April 2009

April 3: Monthly Meeting

Extrasolar Planets and the Search for Habitable Worlds

Sara Seager

Sara Seager is the Ellen Swallow Richards Associate Professor of Planetary Science and Associate Professor of Physics at MIT. 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. Her PhD is from Harvard University and her BSc in math and physics from the University of Toronto. Professor Seager is the 2007 recipient of the American Astronomical Society’s Helen B. Warner Prize.

Professor Seager’s research focuses on theoretical models of atmospheres and interiors of all kinds of exoplanets. Her research has introduced many new ideas to the field of exoplanet characterization, 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. Sara Seager,http://seagerexoplanets.mit.edu/ arXiv.org: Sara Seager,http://arxiv.org/find/astro-ph/1/au:+Seager_S/0/1/0/all/0/1