Sara Seager

professor, physics, MIT

Sara Seager is Director for the MIT-led Venus Morning Star Missions to Venus and lead for Project Starshade. In the past she was Deputy Science Director for the MIT-led NASA mission TESS and PI for the on-orbit JPL/MIT CubeSat ASTERIA.

Before joining MIT in 2007, she spent four years on the senior research staff at the Carnegie Institution of Washington preceded by three years at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, NJ. She earned a BSc from the University of Toronto and a PhD from Harvard University. Professor Seager is the 2007 recipient of the American Astronomical Society’s Helen B. Warner Prize. Professor Seager’s research focuses on computer models of atmospheres and interiors of all kinds of exoplanets. Her research has introduced many new ideas to the field of exoplanets, including work that led to the first detection of an exoplanet atmosphere. She was part of a team that co-discovered the first detection of light emitted from an exoplanet and the first spectrum of an exoplanet. Her current research focuses on the search for Earth-like planets orbiting nearby stars and their bio-signatures.