November 2, 2023, Mountain View, CA – The SETI Institute is pleased to announce that Drs. Pascal Lee will be honored with the 2023 Carl Sagan Prize for the Popularization of Science, presented by Wonderfest. The prestigious Sagan Prize honors and encourages individuals who have “made outstanding contributions to the public understanding and appreciation of science.” Previous SETI Institute recipients include SETI Institute co-founder and SETI pioneer Jill Tarter, Senior Astronomer Seth Shostak, and Trustee Andrew Fraknoi.
“I am truly delighted and honored by this award,” says Pascal Lee, “especially since Carl Sagan has been and continues to be such an inspiration and encouragement to so many people to share their love of science and advocate for informed, rational, critical thinking.”
Lee is a planetary scientist at the SETI Institute, founder and chairman of the Mars Institute, professor of planetary science at the Kepler Space Institute, and director of the NASA Haughton-Mars Project at NASA Ames Research Center. His research focuses on the history of water on Mars and planning for future human exploration of the Moon and Mars. Lee led more than 30 expeditions to the Arctic and Antarctic to study Mars in comparison to Earth. His areas of research include asteroids, the moons of Mars, Saturn’s moon Titan, and SETI, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence.
But Lee was also a passionate supporter of planetary and deep space exploration, sharing his love of space science with students and the public around the world. He has given countless public and school lectures in recent decades, including his sought-after “From Earth to Mars” lectures on future human journeys to Mars and the more speculative “N~1: Alone in The Milky Way”, in which he argues that in every galaxy there may be very few advanced civilizations. His first book, Mission: Mars, won the 2015 Award for Excellence in Children’s Science Books from the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Plus a 2016 documentary A flyby to Mars chronicles Lee and his team’s epic, dangerous and record-breaking journey across sea ice in the Northwest Passage in the Arctic to help prepare for future human exploration of Mars.
Wonderfest director Tucker Hiatt says of Lee’s receipt of the award: “Sagan would be proud to know that Pascal Lee, known for both his research and outreach, and who served as Sagan’s last teaching assistant at Cornell University, received Sagan from Wonderfest . Price for 2023”.
More information about the Wonderfest Sagan Prize can be found here https://wonderfest.org/sagan-prize/ and about the Wonderfest Dr. Lee here https://wonderfest.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/ SaganPrize2023-release-2.pdf
About the SETI Institute
Founded in 1984, the SETI Institute is a non-profit, multidisciplinary research and education organization whose mission is to lead humanity in its quest to understand the origin and expansion of life and intelligence in the universe and to share that knowledge with the world. Our research spans the physical and biological sciences and uses data analytics, machine learning and advanced signal detection technologies. The SETI Institute is a major research partner for industry, academia, and government agencies, including NASA and the National Science Foundation.
Contact
Rebecca McDonald
Director of Communications
The SETI Institute
rmcdonald@seti.org
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