Professor Sara Seager will give a Keynote Address entitled:
'Innovation, Exploration, and the Search for Life Beyond Earth'

DATE: Tuesday, 10/19 at 12-1pm  
LOCATION: W20-307

Food will be available TO-GO at the end of the event to take with you when you leave.

Please RSVP by Thursday, 10/14 if you would like food.
----

Sara Seager is an astrophysicist and a Professor of Physics, Professor of Planetary Science, and a Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where she holds the Class of 1941 Professor Chair.  She has been a pioneer in the vast and unknown world of exoplanets, planets that orbit stars other than the sun. Her ground-breaking research ranges from the detection of exoplanet atmospheres to innovative theories about life on other worlds to development of novel space mission concepts.
 
In space missions for planetary discovery and exploration, she was the Deputy Science Director of the MIT-led NASA Explorer-class mission TESS; she was PI of the JPL-MIT CubeSat ASTERIA; is a lead of the Starshade Rendezvous Mission (a space-based direct imaging exoplanet discovery concept under technology development) to find a true Earth analog orbiting a Sun-like star; and most recently is directing a mission concept study to find signs of life or life itself in the Venus atmosphere.
 
Her research earned her a MacArthur “genius” grant and in addition Professor Seager is an Officer of the Order of Canada, a member of US National Academy of Sciences, a recipient of the Sackler Prize in the Physical Sciences, and has Asteroid 9729 named in her honor. Professor Seager is the author of, “The Smallest Lights in the Universe: A Memoir”.