Breakthrough Initiatives

Welcome to the Neighborhood:
New Opportunities for Using and Exploring Our Cosmic Backyard

Low-cost access to space, a growing exploratory focus on cislunar space and the Moon, and new technologies are enabling significant – often privately funded – space missions within the next decade. The conference will discuss options in the next 15 years for significant, paradigm altering space projects. Topics include: 1) The search for technosignatures from space, 2) Mapping potentially life-supporting planets in our stellar neighborhood, 3) The first missions to interstellar space.

DAY ONE – June 28

SESSION ONE:
The Search for Technosignatures from Space

The terrestrial radio – and even optical – environment is increasingly polluted by human-generated interference; it is already impossible to detect faint signals in many parts of the m and cm-wave spectrum. The proliferation of Earth-orbit communication networks is a further, serious, challenge to detecting alien technosignatures. However, increasing development in cislunar space and at the Moon is opening opportunities to place systems in relatively interference-free deep space. Of particular interest is the Lunar far-side, where the moon itself blocks most human-generated interference. This session will review concepts and mission development for space- and lunar far-side observatories. International efforts to preserve key locations in cislunar space and the lunar far-side will also be covered.

Co-Chair: Sofia Sheikh

SETI Institute

Sofia Z. Sheikh is a radio astronomer and astrobiologist working at the SETI Institute. She obtained her undergraduate degrees in physics and astronomy at UC Berkeley, and has recently returned to the Bay Area with an NSF-ASCEND Postdoctoral Fellowship after getting her PhD in Astronomy and Astrobiology at Penn State. Currently, she is performing SETI searches and studying pulsars and fast radio bursts with the Allen Telescope Array, a 42-dish radio array located in Hat Creek, California.

Co-Chair: Michael Garrett

University of Manchester

Mike Garrett is the inaugural Sir Bernard Lovell chair of Astrophysics at the University of Manchester and Director of the Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics. His scientific interests are very broad but include the study of the distant universe via high resolution radio observations, in particular VLBI. He is a “bijzonder hoogleraar” (extraordinary professor) at the University of Leiden in the Netherlands. He is also an active SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) researcher and currently chairs the International Academy of Astronautics (IAA) SETI Permanent Committee.

Hector Socas-Navarro

Astrofisica de Canarias
“Space Missions to Search for Alien Technology”

Exciting and unprecedented prospects have emerged in the field of astronomy for detecting signs of advanced civilizations on other planets, known as technosignatures (TS), that go beyond the traditional SETI radio searches. These prospects have been made possible by remarkable advancements in exoplanet science and observational capabilities in recent years. In this presentation, I will provide an overview of some conclusions from the TechnoClimesconference, focusing on potential mission concepts specifically designed to investigate TS. It's worth noting that the data obtained from such missions would not only enable us to search for technosignatures but also yield valuable insights in other areas of astrophysics. Furthermore, we will introduce a groundbreaking framework for quantitatively exploring a wide range of technosignatures, encompassing their diverse manifestations.

Currently: Senior scientist at Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias (IAC) and director of the Museum of Science and the Cosmos of Tenerife (Spain). Ph.D. in Astrophysics, Unviersity of La Laguna, Spain (1999). Former senior scientist at the U.S. National Center for Atmospheric Research (1999-2008). Worked on the development of space missions Hinode (led by JAXA) and SDO (NASA). PI for SPINOR spectro-polarimeter at Sac Peak observatory. PI for project MAGNETO (Spain’s National Plan for Astrophysics AYA2014-60476-P) to fund solar and stellar spectro-polarimetry at the IAC (2014-2018). Project Scientist for the European Solar Telescope (2008-2018). Project Scientist for the ViSP spectro-polarimeter for the DKIST telescope in Hawaii (2001-2008). Recepeint of the Spanish Astronomical Society award to the best Ph.D. thesis in 1998/1999. Creator/director of Coffee Break: Señal y Ruido, an award-winning weekly podcast about science news that regularly tops the audience charts in Spanish language. Coauthor of “NASA and the search for technosignatures”, a report of the NASA technosignatures workshop, which was convened by NASA to learn more about the current field and state of the art of searches for technosignatures.

Tzu-Ching Chang

NASA JPL
“Cosmology from the Far Side of the Moon”

The cosmic dark ages remains one of the last frontiers in cosmology. It refers to the time period in the early Universe after the release of the cosmic microwave background light and before the birth of the first stars. The growth of structure was largely linear and pristine. The dark ages offers a trove of information that can help constrain our models of cosmology to unprecedented precision. The 21cm hyperfine transition from neutral hydrogen is the only available tracer of this period; at rest frame 1.4 GHz, the 21cm radiation from the dark ages is redshifted to ~10-30 MHz and is not observable on earth due to the ionosphere and manmade radio frequency interference. The farside of the moon offers a fantastic possibility to detect the faint glow of hydrogen atoms from the dark ages. I will briefly describe two mission concepts, FARSIDE and the Lunar Crater Radio Telescope (LCRT), that make use of radio interferometer and large reflector, respectively, to pursue such a measurement.

