Carmen Guerra-Garcia

Biography

Carmen Guerra-Garcia is the Esther and Harold E. Edgerton Associate Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where she leads the Aerospace Plasma Group focused on the intersection of aerospace engineering, low temperature plasma technologies, and gas discharge physics. She majored in Aeronautical Engineering from the Polytechnic University of Madrid (Spain) and obtained her SM and PhD degrees in Aeronautics and Astronautics from MIT. Prior to joining the MIT faculty, Guerra-Garcia worked as a research engineer in Boeing Research and Technology Europe and was a visiting researcher at Princeton University. Guerra-Garcia is the recipient of an NSF CAREER Award (2024), an Office of Naval Research Young Investigator Award (2021) and an International Fulbright Science and Technology Award (2009), amongst others, and her teaching and mentoring have been recognized by the Junior Bose Award for Excellence in Teaching (2024) and the Earll M. Murman Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Advising (2021). She is a member of the APS Gaseous Electronics Conference Executive Committee and the AIAA Plasmadynamics and Lasers Technical Committee. Guerra-Garcia’s current research spans from safety issues (interaction of lightning with aircraft and wind turbines) to plasma technologies for ignition, combustion, and chemical conversion, and combine multi-physics modeling, computation, and experimentation.

Specialization and Research Interests

My current efforts span from aircraft safety issues (interaction of lightning with aircraft and wind turbines, novel methods for protection and mitigation against lightning strike damage), to plasma technologies for combustion and chemical conversion, and combine multi-physics modeling, computation, and experimentation.

Teaching Interests

Ionized gases, Aerospace Propulsion, Space Propulsion

Academic Degrees

Ingeniero Aeronautico, 2007, Madrid Polytechnic University; S.M. Aeronautics and Astronautics, 2011, Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Ph.D. Aeronautics and Astronautics, 2014, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Positions Held at MIT

Associate Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics, 2024–present
Assistant Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics, 2018-2024
Postdoctoral Associate, 2015-2016

Positions Held outside MIT

Research Engineer, Boeing Research & Technology – Europe, 2016-2017; Exchange scholar, Princeton University, Nov 2013 – Jan 2014; Mission Analysis Engineer, Deimos Space, 2007-2009

Awards & Honors

• Junior Bose Award, School of Engineering, 2024
• NSF CAREER Award, 2024
• Young Investigator Award, Office of Naval Research (ONR), 2021
• Earll M. Murman Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Advising, MIT, 2021
• EU-US Frontiers of Engineering, National Academy of Engineering, 2021

Research

• Corona Discharge in Wind for Electrically Isolated Electrodes JGR Atmospheres (2020), C. Guerra-Garcia, N. C. Nguyen, T. Mouratidis, M. Martinez-Sanchez
• Investigations of positive streamers as quasi-steady structures using reduced order models Plasma Sources Science and Technology (2020), C Pavan, M Martinez-Sanchez, and C Guerra-Garcia
• Aircraft Charging and its Influence on Triggered Lightning JGR Atmospheres (2019), C. Pavan, P. Fontanes, M. Urbani, N. C. Nguyen, M. Martinez-Sanchez, J. Peraire, J. Montanya, C. Guerra-Garcia
• Charge Control Strategy for Aircraft-Triggered Lightning Strike Risk Reduction AIAA Journal (2018), Carmen Guerra-Garcia, Ngoc Cuong Nguyen, Jaime Peraire, and Manuel Martinez-Sanchez
• Arc reattachment driven by a turbulent boundary layer: implications for the sweeping of lightning arcs along aircraft Journal of Physics D: Applied Physics (2016), C. Guerra-Garcia, N C Nguyen, J Peraire and M Martinez-Sanchez