Sara Seager is a renowned Canadian-born astrophysicist and planetary scientist based at The Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Her research focuses on the discovery of planets outside our own solar system.

Since first being detected in 1992, more than 4,300 of these exoplanets have been discovered.

Seager’s in no doubt there must be other life somewhere in the universe and in her book The Smallest Lights in the Universe, she interweaves her quest to find an earth-like exoplanet with the story of her search for meaning and solace after becoming a young widow and solo mother to two small boys.