Dr. Tzu-Ching Chang is a Senior Research Scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Caltech. She is a cosmologist and her research focuses on the early cosmic structure formation and evolution, from the cosmic dark ages, to the birth of the first stars that led to the cosmic dawn and the subsequent reionization of the Universe in the first billion years. To explore these eras, she pioneered an observational technique called line intensity mapping, which is the foundation of many on-going experiments. She participated in multiple observational programs spanning the radio, optical, near- and far-infrared wavelengths. Most recently, she co-proposed and explored a novel technique to detect gravitational waves from supermassive blackholes using large-scale photometric surveys. She is a co-I in the upcoming NASA MIDEX SPHEREx mission. She was project scientist or study scientist for several mission concepts, including the CDIM and FARSIDE probe studies, and is currently leading the development of a new mission concept to be submitted to NASA. She obtained her PhD from Columbia University and held research positions at UC Berkeley, University of Toronto, and at ASIAA Taipei.

Alanna Krolikowski

Missouri S&T
“Protect Scientific Opportunity on the Moon Now”

The Moon presents unique opportunities for high-impact scientific research that could enhance our understanding of our planet, our solar system, and perhaps even the origins of life on Earth. A handful of locations on the lunar surface are “sites of extraordinary scientific importance” (SESIs) presenting opportunities for research unmatched quite literally anywhere else. For instance, as the most radio-quiet location in the solar system, the farside of the Moon could allow for the emplacement of telescopes to study the cosmic dark ages or search for technosignatures of extraterrestrial life in ways that are simply impossible elsewhere. However, we are also on the cusp of a broader lunar renaissance. A flurry of upcoming missions – both scientific and non-scientific in character – will target some of these very same sites and threatens to degrade their value to science. Two major international efforts to create rules for activities on the Moon are afoot, but so far neither emphasizes protecting SESIs. To safeguard exceptional scientific opportunity on the Moon, the scientific community should engage these international rulemaking efforts and steer them toward ensuring the preservation of SESIs for research and discovery.

Alanna Krolikowski is Assistant Professor of Political Science at the Missouri University of Science and Technology (Missouri S&T), where she specializes in policy for science, technology, and innovation. Her research and teaching focus on policy for space activities, the Chinese and U.S. innovation systems, and China-U.S. relations. Dr. Krolikowski’s research has been published in Space Policy, Philosophical Transactions A, Global Policy, the International Studies Review, the Journal of International Relations and Development, New Space, and other journals. Before joining Missouri S&T, she was a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University and a visiting professor at the University of Göttingen.

Mary Knapp

MIT
"The unexplored sky: Radio Astronomy from Space"

Humanity has never seen the low frequency sky. The Earth’s ionosphere (the plasma layer above ~100 km altitude) blocks cosmic radio waves longer than ~30 m (10 MHz) from reaching the surface of the Earth. We need space-based radio telescopes to fly above the Earth’s ionosphere, revealing the universe at low frequencies for the first time. The low frequency sky holds the key to mysteries about the early universe, including the formation of the first stars and galaxies. This part of the spectrum will also reveal the secrets of stellar and (exo)planetary magnetic fields – key ingredients in the complex recipe for exoplanet habitability. I will describe current and future space missions designed to explore the low frequency sky. One example is the AERO-VISTA mission, a pair of CubeSats that will map the Earth’s powerful auroral radio emission from low Earth orbit (LEO) using a unique vector sensor antenna. I’ll also describe future mission concepts that expand on AERO-VISTA’s technology to study solar wind interactions with solar system planets and, eventually, measure the magnetic fields of exoplanets in our stellar neighborhood.

Mary Knapp is a research scientist at MIT Haystack Observatory. Her research interests include radio detection of exoplanets, development of space-based radio telescopes, and CubeSats mission design and instrumentation for novel science applications. She is currently deputy PI and PM for NASA-funded AERO-VISTA CubeSat mission. AERO-VISTA science objective is mapping Earth’s auroral radio emission from low Earth orbit using two-spacecraft vector sensor interferometry. Knapp is a NASA NIAC Phase I Fellow for GO-LoW (Great Observatory for Long Wavelengths). Previously, she served as project scientist and operations team member of ASTERIA CubeSat mission, which was the first CubeSat to detect an exoplanet transit.

Joe Lazio

NASA JPL

“Technosignatures in the Solar System”

NASA has five robotic space probes on escape trajectories from the solar system (Pioneer 11, Pioneer 12, Voyager 1, Voyager 2, and New Horizons), and the Interstellar Probe is a concept submitted for consideration in the Solar & Space Physics (Heliophysics) Decadal Survey. While none of these robotic probes will be operational on the time scale that it would take to reach another star, it is natural to ask whether another civilization might also be sending out interstellar probes. Serious consideration of such interstellar probes dates at least to R. Bracewell in the early 1960s, and the discovery of 1I/2017 ‘Oumuamua has rekindled some of that interest. I consider what limits exist on signatures of extraterrestrial technology maight be present in the Solar System, considering both objects on various orbits (“probes”) and surface artifacts,using data available from planetary exploration and astronomical sky surveys. Perhaps not surprisingly, the completeness to which the Solar System has been searched varies as a function of distance from the Sun. However, with notable exceptions, only extremely crude limits can be placed on the existence of interstellar probes. I also highlight areas that might be profitable for improving these limits considerably.

