Carlos is an Assistant Professor and Society of Fellows Postdoctoral Scholar, as well as an NSF Postdoctoral Fellow in Biology, in the department of Earth and Environmental Science at the University of Michigan. He received his Ph.D. from George Mason University. His research focuses on understanding the patterns of evolution associated with mammals returning to a marine environment. His lab studies the evolutionary origins of key innovations, such as echolocation or filter feeding in whales. These innovations represent key transformations associated with changing ecologies akin to the transition from scales to feathers in dinosaurs of fins to limbs in early tetrapods. His research program uses high resolution CT scanning and 3D modeling of fossils to understand how the return to a marine environment broadly shapes mammalian evolution overall, and to understand the origins of modern groups and their ecologies.