The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence with MeerKAT and Breakthrough Listen

Description: An introduction to the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) with MeerKAT and Breakthrough Listen. Breakthrough Listen’s exciting commensal SETI survey with MeerKAT is discussed, alongside MeerKAT’s unique capabilities for SETI.

Daniel Czech is a postdoctoral scholar with Breakthrough Listen at the University of California, Berkeley, where he works on a commensal observing system for the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) 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.