Dr. Joseph Lazio is the Interplanetary Network Directorate Scientist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology and Project Scientist for the Sun Radio Interferometer Space Experiment (SunRISE). The Interplanetary Network Directorate manages the Deep Space Network for NASA's Space Communications and Navigation (SCaN) Program. SunRISE will be a six-antenna space-based interferometer designed to provide new insights on energetic particle acceleration and transport near the Sun by observing solar radio bursts. He received his Ph.D. from Cornell University, was a National Research Council Research Associate at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory, and was a Radio Astronomer on the staff of the NRL before joining JPL. He was the Deputy Principal Investigator for the Dark Ages Radio Explorer (DARE) mission concept. He has served as Project Scientist for the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) and the Deputy Director of the Lunar University Network for Astrophysics Research (LUNAR). He observes routinely with the world’s premier ground-based radio telescopes, including the Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array and the Very Long Baseline Array.

Darryl Seligman

MIT
"Interstellar Interlopers and Dark Comets"

In recent years, two entirely new classes of planetesimals have been discovered in the solar system: interstellar interlopers and dark comets. These still-enigmatic objects are challenging our understanding of the behavior and properties of comets and asteroids. In this talk, I will review what has been learned to date from the known interstellar objects and dark comets, highlighting the attributes that are difficult to reconcile with previous models of planetesimal behavior. I will present recent hypotheses that can explain their unusual behavior through natural mechanisms, including the acceleration of 1I/`Oumuamua via release of radiolytically produced and entrapped molecular hydrogen. This context helps to delineate the criteria for identifying natural behavior as opposed to technosignatures. The forthcoming Rubin Observatory Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST) is poised to further transform our understanding of these classes of objects, and I will discuss the feasibility of future discoveries via ground-based observations as well as possible intercept missions.

Darryl Z. Seligman completed his undergraduate degrees in Mathematics and Physics at the University of Pennsylvania in 2015. He completed his Ph.D. at Yale University in Astronomy in 2020, and was awarded the Yale University Dirk Brouwer Memorial Prize for Outstanding Ph.D. Thesis. He was the TC Chamberlin Fellow at the University of Chicago Department of the Geophysical Sciences after completing his Ph.D. He is currently at Cornell and will be a Simonyi-NSF Scholar, an NSF Astronomy and Astrophysics Postdoctoral Fellowship award made in recognition of significant contributions to Rubin Observatory’s Legacy Survey of Space and Time.

SESSION TWO:
Mapping our Stellar Neighborhood

There are at least five star systems within five parsecs of Earth with Solar-type stars and the potential for hosting a life-bearing planet. New 30-meter-class ground-based telescopes may detect and obtain planetary atmospheric spectra which could give some indication of a life process. The next generation of even larger telescopes is also currently being discussed using novel technologies to reduce mass and cost drastically. One of the most exciting possibilities would be the development of large, low-cost space-based systems enabled by the next generation of heavy lift launch vehicles. This session will review plans and programs that could detect life-bearing planets orbiting nearby Solar-type stars.

Co-Chair: Anne-Marie Lagrange

Centre National de la Rechercher Scientifique

Anne-Marie Lagrange is a senior astrophysicist at Centre National de la Rechercher Scientifique and Observatoire de Paris-Meudon, associate Professor at Université Paris Sciences et Lettres, and a member of the French Academy of Sciences. She has been involved in exoplanetology for more than 30 years. Her aim is to contribute to the understanding of planetary systems formation and evolution, and to find ways to discover and characterize Earth twins. She participated to the discovery of the first exocomets in the mid eighties using high resolution spectroscopy. She co-developed a coronagraph coupled to the first adaptive optics system in the early nineties to allow for high contrast imaging. She predicted the presence of a planet or a brown dwarf around the star beta Pictoris to explain the peculiar shape of its dust disk. She served as the Project Scientist of the first Adaptive Optics system mounted on the ESO Very Large Telescope. With this instrument, she and her team made the first images of extrasolar planetary mass bodies orbiting stars and brown dwarfs in the mid 2000, and discovered the planet beta Pictoris b in 2008. She has been involved in the design and exploitation of the SPHERE exoplanet imager at the VLT. She is also involved in the search for giant and light exoplanets using indirect techniques (radial velocities, photometry, absolute astrometry). She investigates quantitatively the impact of the many types of stellar activity on the detection of Earth twins with indirect methods, and estimates the limitations of current and forthcoming instruments.

Co-Chair: Ewan Douglas

University of Arizona

Ewan Douglas is an Assistant Professor of Astronomy at University of Arizona Steward Observatory. Ewan completed a postdoctoral appointment at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics, received master's and doctoral degrees in Astronomy from Boston University, and a bachelor's degree in physics from Tufts University. Dr. Douglas' develops space telescopes and instrumentation, particularly wavefront sensing and control for high-contrast imaging of debris disks and extrasolar planets. He worked on the NASA PICTURE sounding rocket experiments testing visible nulling interferometry with a 0.5m space telescope, was instrument scientist on the CubeSat Deformable Mirror (DeMi) demonstration payload, and has supported NASA's Nancy Roman Space Telescope Coronagraph Science Investigation Team in various roles. Dr. Douglas leads a team building the Vacuum Space Coronagraph Optical Bench in the UArizona Space Astrophysics Lab, http://uasal.github.io.

