Faculty

SARA SEAGER
Class of 1941 Professor of Physics and Planetary Science

SARA SEAGER, Associate Professor of Physics and Ellen Swallow Richards Associate Professor of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences

Name: Sara Seager

Title(s): Class of 1941 Professor of Physics and Planetary Science

Email: seager@mit.edu

Phone: (617) 253-6775

Assistant: Kristen Barilaro (617) 253-9397

Address:

Massachusetts Institute of Technology
77 Massachusetts Avenue, Bldg. 54-1626
Cambridge, MA 02139

Related Links:

Area of Physics:

Astrophysics: Planets & Brown Dwarfs

Education:

  • B.Sc. 1994, UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO
  • Ph.D. 1999, HARVARD UNIVERSITY

Selected Awards and Honors:

  • American Association for the Advancement of Science Fellow
  • Raymond and Beverly Sackler Prize in the Physical Sciences

Research Interests

Sara Seager’s current research interests are focused upon exoplanet atmospheres and interiors. Over 450 exoplanets are known to orbit nearby stars. Now that their existence is firmly established, a new era of exoplanet characterization has begun. A subset of exoplanets, called transiting planets, pass in front of and behind their stars, as seen from Earth. Transiting planets have immeasurably changed the field of exoplanets because their physical properties, including average density and atmospheric thermal emission, can be now be routinely measured. Seager’s group aims to understand the atmospheric composition and the interior structure of exoplanets, with a focus on the new and growing data set of transiting exoplanets.

Biographical Sketch

Sara Seager received her B.Sc. in mathematics and physics from the University of Toronto in 1994. She earned a Ph.D. in astronomy from Harvard University in 1999, where she investigated recombination in the early Universe before moving to the then brand-new field of exoplanets. Seager was a long-term member at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, NJ, and a senior research staff member at the Carnegie Institution of Washington in Washington, D.C., before joining the MIT faculty in 2007. Seager was awarded the American Astronomical Society’s Helen B. Warner prize in 2007 for her work on exoplanet atmospheres.

Selected Publications

Prof. Seager's publication list pdf icon, as of March 2010.

Last updated: 04.01.2013