{"id":18544,"date":"2018-05-02T01:05:33","date_gmt":"2018-05-01T17:05:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/seti-institute-gives-drake-award-to-univ-of-washington-astrobiologist-vikki-meadows\/"},"modified":"2018-05-02T01:05:33","modified_gmt":"2018-05-01T17:05:33","slug":"seti-institute-gives-drake-award-to-univ-of-washington-astrobiologist-vikki-meadows","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/seti-institute-gives-drake-award-to-univ-of-washington-astrobiologist-vikki-meadows\/","title":{"rendered":"SETI Institute gives Drake Award to Univ. of Washington astrobiologist Vikki Meadows"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_416802\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-416802\" style=\"width: 630px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full-width wp-image-416802\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/180501-meadows-630x373.jpg\" alt=\"Victoria Meadows\" width=\"630\" height=\"373\" srcset=\"https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/180501-meadows-630x373.jpg 630w, https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/180501-meadows.jpg 648w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 630px) 100vw, 630px\"><figcaption data-nosnippet=\"\" id=\"caption-attachment-416802\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">University of Washington astrobiologist Victoria Meadows holds up a rock sample. (UW Photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>University of Washington astrobiologist Victoria Meadows has become the first woman to receive the SETI Institute\u2019s Frank Drake Award, named after a pioneer in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence.<\/p>\n<p>Meadows directs UW\u2019s graduate program in astrobiology and is the principal investigator for the Virtual Planetary Laboratory, which is based at UW and administered by the NASA Astrobiology Institute.<\/p>\n<p>Under Meadows\u2019 guidance, researchers affiliated with the VPL use computer modeling to assess the potential habitability of planets beyond our solar system. About two dozen institutions, including UW and other universities as well as NASA centers, participate in the VPL program.<\/p>\n<p>Drake Award recipients are chosen by the SETI Institute\u2019s science advisory board.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cVikki Meadows is a truly outstanding awardee for the Frank Drake Award,\u201d board chairman John Rummel said today in a news release. \u201cShe is a leader in the scientific estimation&nbsp;of environments on extrasolar planets, and in the search for signs of habitability and life. As a professor and mentor, she has infused others with her enthusiasm and research expertise&nbsp;\u2014 leading from the front.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><iframe title=\"Finding Life in the Universe with Victoria Meadows\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/bJMp9Whqu7A?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen=\"\" data-ratio=\"0.5625\" data-width=\"800\" data-height=\"450\" style=\"display: block; margin: 0px; width: 800px; height: 450px;\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Meadows shared the glory with her colleagues.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAstrobiology addresses questions so big, they can\u2019t be answered by a single researcher of even a single field,\u201d she said in a statement.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cInstead, it takes a community with a staggering breadth of expertise and techniques, and the willingness to work with and learn from each other,\u201d she said. \u201cIt has been my very great honor to lead this spectacular team of interdisciplinary researchers, and a privilege to engage in such exciting and impactful research.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Meadows came to UW in 2007, after serving as a research scientist at NASA\u2019s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and an associate research scientist at Caltech\u2019s Spitzer Science Center. She\u2019s been on the science teams for the Spitzer Space Telescope, the Hubble Space Telescope\u2019s Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2, and the Deep Space EPOXI mission to Comet Hartley 2.<\/p>\n<p>She\u2019s currently on the science and technology definition team for the Large UV Optical Infrared Surveyor concept, or LUVOIR, and chairs NASA\u2019s Exoplanet Exploration Program Analysis Group.<\/p>\n<p>Meadows is the fourth recipient of the Drake Award. The first award was given in 2001 to its namesake, Frank Drake, who conducted the first radio-based SETI search in 1960 and is the originator of the Drake Equation. Other recipients include Charles Townes (2002), the Nobel-winning inventor of the maser and the laser; and William Borucki (2015), the principal investigator for NASA\u2019s planet-hunting Kepler mission.<\/p>\n<p>Meadows will receive the award and discuss her work at a public event on June 14 at SRI International in Menlo Park, Calif.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>University of Washington astrobiologist Victoria Meadows holds up a rock sample. (UW Photo) University of Washington astrobiologist Victoria Meadows has become the first woman to receive the SETI Institute\u2019s Frank Drake Award, named after a pioneer in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. Meadows directs UW\u2019s graduate program in astrobiology and is the principal investigator for [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[1874,3754,4368,5248,5249],"class_list":["post-18544","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-astrobiology","tag-seti","tag-university-of-washington","tag-victoria-meadows","tag-virtual-planetary-laboratory"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18544"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18544"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18544\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18544"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18544"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18544"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}