Researchers

John Elliott

Coordinator of SETI Post-Detection Hub

Dr John Elliott has been a leading contributor for SETI post-detection research and development, since the late 1990s: initially in the fields of signal categorisation, analytics and message decipherment, which subsequently expanded to include post-detection metapolicy, protocols, societal impact and dissemination strategies. More recently, this has extended to post detection strategies for designing a global framework for integrating comprising multidisciplinary research. In 2012, together with Lord Martin Rees (Astronomer Royal) as patron, he co-founded the UK SETI Research Network, of which he is currently the Chair.

Derek Ball

Derek Ball specialises in the philosophy of language and the philosophy of mind.  His interests include communication between individuals with different backgrounds and beliefs, and the minds of infants and non-human animals. 

Stephen Baxter

Stephen Baxter was born in Liverpool, England, in 1957. He has degrees in mathematics, from Cambridge University, engineering, from Southampton University, and in business administration, from Henley Management College. He is a Chartered Engineer and Fellow of the British Interplanetary Society. Stephen Baxter has been a full-time author since 1995. His science fiction novels have been published in the UK, the US, and in many other countries including Germany, Japan, France.

Michael Bohlander

Professor Michael Bohlander holds the Chair in Global Law and SETI Policy at Durham Law School. His SETI-related research focusses on the consequences of contact for human law in the wider sense. He is a member of the UK SETI Research Network, the German ETI Research Network, and of the International Institute of Space Law. In February 2022, the Council of the Faculty of Mathematics and Computer Science of Würzburg University (Germany) appointed him to the Scientific Advisory Council of its Interdisciplinary Research Centre for Extraterrestrial Studies (IFEX). He has given talks on SETI and human law in the UK and Germany, and published on SETI issues in the journals Acta Astronautica and Futures. He is currently finishing a book with the working title “Contact with Extraterrestrial Intelligence and Human Law – A speculative study at the example of humanitarian and human rights law” (forthcoming 2023).

Adam Bower

Dr Adam Bower is a Senior Lecturer in the School of International Relations and Co-director of the Centre for Global Law and Governance at the University of St Andrews. Dr Bower’s research examines the development, implementation, and transformation of international norms and laws regulating the use of armed violence. He is currently undertaking a long-term research program (initially funded by a Research Fellowship grant from The Leverhulme Trust) studying the prospective development of new international governance mechanisms to regulate military space operations. Dr Bower is a Fellow of the Outer Space Institute, a global network of transdisciplinary space experts committed to promoting safe and sustainable space operations.

Matt Colborn

Matt Colborn completed a DPhil from the University of Sussex in 2001 and an MSc with distinction in Cognitive Science at the University of Birmingham in 1997. Since 2019 he has been a tutor at the Alef Trust on their MSc programme. Academic interests include Consciousness Studies & philosophy of mind, animal behaviour and cognition and the Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI). He has contributed several talks to the UKSRN Symposia.

Ian Crawford

Ian Crawford is an astronomer turned planetary scientist and is currently Professor of Planetary Science and Astrobiology at Birkbeck College, University of London. The main focus of his research is in the area of lunar exploration, including the remote sensing of the lunar surface and the laboratory analysis of lunar samples. Ian also has research interests in the field of astrobiology, especially Martian analogue environments on Earth, and in the future of space exploration which he believes will become increasingly important for the future of humanity.

Martin Dominik

Martin Dominik is one of the Co-Directors of the St Andrews Centre for Exoplanet Science as well as President of the Network of Researchers on the Chemical Evolution of Life (NoRCEL). A physicist by training and an astronomer by practice, he not only contributed to the detection of extra-solar planets, but also engaged on integrating science in society and cutting across the sciences, humanities, and arts. His wider interests include the fundamental principles underlying the emergence of life and what it means to be human.

William Edmondson

Dr William Edmondson is a Cognitive Scientist with a wide-ranging set of interests in linguistics, human-computer interaction and SETI: first publishing a paper on SETI in 2003, in which he proposes that pulsars can serve as beacons for the discovery of and communication with extraterrestrials. His recent book – The Sequential Imperative, published by Brill (2017) – provides a synthetic summary of much of his work; the conceptual focus is the Functional Specification of the brain, any brain. Along with being a member of the UKSRN, he is also on the Advisory Council of METI (Messaging Extraterrestrial Intelligence), to give critical voice on matters regarding linguistic exchange with an extraterrestrial intelligence. 

