Aja Carter received her bachelor’ degree in biology from Drexel University in 2014. She earned her PhD in earth and environmental sciences in 2020 from the University of Pennsylvania, where she completed a postdoctoral fellowship and published on utilizing the fossil record for design insights and how these insights can inform mechanical intelligence in legged systems. Currently a postdoc in mechanical engineering at Carnegie Mellon University, she is exploring spine-limb combinations for increased maneuverability in robots — designs only made available by probing the fossil record. Her future work has three primary aims: build a generalizable, taxa-agnostic, task- or environment-specific approach to using the fossil record for robot design; develop dynamic robot models to investigate the behavior of extinct taxa; and design and build robots for fieldwork in paleontology. During graduate school, she completed more than 20 outreach events primarily geared toward underserved and underrepresented students, and she conducted and participated in activities for the Louis Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation and designed for Upward Bound. Of her several published papers, one addressed how accessibility affects retention of diverse students. Accessibility is a mainstay of Carter’s education plan, which calls for instilling scientific literacy, critical thinking, and active and cooperative learning techniques to achieve a richly variegated STEM environment.

Research Interests

Robotic design, paleobiological-inspired design