Nikku Madhusudhan

University of Cambridge

"The Search for Biosignatures in Nearby Exoplanetary Systems"

The detection of a biosignature in the atmosphere of an exoplanet is the holy grail of exoplanetary science. Exoplanet surveys over the past decade have revealed that low-mass planets dominate the exoplanet population. Increasing numbers of such planets are being discovered orbiting nearby small stars (M-dwarfs) making them conducive for atmospheric characterisation with the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) and large ground-based facilities. The diversity of exoplanet detections is also challenging and redefining conventional notions of planetary habitability. Traditionally, studies of planetary habitability have focused predominantly on rocky exoplanets. Recently, a new class of exoplanets, called Hycean worlds, has been proposed which promises to significantly expand and accelerate the search for life elsewhere. In this talk, we will discuss the diversity of exoplanets that could be promising environments for hosting life and good targets in the search for biosignatures in the solar neighbourhood. We will discuss the prospects for detecting biosignatures in their atmospheres using current and upcoming large facilities in space and on ground, and the future landscape of the field.

Nikku Madhusudhan is a Professor of Astrophysics and Exoplanetary Science at the Institute of Astronomy, University of Cambridge, UK. He obtained his PhD at MIT, followed by postdoctoral work at MIT, Princeton and Yale, before arriving at Cambridge in 2013 where he has remained since. His research interests span exoplanetary atmospheres, interiors, formation conditions, habitability and biosignatures. He is widely known for pioneering the inverse techniques used to retrieve atmospheric properties of exoplanets from spectroscopic observations, besides several other theoretical developments and observational inferences in the field.

Rebecca Jensen-Clem

UC Santa Cruz
"The Next Generation of Extreme Adaptive Optics Systems"

The last three decades have been marked by the discovery of over 5000 exoplanets orbiting nearby stars. Unraveling these planets' compositions, climates, and formation histories requires spectra of their thermal emission and reflected starlight; direct imaging is the only path forward for obtaining high signal-to-noise, high-resolution spectra of diverse exoplanet atmospheres. Today, only a handful of massive super-Jupiters have been imaged, while faint Earth-sized planets remain hidden in the glare of their suns. Our own atmosphere is responsible for this limitation: atmospheric turbulence blurs the image of a star, obscuring our view of nearby planets. My work focuses on a turbulence-compensation technology called adaptive optics (AO) that has the potential to make habitable-zone rocky planet imaging possible. However, even with the next generation of 30-meter-class ground-based telescopes coming online in the next decade, significant AO advances are required to meet this challenge. I will discuss how this challenge can be met with new AO strategies including turbulence prediction, segment phasing, and photonic instrument architectures.

Rebecca Jensen-Clem is an assistant professor of astronomy and astrophysics at UC Santa Cruz. She received a BS in physics from MIT in 2012 and PhD in astrophysics from Caltech in 2017. She was a Miller Fellow at UC Berkeley before joining the faculty at UC Santa Cruz in 2020. In 2022 she was appointed the Director of Center for Adaptive Optics. Prof. Jensen-Clem combines observational astronomy and astronomical instrumentation to directly image new classes of exoplanets and characterize their atmospheres. She is the PI of the Santa Cruz Extreme AO Lab (SEAL), a new facility for adaptive optics technology development that focuses on ground-based, segmented-aperture telescopes such as the W. M. Keck Observatory and Thirty Meter Telescope.

Clarissa Luk

University of Sydney

"Habitable Zone Earth Analogue Planets with the TOLIMAN Space Telescope"

The TOLIMAN mission will fly a low-cost space telescope designed and led from the University of Sydney. Its primary goal targets an audacious outcome in planetary astrophysics: an exhaustive search for temperate-orbit rocky planets around Alpha Centauri, our nearest neighbour star system. Tackling such a challenging measurement is normally thought to require a much larger instrument, so the TOLIMAN program has driven significant innovations optical and signal encoding architecture. This presentation will describe the key features of the 12.5cm space telescope and 16U cubesat bus, both of which are now under construction, while also placing this in wider context of contemporary advances in instrumentation set to deliver new insights into the ubiquity and diversity of our galactic planetary neighbours.

Clarissa Luk is Project Officer for the TOLIMAN space telescope mission at the University of Sydney and has a rare double degree in Space Engineering and law. Clarissa’s broad academic skillset is supplemented by diverse experiences in her early career, having immersed herself in the emerging Australian space industry through different organisations, in academic, commercial, and legal services and defence. Clarissa is one of many next-generation leaders on the TOLIMAN team, led by Professor Peter Tuthill, principal investigator.