Emily Finer

Emily studies intersections between science fiction, science, and space policy. Her research has focused on multilingualism and translation between Russian, Polish and English, and the early Soviet theorists who aimed to make literary analysis more scientific. She is PI for the grant ‘Forecasting Reproduction in Space’; was a contributor to BBC Radio 4’s Red Mars Series, and is Co-Director of the St Andrews Centre for Exoplanet Science.

Michael Garrett

Mike Garrett is the inaugural Sir Bernard Lovell chair of Astrophysics at the University of Manchester and the Director of the Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics (JBCA). His scientific interests are very broad but include the study of the distant universe via high resolution radio observations. He is active in the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) and is currently chair of the IAAs SETI Permanent Committee. He is also a visiting Professor at the University of Leiden.

Kate Genevieve

Kate Genevieve is an artist and researcher at creative studio chroma.space and a trustee at Intercreate, connecting arts and technologies across cultures on projects in Aotearoa New Zealand and Oceania. She has worked as artist in residence at the Sussex Centre for Consciousness Science and the Swiss Center for Affective Sciences, Geneva and currently leads a hybrid programme ‘Ecologies Technologies’ with the Ecological Design Thinking MA at Schumacher College, Devon. Her research explores ecological notions of communication, where (since 2013), she has worked on Of the Spheres: a range of media performances inspired by the Voyager probes that include first contact scenarios for playing audiences. The work considers trans-disciplinary collaboration and action research as playful and creative ways to welcome diverse perspectives, practice improvisatory “readiness” and deepen how we understand and shape post-detection protocols. She collaborates with UKSRN members and Furtherfield Gallery towards designing LARPs (Live Action Role Play).

Roy Jackson

Roy Jackson is an Associate Professor in Philosophy of Religion at the University of Gloucestershire. The relationship between philosophy, religion and science is of particular interest. Roy’s most recent monograph, Muslim and Supermuslim: The Quest for the Perfect Being and Beyond (Palgrave, 2021) was an examination of the concept of Posthumanism from the perspective of Western philosophy (for example, Nietzsche’s Übermensch and Bergson’s Élan vital) and its relation to the Islamic notion of al-Insān al-Kāmil (the ‘Perfect Muslim’). This has led, more recently, into philosophical research on the nature of the human, transcendence, and how the encounter with the ‘Other’ (transhuman, posthuman, non-human) impacts upon the self and our belief systems. Roy is the author of numerous other works, including Nietzsche and Islam (Routledge, 2007), The God of Philosophy (Acumen, 2011), Mawdudi and Political Islam (Routledge, 2011), and What is Islamic Philosophy? (Routledge 2014), as well as a number of introductory texts on Plato and Nietzsche.

David Keir

Dr David Keir, a physical chemist by training, has spent most of his career studying scientific approaches to quantifying and managing risks; mostly in nuclear, chemical and biological applications. Many of his projects were funded by the Ministry of Defence, the civil nuclear industry and other UK and European public bodies. He spent some years working for the NGO VERTIC where he was Director for Verification and Monitoring, in the sphere of nuclear weapons non-proliferation and international disarmament. He led the Foreign and Commonwealth Office-funded, UK-China exchange on reducing the threats of weapons of mass destruction, and a multinational scientific forum on the verification of weapons treaties, funded by the Norwegian government.

Eamonn Kerins

Dr Eamonn Kerins is Senior Lecturer in Physics and Astronomy at the Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics, University of Manchester.  His research primarily focuses around the detection and characterisation of planets around other star systems (exoplanets). He is the deputy lead of the Exoplanets Science Working Group for the European Space Agency’s Euclid mission and the Principal Investigator for a pilot programme called SPEARNET that is probing the atmospheres of hot, massive transiting exoplanets using the technique of transmission spectroscopy. His interests in SETI focus mostly around the development of ”smart” methods for targeted SETI strategies. In 2020 Eamonn proposed the idea of Mutual Detectability as a game-theoretic strategy that could improve our chances of success. The strategy involves targeting systems where a civilisation could, along with ourselves, recognise mutual evidence of our mutual existence. This mode of thinking argues for exoplanet search strategies, and subsequent SETI programmes, that are optimised such as to maximise game-theory incentive for discovery.

Arik Kershenbaum

Dr Arik Kershenbaum is a zoologist at the University of Cambridge, and a specialist in animal communication, especially in wolves, dolphins, and primates. His recent popular science book, The Zoologist’s Guide to the Galaxy, shows how observations of life on Earth, combined with evolutionary theory, can be used to make predictions about the nature of alien life. He has been a member of the UKSRN since 2017, and is also on the advisory committee of METI.org, and a member of the Message in a Bottle project, both dedicated to formulating intelligible messages to extraterrestrial civilisations.

