Maine native wins $1 million TED Prize for her work in archaeology
A Bangor native has been awarded a $1 million prize from the TED Foundation to pursue her work in the field of archaeology.
The TED Prize winner, Sarah Parcak, a 1997 graduate of Bangor High School, uses satellite images to uncover archaeological sites, the Bangor Daily News reported.
Parcak, 36, founding director of the University of Alabama at Birmingham’s Laboratory for Global Observation, is leading a program that uses satellite images to track looting at ancient sites in Egypt, according to the New York Times.
At the annual TED Conference in February, Parcak will reveal details of a project elevating her work that will be funded by the prize. Her talk will be broadcast live from Vancouver, British Columbia.
Maine Public Broadcasting Network reported that Parcak explained in her TED Talk filmed in 2012 that her interest in finding things can be traced back to her childhood in Maine. She said searching for sand dollars on the beaches of Acadia National Park helped her discover patterns that enabled her to know where to dig.
"And eventually, when I started studying Egyptology, I realized that seeing with my naked eyes alone wasn't enough," she said in the talk. "Because all of a sudden, in Egypt, my beach had grown from a tiny beach in Maine to one 800 miles long next to the Nile and my sand dollars had grown to the size of cities."
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