Drake joined the Astronomy faculty of Cornell University in 1963. Drake lead the conversion of the Arecibo Observatory to a radio astronomical facility. He lead Arecibo's improvements in 1974 and 1996. As a researcher, Drake was involved in the early work on pulsars. In this period, Drake was a professor at Cornell University and Director of the National Astronomy and Ionosphere Center (NAIC) – the formal name for the Arecibo facility. In 1974 he wrote the Arecibo message.