SETI Institute Honors Dr. Lori Marino with 2026 Drake Award

Cites pioneering research on the evolution of intelligence in life on Earth and beyond

The SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) Institute has announced that this year’s recipient of its prestigious Drake Award will be Dr. Lori Marino, founder and president of the Whale Sanctuary Project.

We’re delighted to learn this. And you may understandably be asking: “But what does the search for extraterrestrial intelligence have to do with whales and dolphins and the Whale Sanctuary Project?”

The answer, in fact, is: “Quite a lot.”

The SETI Institute is best known for the huge arrays of telescopes that watch for signs and signals of intelligent life beyond Earth. Less well-known is that its work involves a lot more than just scanning the cosmos. It requires a basic understanding of the different forms of intelligence that life might take on other worlds. And since the intelligence of whales and dolphins parallels that of us humans in many ways, understanding their highly complex brains and intelligence is a great way to start.

That’s why, to help answer the question of how to look for signs of intelligent life beyond Planet Earth, astronomers at the SETI Institute turn to scientists who study intelligence in our fellow animals.

A neuroscientist and psychologist by training, Dr. Marino is a leader in the field of intelligence in nonhuman animals. In 2001, at the New York Aquarium, she and a colleague demonstrated that bottlenose dolphins showed evidence of self-awareness, which is considered one of the hallmarks of complex intelligence.

She also showed that having an oversized brain is not unique to us humans and our primate cousins. Dolphins have them, too.

But while these findings led many of her colleagues to want to pursue further research on captive dolphins, it led Dr. Marino to the opposite conclusion: that no self-aware being belongs in a concrete tank. Nor, indeed, except for their own wellbeing, in any form of captivity.

And it was this understanding that would lead her, 15 years later, to the founding of the Whale Sanctuary Project and our efforts today to complete the sanctuary we’re establishing in Nova Scotia.

You can browse through some of Dr. Marino’s research into the intelligence of cetaceans (whales, dolphins and porpoises) on the Whale Sanctuary website here.

One thing that has drawn scientists at SETI to her work is that although, over tens of millions of years, cetaceans and humans have evolved along very different tracks, our two species share much in common in terms of our psychology. They call this convergent evolution. And if it happens in animals who are so distantly related on our own planet, one might reasonably hypothesize that life forms on other worlds might develop similar forms of intelligence, too.

What, then, might the evolution of intelligence on Earth tell us about how life and intelligence might evolve on other planets? And what does this kind of research tell us about how we should relate to the other animals right here on our own planet?

Prior to her work with whales and dolphins, Dr. Marino also worked at NASA in the Space Life Sciences program. And in bestowing this year’s Drake Award on her, the SETI Institute recognizes the importance of advancing our understanding of intelligence on Earth and applying that knowledge to foster meaningful scientific, ethical, and social change. Only once we have accomplished this on our own planet will we be in a position to relate meaningfully and ethically to whatever forms of life we might encounter on other worlds.

Below is a copy of the SETI Institutes announcement of this year’s Drake Award.