Kerr was born in 1971 in New York and graduated from Tower Hill School in Wilmington, Delaware, in 1989.[3] In 1993, he received a B.S.E. magna cum laude in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering from Princeton University; in 1994, a Master of Science in Mechanical Engineering from Stanford University. He attended Harvard Law School, where he was an editor of the Harvard Journal of Law & Technology and executive editor of the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy; he received his Juris Doctor magna cum laude in 1997.[4]