Sarah Parcak has been called the “Indiana Jones of the Sky,” but her tools aren’t whips or shovels. She uses satellites.

By analyzing high-resolution imagery from orbit, Dr. Parcak has identified lost pyramids, ancient settlements, and thousands of tombs hidden beneath sand and soil. In 2011, her team revealed evidence of up to 17 possible pyramids and over 3,000 forgotten settlements in Egypt, discoveries that rewrote the archaeological map of the Nile.

Born in Bangor, Maine, in 1978, Parcak studied Egyptology at Yale before earning her Ph.D. in Egyptian Archaeology at Cambridge University. After teaching in Wales, she became a professor at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, where she founded the Laboratory for Global Observation.

Her approach is redefining archaeology: history is no longer revealed only by digging into the ground, but by looking down at Earth from hundreds of miles above.