Linsey Chen Marr is an American scientist who is the Charles P. Lunsford Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Virginia Tech. Her research considers the interaction of nanomaterials and viruses with the atmosphere. During the COVID-19 pandemic Marr studied how SARS-CoV-2 and other airborne pathogens could be transported in air. In 2023, she was elected to the National Academy of Engineering and named a MacArthur Fellow.
Early life and education
Marr studied engineering at Harvard University and graduated summa cum laude in 1996. During her undergraduate degree Marr developed an energy efficient lamp. She moved to the University of California, Berkeley for her graduate studies, where she worked in the department of environmental engineering. Her doctoral research considered how ozone levels were impacted by transport, population and industrial development. Marr joined Massachusetts Institute of Technology as a postdoctoral researcher, where she worked alongside Mario J. Molina. At MIT, she collected data to better understand pollution in Mexico, joining a measurement campaign on board a mobile scientific laboratory. As part of the campaign Marr tried to track down Mexico's most significant polluters, following taxi drivers as they made their way around Mexico City. The research informed environmental policy in Mexico and was proposed as a means to protect the inhabitants of other over polluted megacities.
Research and career
Marr joined the faculty at Virginia Tech in 2003, where she established her own research group that investigates how engineered nanomaterials interact with the atmosphere. Marr showed that when released into the air, engineered nanomaterials can aggregate with other matter to form structures of various sizes (in the nm and μm length scales).
Beyond nanomaterials, Marr has considered how airborne pathogens pollute the atmosphere. To Marr, airborne pathogens are self-replicating assemblies of nanoparticles. In 2013 she was awarded a National Institutes of Health (NIH) New Innovator award to study virus transmission by bioaerosols. Her early research considered the spread of influenza, looking at the viral concentration in the air of aeroplanes and play centres. She showed that it was in childcare centres that the influenza viral load was highest, and it was the lowest in hospitals. In an attempt to understand these findings, Marr has studied the viral and bacterial microbiome in different environments. Marr has demonstrated that viruses were more active in very high (> 98%) and relatively low (< 50%) humidity. In an effort to establish the dynamics of these pathogens, Marr has developed sensitive, multi-layer sensors. The sensors include a custom-DNA that has been designed to immobilise specific viruses, which are subsequently bound to another DNA strand which can be attached to a gold nanoparticle for viral detection using Raman spectroscopy.
Alongside virus transmission and nanomaterial – atmosphere interactions, Marr has investigated the emissions and transport of air pollutants. She was appointed the Charles P. Lunsford Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering in 2018.