May 4, 2018

UW astrobiologist Victoria Meadows receives SETI Institute’s Frank Drake Award

Victoria Meadows, University of Washington professor of astronomy and leader of NASA’s UW-based Virtual Planetary Laboratory (VPL), has been named recipient of the 2018 Frank Drake Award from the SETI Institute. She is the first woman to receive the award.

The mission of the nonprofit SETI Institute, founded in 1984, is to “explore, understand and explain the origin and nature of life in the universe.” The Frank Drake award is named for the pioneering astronomer who in 1961 created the Drake Equation, which addressed the relative likelihood of advanced civilizations in space. Many view the equation still as a road map for astrobiology.

Read the full article in UW NEWS.