Sascha P. Quanz

ETH Zurich

"Finding our nearest neighbors with LIFE"

Indications for life on extrasolar planets can be inferred via the detection of atmospheric absorption lines of so-called biosignatures, i.e., atmospheric constituents that are only present because of biological activity. Primary candidates for searches for biosignatures are terrestrial exoplanets within the immediate vicinity of the Sun, but such objects are beyond reach for current observational techniques or instruments on ground or in space. In this talk I will present the international LIFE initiative (LIFE = Large Interferometer For Exoplanets) which has the goal to develop and implement an ambitious space mission driven by the goal to search for life on a sizable sample of nearby exoplanets. I will describe the unique discovery space of the LIFE mission concept and emphasize the scientific advantages of investigating the intrinsic thermal emission of terrestrial exoplanets if the search for extraterrestrial life is a primary goal.

Sascha is an exoplanetary scientist and head of the Exoplanets & Habitability Research Group in the Department of Physics at ETH Zurich in Switzerland. He studied Physics at the University of Heidelberg and graduated with a doctoral degree from the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Germany in 2007. From 2007 until 2009 he worked as Senior Associate and Junior Engagement Manager for McKinsey & Company before returning to academia and joining ETH Zurich as postdoctoral fellow. He became Senior Staff Scientist in 2014 and was appointed as professor in his current role in 2019. Sascha is driven by the long-term goal to search for indications of life on extrasolar planets, i.e., planets orbiting stars other than our Sun. He is Principal Investigator (PI) of the international LIFE initiative, which is developing the scientific context, the technology, and a roadmap for an ambitious future space mission that will allow humankind to detect and characterize the atmospheres of hundreds of nearby extrasolar planets including dozens that are similar to Earth. He also serves as Deputy Director at the ETH Zurich Centre for Origin and Prevalence of Life and as co-lead of the ETH Zurich | Space initiative.

Giovanna Tinetti

University College London

"Planetary Science Across Light-Years"

The search for exoplanets has often been driven by the goal to discover life in the Universe. We know today there are billions of worlds out there, and small planets are the most numerous… So there is hope! We have come a long way from the prejudice that only an Earth’s twin can host life: our galactic cousins appear more diverse, complex and interesting that we ever thought, and perhaps for this reason, many of the great exoplanetary discoveries have been obtained serendipitously and with modest facilities. While the role of flagship missions to advance the study of habitable worlds is unquestioned, alone they risk creating a scientific ecosystem based on a monoculture. To foster a diverse, rich and sustainable approach, which will also enable the best use of the flagships, we are pursuing dedicated, moderate size missions that will provide a much needed scientific complement to the largest facilities. A keystone of this approach is the Ariel Space Telescope, to be launched in 2029 by ESA. Ariel is the first mission dedicated to the determination of the chemical composition of hundreds of exoplanets, enabling planetary science far beyond the boundaries of the Solar System.

We are at the same time pursuing an innovative, commercial approach to the delivery of high-performance, moderate-size scientific satellites through the company BSSL, that will further contribute to a thriving, diverse and sustainable scientific ecosystem.Professor Giovanna Tinetti is the Head of Group of Astrophysics at University College London and Director of the UCL Centre for Space Exo-chemistry Data. She is the Principal Investigator of the European Space Agency’s Ariel, the only space telescope dedicated to undertaking a comprehensive spectral survey of exoplanets in a wide variety of environments. Ariel will be launched in 2029. She is also co-founder and co-director of Blue Skies Space Ltd, which aims at creating new opportunities for science space satellites. After a PhD in Theoretical Physics, she has worked at Caltech and Jet Propulsion Laboratory, at the Institute of Astrophysics in Paris and at La Sapienza U. of Rome (Fermi Chair). Prof. Tinetti has authored / co-authored 250 research publications. These include the paper with the highest altmetric score among Physical Sciences in 2019. She has delivered over 300 talks, seminars and public lectures internationally. Select awards include Institute of Physics Moseley Medal (2011), NASA Group Achievement Award (2009), JPL Edward Stone Award (2009), Monte-Carlo Prize Women in Science (2022), Knight of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic (2020).

Shawn Domagal-Goldman

NASA Goddard

"How Lonely (or not) is the Universe?"

Are globally-inhabited planets, with pervasive biospheres similar to Earth’s, present in our stellar neighborhood? If so, how common are such worlds? If not, can we place an upper limit on how common such worlds are? These are the questions we are planning to answer with the Habitable Worlds Observatory (HWO), which is being studied to potentially be NASA’s next flagship mission after the Nancy Grace Roman Telescope that is slated for launch later this decade. HWO will do this by blocking out the light of other stars, so that it can capture the much fainter light reflected off the surfaces of planets around those stars. It will spread that light out to make spectra of those worlds, and scientists will analyze those spectra for signs of biologically-produced gases such as oxygen. This will all take place in the context of knowledge about the host star and the other planets in the system. And it will be done alongside a wide variety of explorations into the cosmos that has created potentially habitable worlds.

Shawn Domagal-Goldman in the Program Scientist for the Great Observatories Maturation Program (GOMAP), which is designed to develop the technologies and concept maturations early in the mission’s development. He is an astrobiologist that has been a member of multiple interdisciplinary teams, that conduct research on the standards of evidence for biosignatures. He’s also been on a number of mission and mission concept teams, including the Mars Curiosity rover team, and two concepts for future flagship telescope concepts: the Habitable Exoplanets Observatory (HabEx) the Large UV-Optical-Infrared Surveyor (LUVOIR). These studies were precursors to the Habitable Worlds Observatory mission concept, which is the first project to enter GOMAP program.

