Sara Seager

Sara Seager is a planetary scientist and MIT professor of physics, planetary science, and aeronautics and astronautics, known for her work on exoplanet atmospheres and the search for biosignatures, who left MIT to join the University of Toronto as North Star Distinguished Professor at the Canadian Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics (CITA), with cross-appointments in Physics, Chemistry, and Astronomy & Astrophysics.

The move, announced November 18, 2025, returns Seager to her alma mater and took effect September 1, 2026.

Before her move, Seager held MIT's Class of 1941 Professor Chair and led several space mission efforts: she was deputy science director of NASA's TESS exoplanet-hunting mission, principal investigator of the JPL-MIT ASTERIA CubeSat, a leader of the Starshade Rendezvous Mission concept to directly image an Earth-like exoplanet, and principal investigator on mission work searching for signs of life in the atmosphere of Venus.

Her honors include a MacArthur "genius" grant, membership in the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, the Sackler Prize in the Physical Sciences, the Magellanic Premium Medal, and appointment as an Officer of the Order of Canada. She is the author of the memoir The Smallest Lights in the Universe. Early in her career, she was mentored at the Institute for Advanced Study by astrophysicist John Bahcall, whose support helped her pursue then-unconventional research into exoplanet atmospheres — work that contributed to the first detected exoplanet atmosphere, the first light measured from an exoplanet, and the first exoplanet spectrum.