Photo by David Kelly Crow
Emily Carter, professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering, is among the 94 scientists and scholars who have become fellows or foreign members of the Royal Society in 2024. To receive this honor, nominees must have made “a substantial contribution to the improvement of natural knowledge, including mathematics, engineering science and medical science.”
Carter, now a foreign member of the Royal Society, is the Gerhard R. Andlinger Professor in Energy and the Environment at Princeton University, and the senior strategic advisor and associate laboratory director at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL). She has held many roles at Princeton, including serving as the founding director of the Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment and the dean of the School of Engineering and Applied Science.
The Royal Society honored “her pioneering development and application of quantum-mechanics-based atomic- and multi-scale simulation tools that have produced deep insights into materials science, sustainable energy and carbon mitigation.” Her previous awards include election to the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the U.S. National Academy of Inventors, the U.S. National Academy of Engineering, and the European Academy of Sciences.
Carter earned her bachelor’s degree in chemistry from the University of California-Berkeley and her doctoral degree in chemistry at Caltech.