DAY 2 – JUNE 29

Keynote: Harry Atwater

Caltech

"Starshot: From Science to Spacecraft and Missions"

In 2016, the Breakthrough Starshot Initiative defined the audacious goal of sending spacecraft to our stellar neighbors within a generation. Starshot also sparked an international research effort to frame the science and technology needs for launching laser-driven lightsail spacecraft, gathering scientific data, and returning data to earth. The outcomes of this initial research effort have laid the foundations for laser lightsail spacecraft missions, including selection of lightsail materials, sail optical design for stability, photon engine system design, and design for data communications from the lightsail to a ground receiver. Starshot has thus advanced from an abstract idea into a science-driven engineering program to support a new mode of scientific exploration.

Harry Atwater is the Howard Hughes Professor of Applied Physics and Materials Science at the California Institute of Technology. Atwater’s scientific effort focuses on nanophotonic light-matter interactions. His work spans fundamental nanophotonic phenomena and applications, including optical propulsion and active wavefront shaping of light using metasurfaces, as well as solar energy conversion. Atwater was an early pioneer in nanophotonics and plasmonics; he gave the name to the field of plasmonics in 2001. He is Chair of the LightSail Committee for the Breakthrough Starshot program. Currently Atwater is also the Director for the Liquid Sunlight Alliance (LiSA), a Department of Energy Hub program for solar fuels, and is also the founding Editor-in-Chief of the journal ACS Photonics. Atwater is a Member of the US National Academy of Engineering, and a Web of Science Highly Cited Researcher.

SESSION THREE:
The Pursuit of Interstellar Missions & Science

The Pursuit of Interstellar Missions & Science will examine how the pursuit of physical interstellar missions changes science, engineering, investment, exploration objectives, and our overall worldview. We will conceptualize, define, and address the spectrum of challenges, benefits, and risks involved in the efforts to achieve physical interstellar missions, both in the near term (10-50 years) as well as further into the future. Drawing from the extensive work and connections of 100 Year Starship and fellow initiatives working toward the interstellar journey, this session will provide topical overviews, supported with specific examples, as we consider both robotic and crewed missions.

Co-Chair: Mae Jemison

100YSS

Entrepreneur, engineer, physician, former NASA astronaut, educator and humanitarian, Mae Jemison, M.D. is at the forefront of integrating the physical and social sciences with art and culture to solve problems and foster innovation. Jemison leads 100 Year Starship® (100YSS), a nonprofit global initiative to assure that capabilities for human travel beyond our solar system to another star exist within the next 100 years while transforming life on

Earth. 100YSS celebrated its 10th anniversary this year with Nexus NairobiTM – When SPACE, PURPOSE & CULTURE CollideTM—in the cradle of humans. Started thru a competitive seed-funding grant from DARPA, 100YSS pushes radical leaps in knowledge, technology, and human systems.

Dr. Jemison served six years as a NASA astronaut and was the first woman of color in the world to go into space aboard a joint space shuttle mission with the Japanese space agency. Trained as an engineer, social scientist and dancer, Jemison, a medical doctor, was the Area Peace Corps Medical Officer for Sierra Leone and Liberia.

Dr. Jemison founded technology organizations including The Jemison Group, Inc. a technology consulting firm integrating critical socio-cultural issues into the design of engineering and science projects. As an environmental studies professor at Dartmouth College, Dr. Jemison focused on designing sustainability into technologies for both the industrialized and developing worlds.

In 1994, Dr. Jemison founded the international science camp The Earth We ShareTM (TEWS), which designs and implements STEM education experiences impacting thousands of students and hundreds of teachers worldwide and is a program of the non-profit Dorothy Jemison Foundation for Excellence (DJF).

LOOK UP One Skyä, led by Jemison, developed the “Skyfie” TM App that connects people, on a single day worldwide, to weave a global tapestry of what we individually see, feel, think, love, fear, offer, need and hope as we look up at the sky.

A member of the National Academy of Medicine, Dr. Jemison is the Chair of the NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts External Council and is on the board of directors of Kimberly-Clark and the National Board of Professional Teaching Standards. Dr. Jemison has led the Texas State Product Development and Small Business Incubator Boards among other national, state and city projects for business incubators and small business investment, infrastructure, disaster response and development of advanced industries and has served on multiple Fortune 500 company boards.

Dr. Jemison has received numerous awards, recognition and honorary degrees including an inductee in the National Women’s Hall of Fame, the National Medical Association Hall of Fame, Texas Science Hall of Fame, and International Space Hall of Fame as well as a recipient of the African Union Ambassador’s Mickey Leland Award, the West Point Sylvanus Thayer Award, The Commonwealth Award of Distinguished Service, the National Organization for Women’s Intrepid Award, and the Kilby Science Award.

