It is a question that the human race has posed for thousands of years, a question that has bridged science and popular culture; in print, on stage and on screen, and most recently in Ridley Scott’s 2012 summer blockbuster Prometheus.

It’s also a question that fits perfectly with the theme of the inaugural President’s Dream Colloquium on the Emergence and Complexity of Life and a question that the Colloquium’s fifth lecturer, Sara Seager, is more than equipped to discuss.

On November 15, in Burnaby, and November 16, at SFU’s Vancouver campus, Seager will give a presentation entitled “Exoplanets and the Search for Habitable Worlds,” a subject that has been the main focus of her research for nearly 20 years.

Born and raised in Toronto, Seager developed a love of the stars at an early age, and after graduating from the University of Toronto, attended the PhD program in Astronomy at Harvard. It was at this time, in the mid-1990s, that the first reports of exoplanets (planets outside our Solar System) around sun-like stars began to appear.

Now an astrophysicist and planetary scientist at MIT, Seager is consumed by exoplanets, where her research focuses on theory, computation and date analysis, including work that led to the first detection of an exoplanet atmosphere.

While her discoveries have resulted in numerous accolades, including being named one of Time Magazine’s 25 Most Influential in Space in 2012, her latest endeavour may yield even greater rewards: as a science advisor with Planetary Resources Inc., a space-mining venture backed by a group of luminaries including director James Cameron and software magnate Charles Simonyi. Planetary Resources intention; to mine resources, like platinum and other metals, from near-earth asteroids.

For more information on Seager’s lecture and the President’s Dream Colloquium, visit: www.sfu.ca/grad.