SETI Institute

The SETI Institute is a private, nonprofit organization which carries out scientific research, education, and public outreach. They have just over 100 scientists, educators and support staff. The SETI Institute is based in Mountain View, California and funded by many sponsors including NASA, various U.S. government departments, Sun Microsystems, Gordon and Betty Moore, Hewlett Packard, etc...

The main projects being conducted by the institute are:

The Allen Telescope Array
- a large array of radio telescopes which together form one very large telescope. Funded by two co-founders of Microsoft, Paul Allen and Nathan Myhvold.

Project Phoenix
- this project ran from February 1995 until February 2004. The giant radio telescope at Arecibo was used for for 6 weeks per year. They targetted over 700 sun-like stars within 200 light years of Earth. The project is now over. No evidence of extra-terrestrial intelligence was found. Many scientific reports from the project are yet to be published.

Optical SETI
- astronomers at the University of California are using the 40-inch optical telescope at the Nick Observatory to search for laser pulses sent from intelligent civilisations.

New Search System Development
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Interstellar Message Composition
- research into what messages to send to unknown extra-terrestrial intelligences and how to interpret any incoming message.

See the website: SETI Institute
And the staff: SETI Institute Staff