Dr. Jemison authored “Find Where the Wind Goes: Moments from My Life” for teenagers and the Scholastic True Books’ 100 Year Starship series on space exploration. The first real astronaut to appear in the Star Trek TV series, she is a LEGO mini- figurine in the Women of NASA kit, Astronaut Mae in Sesame Street and voice and inspiration of the “Skipster” device in Marvel’s “Moon Girl and the Devil Dinosaur”. She is a series hosts of National Geographic’s “One Strange Rock” and the space operations advisor for its global miniseries, “Mars.”

Dr. Jemison graduated from Stanford University with a Bachelor of Science degree in Chemical Engineering and a Bachelor of Arts degree in African and Afro-American Studies. She received her medical doctorate from Cornell University Medical College.

Co-Chair: Karl Aspelund

University of Rhode Island & 100 Year Starship

Karl Aspelund is Associate Director of the Honors Program at the University of Rhode Island and Associate Professor of Design and Design Theory in the TMD Dept. at URI’s College of Business. He is also Visiting Associate Professor in Ethnology and Museum Studies at the University of Iceland. After a 20-year career in design for theater, film, and public art, Karl completed a Ph.D. in Anthropology and Material Culture at Boston University in 2011 where he was awarded the Edmonds Prize for Best Dissertation. His research involves textiles, material culture and personal and national identity creation. On the 100-Year-Starship research team, he has investigated the needs and constraints of textiles for long-duration spaceflight, leading to current focus on the human element involved and on circular economies of textiles on Earth. Karl has authored three textbooks on design and design theory and has organized and facilitated a number of events attended by academic, industry, government, and military organizations where design thinking has produced solution sets for complex local and global problems. A volume of essays on Icelandic culture-creation he co-authored and edited with Dr. Terry Gunnell, was nominated for the 2017 Icelandic Literary Prize for Academic Work.

Peter A. Swan

International Space Elevator Consortium

"Unmatched Velocity for Huge Spacecraft – Going Interstellar"

Can you imagine a large space system leaving Earth in excess of 12.34 km/sec which ensures escape from our Sun? How about if it had an extra 10 km/sec assist from slingshot release from it’s space elevator with the ability to gain another 15 km/sec by doing gravity assists along the way. The total concept being discussed is fast enough to leave our solar systems and approach meaningful destinations within a reasonable time [100 AU in 19 years]. However, there is more for the scientist seeking answers within the interstellar arena – how about the ability to send muti-tens of tonnes along this path in a huge space system with fuel for rendezvous and landing along the way? How does this work? Easy! You assemble a large spacecraft above the gravity well of the Earth, add velocity to it by spinning it around the Earth and then release it with extra velocity from a giant slingshot. An extra-long space elevator could achieve these goals by 2038. This story should be told as part of future opportunities for space exploration.

Peter A. Swan, Ph.D, is President of the International Space Elevator Consortium and leads teams to further the Space Elevator concepts. Over 20 years he has published many books on the topic as author and/or co-editor. He is an Academician of the International Academy of Astronautics. He graduated from the US Military Academy in 1968 and served 20 years in the Air Force with a variety of research and development positions in the space arena. Upon retirement in 1988, he joined Motorola on the Iridium satellite program. In 1998, he helped develop Teaching Science and Technology, Inc. a company that teaches space systems engineering. He currently teaches at Arizona State University within OLLI. He is a fellow of both British Interplanetary Society and American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics. Pete received his Ph.D. from the University of California at Los Angeles in Space Systems Engineering. Road to the Space Elevator Era; Space Elevators: An Assessment of the Technological Feasibility and the Way Forward; Space Elevators are the Green Road to Space; Space Elevators are the Transportation Story of the 21st Century; and, Step Zero II: Preparation for a SCUBA Live-Aboard Trip.

Ronke Olabisi

UC Irvine

"Designing for Interstellar"

Ronke Olabisi joined UC Irvine in 2020 and is currently an Associate Professor in the Biomedical Engineering department and affiliate faculty of the UC Irvine Sue & Bill Gross Stem Cell Research Center. Prof. Olabisi came from Rutgers University where she was an assistant professor in Biomedical Engineering with an affiliation with the Institute of Advanced Materials, Devices, and Nanotechnology. The focus of her lab is tissue engineering and regenerative medicine to repair or regenerate tissues damaged by injury, disease, aging, or spaceflight. By modifying synthetic materials with the natural, her lab develops cell-responsive materials. Specifically, her research has resulted in advances in wound healing, methods to form bone, and discoveries in retinal and neural tissue engineering. In addition to biomedical research, Prof. Olabisi conducts research aimed at increasing the recruitment and persistence of minoritized groups in STEM. For her research, Olabisi is the recipient of a 2016 Engineering Information Foundation Award, a 2018 NSF CAREER Award, a 2019 Johnson & Johnson Women in Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics, Manufacturing, and Design (WiSTEM2D) Scholar Award, a 2019 Biomedical Engineering Society’s (BMES) Young Innovator in Cellular and Molecular Bioengineering Award, a 2022 BMES Diversity Lecture Award, and a 2022 NSF Workshop Award. She is also a member of 100 Year Starship, an interdisciplinary DARPA-funded initiative that seeks to replicate the rapid technological development stimulated by the moon landings by imagining human interstellar travel. Olabisi earned her bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from MIT; two master’s degrees in mechanical engineering and in aeronautical engineering from the University of Michigan—Ann Arbor; and her doctoral degree in biomedical engineering from the University of Wisconsin—Madison. She completed postdoctoral research in bioengineering with the West lab while it was at Rice University.