Hannah Little

Dr Hannah Little is a linguist and science communicator at the University of Liverpool. She is currently writing a book about how science fiction scenarios can help us understand early human linguistic evolution and the possibilities of future linguistic technology. She did her PhD in the field of evolutionary linguistics at the Artificial Intelligence Lab at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium, and went on to a postdoc at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics in the Netherlands. She was a Senior Lecturer in Science Communication at UWE Bristol for four years and has presented public-facing talks on aliens and linguistics at the British Science Festival and TEDx, and has talked on the subject on BBC Radio 4’s Stranger than Sci-Fi and Word of Mouth.

Joāo Pedro de Magalhāes

Professor João Pedro de Magalhães graduated in Microbiology in 1999 from the Escola Superior de Biotecnologia in his hometown of Porto, Portugal, and in 2004 obtained a PhD in Biological Sciences from the University of Namur in Belgium. Following further training in genetics at Harvard Medical School, in 2008 Prof de Magalhaes joined the University of Liverpool and, in 2022, he was recruited to the University of Birmingham where he leads the Genomics of Ageing and Rejuvenation Lab (http://rejuvenomicslab.com/). In addition, he has a long-term interest in technological trends and their future impact on society. Prof de Magalhaes has authored over 100 publications and given over 100 invited talks, including three TEDx talks. He is also involved in Active SETI efforts (http://active-seti.info/).

Kurt Mills

Prof. Kurt Mills is a Visiting Scholar in the School of International Relations at the University of St. Andrews. He was previously Professor of International Relations and Human Rights at the University of Dundee. His research focuses on the development of international norms and institutions related to human rights, humanitarianism, international criminal justice, and the responsibility to protect, particularly in the context of sub-Saharan Africa.  He is the author of numerous articles and books, including International Reponses to Mass Atrocities in Africa: Responsibility to Protect, Prosecute, and Palliate. He was Director of the Scottish Human Rights Defenders Fellowship, and is currently an Editor of the journal Global Governance and a Trustee of the British International Studies Association. He is past Vice-Chair of the Academic Council on the United Nations System, past Vice President of the International Studies Association (ISA), and founder of the ISA Human Rights section. He has written about international law and sovereignty in outer space for the European Space Agency/European Science Foundation Humans in Outer Space Project. He has an interest in the global governance of extra-terrestrial relations and how to apply human rights frameworks to extraterrestrial life.

Andrew O’Malley

Dr Andrew O’Malley is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Medicine at University of St Andrews. He has degrees in Forensic Anthropology and Human Identification, and his research background is in the microarchitecture of bone. He has acted as a forensic consultant to the United Nations in the Middle East, assisting various criminal investigations into political assassinations and acts of terrorism. He is also a technology enthusiast and has worked with developers to create realistic portrayals of science in video games.

Emma Johanna Puranen

Emma Johanna Puranen is an interdisciplinary doctoral scholar using data science to study the portrayal of exoplanets in science fiction. She is interested in what science fiction reveals about how humanity imagines extra-terrestrials, and in the ethics of first contact.

Li Shean Toh

Dr Li Shean Toh is an assistant professor in the School of Pharmacy at the University of Nottingham. Li Shean’s main research focuses on improving health services by translating research into practice. Her particular area of expertise is on how medications are managed from manufacturing, supply, storage, prescribing, use, monitoring of side effects until disposal. Her latest and novel research together with Prof Phil Williams is in Astropharmacy which addresses the questions of how pioneers and explorer are to receive effective medical and pharmaceutical care. She works with the UK Space Agency, led the recent inclusion of Pharmacological Countermeasures on the forthcoming European Space Agency (ESA) SciSpacE roadmap and acts as expert advisor with the United Nations (UN) and Royal Society. She has recently been awarded the European Space Leader Award by the Space Generation Advisory Council.

Andreas Anton

Dr. Andreas Anton is a German sociologist working at the Institute for Frontier Areas of Psychology and Mental Health (IGPP) in Freiburg. He is a founding member of the German ETI Research Network. One of his main research interests is the question of the social consequences of a first contact of mankind with an extraterrestrial intelligence. In this context, together with his colleague Michael Schetsche, he has taken up and expanded ideas on exosociology. In several articles and two books (published in German), the authors analyse various scenarios for contact with an extraterrestrial intelligence. The focus is on what factors human reactions would depend on in a first contact event. An English translation of one of the books will be published by Springer in 2023 with the title “Meeting the Alien. An Introduction to Exosociology”. 

