Sara Seager

Sara Seager is the Class of 1941 Professor of Physics, Planetary Science, and Aeronautics & Astronautics at MIT, and a Canadian-American astrophysicist whose career has centered on exoplanet atmospheres and the search for life beyond Earth. She is the Principal Investigator and lead of the Morning Star Missions to Venus, a privately funded series of probes (including the Venus Habitability Mission, the Rocket Lab Venus Life Finder mission, and a future atmospheric sample-return concept) designed to investigate whether the planet's sulfuric-acid clouds could host habitable chemistry. Seager was a member of the team that reported the contested 2020 phosphine biosignature detection in the Venusian atmosphere, work which catalyzed renewed interest in low-cost dedicated Venus astrobiology missions. A MacArthur Fellow, member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, and Officer of the Order of Canada, she is scheduled to join the University of Toronto's Canadian Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics as North Star Distinguished Professor in September 2026.