Sara Seager

Sara Seager received a B.Sc. (1994) from the University of Toronto and a Ph.D. (1999) from Harvard University. She was affiliated with the Institute for Advanced Study (1999–2002) and the Carnegie Institution of Washington (2002–2006) before joining the faculty at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where she is Class of 1941 Professor in the Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences and the Department of Physics. She is the author of Exoplanet Atmospheres and Exoplanets (both 2010). Sara Seager is an astrophysicist and planetary scientist exploring the possibility of life throughout the galaxy. Adapting the principles of existing planetary science to the study of exoplanets (planets outside the solar system), she is quickly advancing a subfield initially viewed with skepticism by the scientific community. A mere hypothesis until the mid-1990s, nearly 900 exoplanets in more than 600 planetary systems have since been identified, with thousands of more planet candidates known.