Anamaria Berea

Anamaria Berea is a computational social scientist with a wide experience in applying computational and data science methods to astrobiology and space sciences. She is an associate professor at George Mason University, a research affiliate with the SETI Institute, a research investigator with Blue Marble Space Institute of Science and affiliate faculty with Frontier Development Lab. She is also studying communication as a complex system.

Klara Anna Capova

Klara is a socio-cultural anthropologist specialised in Science and Technology Studies, primarily interested in the societal context of space sciences and technologies and social impacts they have (Space & Society). This includes cultural, economic, geo-political, environmental and public dimensions of space exploration and in particular transformations of human relations to outer space; search for life beyond Earth; and technological advancement related to space exploration.

Rebecca Charbonneau

Rebecca Charbonneau is a historian of science who researches the history of radio astronomy and the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI). Her research examines the development of SETI in the Cold War period, focusing especially on the relations between SETI scientists in the US and USSR. She currently works as a Jansky Fellow at the United States’ National Radio Astronomy Observatory. In the past, she has held positions such as the historian-in-residence at the Harvard-Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics and as the NASA & History of Science Society’s Fellow of Aerospace History. She is an active member of the SETI community, having served on the Scientific Organizing Committee for the Annual Penn State SETI Conference and worked closely with many in the community on a variety of publications and projects.

Kathryn Denning

Dr Kathryn Denning is a Canadian anthropologist and archaeologist. She specializes in the long view of humanity’s history, both past and future, and is particularly interested in the ethics of how we engage with other species, including the extinct, extant, and as-yet-unknown. All this combines in her long-term research focus on humanity’s cultural expansion into space, and how we anticipate other life that has yet to be discovered. She is a long-time member of the IAA SETI Permanent Committee, sits on the Science Advisory Board of the SETI Institute, and the Board of the Just Space Alliance. Since 2005, she has been active in SETI post-detection research and policy discussions, and in work at the intersection of technosignatures, biosignatures, and society.

Daniela De Paulis

Daniela is a media artist exhibiting internationally and a licensed radio operator. Her artistic practice is informed by Space in its widest meaning. Since 2009 she has been implementing radio technologies and philosophies in her art projects. She is currently Artist in Residence at the SETI Institute and Artist in Residence at the Green Bank Observatory in West Virginia, with the support of the Baruch Blumberg Fellowship in Astrobiology. She is a member of the IAA SETI Permanent Committee and a regular host for the Wow! Signal Podcast, a platform dedicated to conversations on SETI, science, technology and the humanities.

Steven J Dick

Steven J. Dick is the former NASA Chief Historian and former Baruch S. Blumberg NASA/Library of Congress Chair in Astrobiology. He is the author or editor of 25 books, including Astrobiology, Discovery, and Societal Impact (Cambridge, 2018), and Space, Time, and Aliens: Collected Works on Cosmos and Culture (Springer, 2020). He is the recipient of the NASA Exceptional Service Medal and the NASA Group Achievement Award for his work on astrobiology.  He has served on the Science Advisory Board of the SETI Institute, the Board of Directors of METI International, and is on the research team of Harvard’s Galileo Project.  He has been elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and a Fellow of the American Astronomical Society.  Minor planet 6544 Stevendick was named in his honor.

Maria Carolina Gallego Iradi

Dr. Maria Carolina Gallego Iradi, settled in Silicon Valley, earned a BSc Marine Biology, MSc Waste Treatment, and a PhD in Genetics. She has been working as chair, professor, researcher, entrepreneur, innovator, counselor, and mentor for more than 24 years. She is a top expert in molecular & cell biology, genetics, neuroscience, RNA transcriptomics, bioinformatics, and human thymus/immunology. She innovated her cell research applying laser and biophysics (Aerospace Eng. collaboration, UF). Her career portfolio includes prestigious institutions (Stanford, McKnight Brain Institute, UF, UNIZAR, UDO, UNEFA). Carolina discovered during her PhD Alzheimer’s disease pathologies and genes related in dolphin brains (2005, published in 2017). This finding had worldwide recognition (The Times, Newsweek, TV, Discover, Los Angeles Times, Nat Geo Italy, etc.). Her goal is to discover interspecific interaction gene-function and apply these new capabilities unknown to us, including intricated pathways hidden in their brains.

