The Tarter Award for Innovation in the Search for Life Beyond Earth
The SETI Institute
Dr. Jill Tarter is a true pioneer. Beginning as the only woman in the engineering program at Cornell University and her early, groundbreaking SETI research at UC Berkeley and NASA, Tarter went on to co-found the SETI Institute and to lead some of the most important SETI searches for decades. She led the design, construction and science programs at the SETI Institute’s Allen Telescope Array. Tarter has blazed a path for astronomers and scientists, especially women, who have emerged as the next generations seeking evidence of life beyond Earth. Tarter even inspired Carl Sagan to create the protagonist Ellie Arroway in the novel and film Contact. She continues to encourage new paths, technologies and strategies to help humanity answer the question, “Are we alone?”
The new Tarter Award recognizes individuals who have created projects or ideas that have a significant and innovative impact on humanity’s search for life in the universe. As Tarter incorporated into the SETI Institute’s founding charter, this award will be inclusive; recognizing scientific, technical, educational, philosophical, legal, and ethical contributions to the systematic exploration for extraterrestrial life.
The inaugural Tarter Award will be presented in the Fall of 2024; after that, it may be given no more often than once each year.
Nomination period for the second award begins February 1, 2025.
Nomination instructions and submission portal will be posted here once the nomination period begins
Tarter Award Selection Committee:
Jim Bildner
CEO of the Draper Richards Kaplan Foundation, Bildner is also an adjunct lecturer in Public Policy at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government, and a senior research fellow at the Center for Public Leadership at Harvard University. He joined The Kresge Foundation Board of Trustees in 2005.
Andrew Fraknoi
Member of the SETI Institute's Board of Directors and its Science Advisory Board, Andrew Fraknoi retired recently as the Chair of the Astronomy Program at Foothill College. He served as Executive Director of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific for 14 years, and is the Lead Author of OpenStax “Astronomy”, the most-frequenly assigned introductory astronomy textbook in North America.
Frank Levinson
General Partner and Managing Director, Small World Group. An American entrepreneur and investor, Levinson is best known for being co-founder of Finisar Corporation.
Sunil Nagaraj
Sunil Nagaraj is the Founder and Managing Partner of Ubiquity Ventures, a seed-stage institutional venture capital firm with almost $200 million under management and a focus on "software beyond the screen" startups. Before Ubiquity, Sunil was with Bessemer Venture Partners, where he led seed rounds for companies like Auth0 (acquired by Okta) and Zapier, and invested in Rocket Lab and Twitch. He previously founded Triangulate, a machine-learning-driven dating startup. Sunil holds an MBA from Harvard Business School and a BS in Computer Science from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He is a Past President of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific. He spends his free time playing piano, sailing, and nerding out on new technologies.
Gregory Papadopoulos
Currently a Partner, New Enterprise Associates, Papadopoulos is an American engineer, executive, venture capitalist, and former Chair of the Board of Trustees of the SETI Institute. He is the creator and lead proponent for Redshift, a theory on whether technology markets are over or under-served by Moore's Law.