Emily A. Carter is the Gerhard R. Andlinger Professor in Energy and the Environment and Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, the Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment, and Applied and Computational Mathematics at Princeton University. She is also Senior Strategic Advisor and Associate Laboratory Director for Applied Materials and Sustainability Sciences, and a member of the executive management team at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL), a Department of Energy national lab. Since joining PPPL in 2022, Dr. Carter has been working to diversify the laboratory’s research portfolio to include the science of electromanufacturing and solar radiation management. Her portfolio expanded to include microelectronics and quantum information science in 2023. A physical chemist by training, Dr. Carter began her independent academic career at UCLA in 1988, rising through the chemistry and biochemistry faculty ranks before moving to Princeton University in 2004. She spent the next 15 years at Princeton University as a jointly appointed faculty member in mechanical and aerospace engineering, and applied and computational mathematics. Dr. Carter was also the Founding Director of Princeton’s Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment from 2010 to 2016 before being appointed Princeton’s Dean of the School of Engineering and Applied Science in 2016.

Dr. Carter was recruited back to UCLA in 2019 as its Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost, and as Distinguished Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering. Dr. Carter maintains an active research presence, developing and applying quantum mechanical simulation techniques to enable discovery and design of materials for sustainable production of fuels, chemicals, and materials. Her research is supported by grants from the U.S. Department of Defense and the Department of Energy, as well as Princeton University. The author of over 450 publications and patents, Dr. Carter has delivered nearly 600 invited and plenary lectures worldwide and serves on advisory boards spanning a wide range of disciplines. She is the recipient of numerous honors, including election to the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, U.S. National Academy of Inventors, the U.S. National Academy of Engineering, and the European Academy of Sciences. Dr. Carter earned a B.S. in Chemistry from UC Berkeley in 1982 and a Ph.D. in Physical Chemistry from Caltech in 1987, followed by a brief postdoc at the University of Colorado, Boulder.