Chelsea Haramia

Dr. Chelsea Haramia is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Spring Hill College, USA and Senior Research Fellow with the Center for Science and Thought at the University of Bonn, Germany where she is working on collaborative project between the Universities of Bonn and Cambridge titled Desirable Digitalisation: Rethinking AI for Just and Sustainable Futures. She specializes in applied ethics. Her recent research focuses on the intersections of science, technology, and values, and she is the author of several articles and book chapters on space exploration, astrobiology ethics, and the search for extraterrestrial technology—as well as public philosophy news articles and outreach. She holds a PhD in Philosophy and a graduate certificate in Gender and Women’s Studies from the University of Colorado, Boulder, and she is co-editor of the journal 1000-Word Philosophy.

Danielle Krettek Cobb

Danielle Krettek Cobb is a trailblazing force in empathic design, with two decades of work spanning design, technology, film, art, architecture, and social action. Her work, grounded equally in science and soul, has transformed some of the largest organizations and tech companies in the world. At Google, Danielle founded Google Empathy Lab. Her skill of braiding together scientists, artists, poets, writers, spiritual teachers, ecologists, activists, and creative technologists led to the company’s most radical collaborations. Before starting the Lab, she ran special projects for Google X, Alphabet’s Moonshot Factory. Prior to that, Danielle was the youngest senior executive on Apple’s Graphic Design team, working on the top product launches of all time, from the Intel Mac and MacBook Pro to the global introductions of iPhone and iPad. Currently, Danielle serves on the board and is Chief Creative Advisor to Hume AI and Ram Dass’ Love Serve Remember Foundation, Advisor and Facilitator for Ka Mahina Project, a Purple Mai’a startup.

William Lempert

William Lempert is an Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine. He has conducted over two years of ethnographic fieldwork since 2006 in the Kimberley region of Northwestern Australia with Indigenous media organizations. His research engages tensions between the production of films that vividly imagine hopeful and diverse Indigenous futures, and the broader defunding of Aboriginal communities and organizations. This ethnographic research informs his current work on how critical engagements with settler-colonial histories and Indigenous futurisms can help to reimagine the current era of outer space colonization. 

Tim Lomas

Dr Tim Lomas is a Psychology Research Scientist at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and part of the Human Flourishing Program at Harvard University. Dr Lomas’ main research focus is on cross-cultural perspectives on wellbeing, particularly concepts and practices deemed ‘non-Western.’ Dr Lomas’ work also engages with potential non-human forms of consciousness and wellbeing, both in terms of the nature and wellbeing of these non-human forms in themselves, and their relevance and significance to human wellbeing.

Carol Ann Oliver

Carol is a science communication researcher with background in print, radio, and television journalism, and holds a research Masters in science communication (SETI and the Media) and a doctorate in science communication. She is an Associate Professor and a member of the Australian Centre for Astrobiology at the University of New South Wales in Sydney. Carol has been involved with SETI since 1995 and is seen as a leader in establishing SETI in Australia, including being involved in initiating the SETI Australia Centre at Western Sydney University and in setting up a piggy-back SETI experiment at the 64-metre Parkes Radio Telescope, Southern SERENDIP, both of which ran from 1998-2009. More recently, Carol has made significant contributions to three reports on Australian space policy as well as one on establishing a national science communication programme.

Michael Oman-Reagan

Michael P. Oman-Reagan is an anthropologist specializing in collaborative research with the astronomy and SETI communities. His areas of interest include the ethics of exploration and contact, interdisciplinarity, post-detection, and conceptions of extraterrestrial cultures, minds, and intelligences. He is a member of the IAA SETI Permanent Committee, serves on the advisory boards for METI International and the Astrosociology Research Institute, and was a founding board member of the JustSpace Alliance. His research on the anthropology of space and SETI has been supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the Vanier Canada Graduate Scholarships, Memorial University, and SAPIENS, a publication of the Wenner-Gren Foundation in partnership with the University of Chicago Press.

George Profitiliotis

Dr George Profitiliotis is an electrical & computer engineer trained in interdisciplinary environmental studies and holds a PhD on the application of environmental economics to planetary protection policy. He has worked in the fields of strategic foresight, futures literacy, and futures studies and is currently a postdoctoral researcher within the Department of Humanities, Social Sciences, and Law of the National Technical University of Athens, studying the pertinence of anticipation to the search for extraterrestrial life. He is interested in utilizing insights from multiple future-oriented disciplines to inform the anticipatory governance of the search for microbial and intelligent, technology-capable, extraterrestrial life —especially regarding post-detection issues. George is also a published speculative fiction author in Greece and a member of the Panel on Social Sciences and Humanities of the Committee on Space Research.