Dr. Andrew Siemion is an astrophysicist at the University of California (UC), Berkeley and also serves as the Director of the UC Berkeley Center for Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) Research. He is jointly affiliated with the SETI Institute in California.

Dr. Siemion’s research interests include studies of time-variable celestial phenomena, astronomical instrumentation and SETI. Dr. Siemion is one of the leaders of the “Breakthrough Listen Initiative” – a decade-long, 100 million dollar effort, sponsored by world-renowned astrophysicist, Professor Stephen Hawking, and Yuri Milner’s Breakthrough Prize Foundation, that is conducting the most sensitive search for advanced extraterrestrial life in history.

Dr. Siemion is an elected member of the International Union of Radio Science, in which he serves as an Early Career Representative for the Commission on Radio Astronomy, and the International Academy of Astronautics’ SETI Permanent Committee, in which he serves as Committee Secretary. Dr. Siemion also serves on the Science@Cal Advisory Board, CoChairs the Cradle of Life Science Working Group for the forthcoming Square Kilometer Array telescope and is a member of the Board of Directors of the Foundation for Investing in Research on SETI Science and Technology (FIRSST).

Dr. Siemion frequently appears on international television and radio discussing the search for life beyond on Earth and the prospects for detection. In 2016, he was a TEDx speaker and through his talk, “Beyond the singularity: The search for extraterrestrial technologies”, challenged us to ask ourselves, “Are we truly alone in the universe?” He suggests that by looking into the past of other civilizations, we stand to learn about our own future.

While waiting for Andrew to give his keynote at SHIFT, you can listen to his TED talk here