Benjamin Dean Astronomy Lectures: Searching for Technological Life in the Universe Searching for Technological Life in the Universe

Featuring Dr. Sofia Sheikh, SETI Institute
 

Are we alone? Or is there other life out there in the universe beyond Earth? If there is other life, is it complex life, capable of using language and creating technology like us? Dr. Sofia Sheikh seeks to answer this question by using facilities like the Allen Telescope Array to search for “technosignatures,” or signs of non-human technology elsewhere in the universe. In this talk, Dr. Sheikh will describe the current status of technosignature searches, including the history of the field of “SETI” (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence), the progress we’ve made so far in searching for extraterrestrial signals, and the cutting-edge surveys and instruments that will advance our understanding in the years to come.

Dr. Sofia Sheikh is a radio astronomer who works on the search for "technosignatures" (SETI), as well as fast radio bursts, pulsars, and characterization of radio frequency interference. She completed her bachelor's degrees in physics and astronomy at the University of California, Berkeley in 2017, and went on to earn a dual-title PhD in Astronomy & Astrophysics and Astrobiology at Penn State University in 2021. She led radio campaigns with the SETI Institute's Allen Telescope Array as an NSF MPS-Ascend post-doctoral fellow, and has recently chosen to continue this work with the SETI Institute as a Technosignature Research Scientist. She hopes, through her career, to help us learn more about the distribution of technological life in the galaxy.

LEARN MORE HERE!