The New Doctors

Meet Erik Antonsen ’97, MS ’01, PhD ’04
Urbana Campus

Everything Erik Antonsen ’97, MS ’01, PhD ’04, MD ’09, accomplishes takes him one step closer to a childhood dream most only imagine—becoming an astronaut. As a member of UIUC’s combined MD/PhD Medical Scholars Program, he continued the path of his undergraduate and master’s degree studies by earning his doctorate in aeronautical and astronautical engineering, literally making him a rocket scientist.

Antonsen also completed NIH-funded HIV research in Zambia in 2007 as a Fogarty International Center Clinical Research Scholar and made three mission trips to Ecuador to volunteer in public hospitals. Among his many awards, his medical school peers selected him for the Gold Humanism in Medicine Honor Society.

Now a resident in emergency medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, Antonsen hopes his preparations will distinguish him from the thousands of astronaut applications NASA receives, and make him one of the 10 to 20 mission candidates the space program selects every three to four years.