Dr. Erik Antonsen has built his career at the intersection of medicine and engineering for human spaceflight. He is an Associate Physician at Massachusetts General Hospital within the SPEAR Medicine Division of the Department of Emergency Medicine, and an Assistant Professor at Harvard Medical School. He also serves as a lecturer in the AeroAstro Department at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he co-teaches Aerospace Physiology and Life Support Systems.

Dr. Antonsen is Treasurer and CTO of Advancing Frontiers, a consulting company providing spaceflight integration services, and is also owner and CEO of Antarch Consulting, LLC. In addition, he is an editor of the book Systems Medicine for Human Spaceflight.

Throughout his career, Dr. Antonsen has held leadership roles across government, academia, and industry. At NASA, he served as Element Scientist for Exploration Medical Capabilities within the NASA Human Research Program from 2015 to 2018, where he led efforts to develop systems-medicine approaches for spaceflight medical systems. From 2018 to 2021, he served as Assistant Director for Human System Risk Management in the Human Health and Performance Directorate at NASA Johnson Space Center. In that role, he chaired the NASA Human System Risk Board and worked with human spaceflight programs to prioritize research and operational investments aimed at protecting astronaut health and performance.

From 2013 to 2024, Dr. Antonsen was faculty at Baylor College of Medicine, where he served as Associate Professor of Space Medicine and Associate Professor of Emergency Medicine, both with tenure. He also co-founded ADE Aerospace Consulting and ADE Medical, companies that provided engineering and medical support for the record-breaking StratEx mission in 2014.

Dr. Antonsen earned bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degrees in aerospace engineering and is a practicing emergency medicine physician in both Houston and Boston. His current research focuses on advanced risk assessment and analysis for space medicine, artificial intelligence in medicine, and space health systems design.