The Breakthrough Listen Initiative: Humanity's Boldest Effort to Answer our Oldest Question

Guest Speaker

Thursday, 25th January 2024 (19:45 - 22:00)

Venue: The J.A. Jones Hoober Observatory

The Breakthrough Listen Initiative, sponsored by the Breakthrough Prize Foundation, is the most powerful, comprehensive and intensive scientific search ever undertaken for signs of intelligent life beyond Earth. The project is using the Green Bank radio telescope in West Virginia, the Parkes Telescope in Australia and the MeerKat Array in South Africa to search for radio transmissions from advanced civilizations. In addition, the Automated Planet Finder at Lick Observatory is being used to search for optical laser transmissions from other technological civilizations.  Additional partnerships with other international facilities, including FAST (China) and the Jodrell Bank Observatory (UK), extend the program's observational reach.

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Speaker: Daniel Czech, Dr

Daniel Czech is a postdoctoral scholar at the University of California, Berkeley and Project Engineer for Breakthrough Listen's commensal technosignature survey with MeerKAT. His research also involves signal detection and classification for technosignature searches. He received his PhD from the University of Cape Town, where he worked on classifying transient radio frequency interference by source. As an undergraduate at UCT he completed a BSc in engineering (mechatronics). He has also undertaken research internships at the University of Queensland in Australia and the National University of Singapore in computational neuroscience and neuromorphic engineering. His interests include SETI, signal processing, instrumentation and machine learning.