Image and Inquiry: Feb 25 Beyond the Singularity: The Search for Extraterrestrial Technologies

Science@Cal presents a new series of conversations and events on Image and Inquiry

Beyond the Singularity: The Search for Extraterrestrial Technologies

Andrew Siemion & Dan Werthimer

SETI at UC Berkeley Let’s talk about the truth that’s out there… Wednesday, Feb 25 6-8 pm Scarlet City Coffee 3960 Adeline Street Emeryville, CA 94608 Are we alone? For millennia, humanity has pondered their place in the cosmos and asked this question. For the first time in our history, the answer may be within our grasp. Over beer, wine, espresso…whatever…join Dr. Andrew Siemion (ASTRON – Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy) and Dr. Dan Werthimer (UC Berkeley) to explore the history of the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI), the latest developments in the science of astrobiology that are informing modern SETI and the prospects for dramatic advances in the field using the latest generation of world-class telescopes, high-performance signal processing and modern computing techniques. By searching for other technologically-capable species, we are actually peering far into our own future and studying how our own technological progression might proceed. More about our SETI scientists…   Andrew Siemion andrewpvsiemion@gmail.com Dr. Andrew Siemion is the Director of the UC Berkeley Center for SETI Research and is jointly affiliated with The Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy (ASTRON) and Radboud University, Nijmegen, Netherlands. Dr. Siemion’s research interests include studies of time-variable celestial phenomena, astronomical instrumentation and the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI). Dr. Siemion was a recipient of the Josephine De Kármán Fellowship for Undergraduate Studies at UC Berkeley, the UC Berkeley Dorothea Klumpke Roberts Prize for outstanding scholarship as an undergraduate major in astrophysics and the UC Berkeley Mary Elizabeth Uhl Dissertation Prize for his work on searches for exotic radio phenomena.  Dr. Siemion is an elected member of the International Union of Radio Science and the International Academy of Astronautics’ SETI Permanent Committee, and serves on the Science@Cal Advisory Board, the Working Group for Cradle of Life and Transient Science with the Square Kilometer Array and the Board of Directors of the Foundation for Investing in Research on SETI Science and Technology (FIRSST).http://seti.berkeley.edu/siemion   Dan Werthimer danw@ssl.berkeley.edu Co-founder and chief scientist of the SETI@home project and director of other UC Berkeley SETI searches at radio, infrared and visible wavelengths, including the Search for Extra- Terrestrial Radio Emissions from Nearby Developed Intelligent Populations (SERENDIP), Dan Werthimer is also the principal investigator for the worldwide Collaboration for Astronomy Signal Processing and Electronics Research (CASPER). He was associate professor in the engineering and physics departments of San Francisco State University and a visiting professor at Beijing Normal University, the University of St. Charles in Marseille, Eotvos University in Budapest. His father, Jerrold Werthimer, was Professor of Journalism at San Francisco State University for many years. Dan has taught courses at universities in Peru, Egypt, Ghana, Ethiopia, Zimbabwe, Uganda and Kenya. He has published numerous papers in the fields of SETI, radio astronomy, instrumentation and science education; he is co-author of “SETI 2020” and editor of “Astronomical and Biochemical Origins and the Search for Life in the Universe”. Dan specializes in signal processing for radio astronomy. He has been doing SETI since 1979, and he runs the SERENDIP, Optical SETI, and CASPER projects. http://seti.berkeley.edu/