Sonya Teresa Smith

Howard University

"Interstellar Mission Energy Management – The Whole Picture"

The purpose of this talk is to provide a framework for discussing the types of energy forms required for an interstellar crewed mission. As exciting as this prospect may be, achieving this feat is not easy. It requires a comprehensive understanding of various forms of energy which will enable such a journey to take place. Although technological advancements have brought us closer than ever before to achieving such an ambitious goal, significant challenges still remain. For example, in addition to the propulsion system, the crew must maintain a constant supply of food, water, and oxygen during the mission, all of which require energy. These resources must be managed efficiently to ensure their longevity and sustainability throughout the journey, which is a significant challenge that must be overcome.

Dr. Smith obtained her Ph.D. in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering from The University of Virginia (UVA) in 1995 and was the first African-American woman to do so. She joined the Howard University faculty in 1995 and is the first tenured female professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering. She has established an interdisciplinary theoretical and computational research laboratory entitled the Applied Fluids-Thermal Research Laboratory (@FTERLab). Dr. Smith’s research covers thermal management for power systems and energy storage. She is one of the Co-PIs for the Trans-Iron Galactic Element Recorder on the International Space Station (TIGERISS) which provide the most comprehensive data yet on ultraheavy Galactic cosmic rays (UHGCRs). She is one of the Co-PIs for the Engineering Research Center (ERC) for Power Optimization for Electro-Thermal Systems (POETS) and leads it Packaging and Integration Thrust. Dr. Smith is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2021. She also served as FY21 President of Sigma Xi: The Scientific Research Honor Society. Dr. Smith was elected as a Fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) and an Associate Fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA). Dr. Smith’s personal goal is to be a mentor and resource to all students and young faculty/professionals, but especially to those underrepresented in STEM.

Philip Lubin

UC Santa Barbara

"Large Scale Directed Energy for Power Projection and Relativistic Flight"

The ability to project power over vast distances has radical and transformational implications for humanity from space exploration both inside the solar system and beyond as well as interstellar capability to powering remote assets to planetary defense and to how civilizations may beacon their existence - ie SETI. The ability to master this technology is a combination of the Physics of photonics and a complex mathematical problem in phase convergence. Chemical reactions, at best, have an efficiency compared to rest mass of 10-10 (or about 1eV per bond). While chemistry, nuclear propulsion and ion engines such as NTP, NEP, SEP and solar sails can get us to Mars and are extremely useful and should be developed, they do not allow extremely rapid solar system nor interstellar capability. While “new physics” may emerge, we do not assume this in our current plans. Recent advances in photonics and directed energy systems now allow us to realize the ability to project the high power and high flux over the vast distances needed for space applications, including the ability to achieve relativistic flight among many other applications.

Philip Lubin is a professor of Physics at UC Santa Barbara whose primary research has been focused on studies of the early universe in the millimeter wavelengths bands as well as applications of directed energy for planetary defense and relativistic propulsion. His group has designed, developed and fielded more than two dozen ground based and balloon borne missions and helped develop two major cosmology satellites. Among other accomplishments his group first detected the horizon scale fluctuations in the Cosmic Microwave Background from both their South Pole and balloon borne systems twenty years ago and their latest results, along with an international team of ESA and NASA researchers, are from the Planck cosmology mission which have mapped in exquisite detail the structures of the early universe. He was co-I on the Planck mission. His group has worked on applications of directed energy systems for both small scale single launcher solutions as well as large standoff systems for planetary defense and on applications to allow small interstellar probes to achieve relativistic speeds for the first interstellar missions. He is co-recipient of the 2006 Gruber Prize in Cosmology along with the COBE science team for their groundbreaking work in cosmology as well as the 2018 Gruber Prize in Cosmology along with the Planck science team for their determination of fundamental cosmological parameter. He has published more than 500 papers and two books.

Antoine Faddoul

Tony Sky Designs Group

"Interstellar Demands New Disciplines"

Antoine Faddoul is a designer, artist, futurist, and storyteller, with a multidisciplinary approach combining elements of architecture, astronomy, science, history, archaeology, ancient mythology, art, and linguistics. He has lectured, written, and published papers, articles, and books covering such areas. Faddoul is an advocate of revolutionizing space travel through integrated space architecture, innovative space economy, and contemplated novel technology. He compiled one hundred design aspects required for human space travel from LEO to interstellar, assessing current and future technology developments. In addition to space architecture, his space travel assessments involve human factors, infrastructure, and economy platforms. Faddoul holds a degree in architecture, MS in project management, and is working on his doctorate degree at the Polytechnic Institute at Purdue University, researching optimizing design and construction management for sustainable extraordinary projects on earth and in space. He is the director of Tony Sky Designs Group for planning and project management.

Co-Chair: Karl Aspelund

University of Rhode Island & 100 Year Starship

An interstellar mission, crewed or uncrewed, has a human element beyond its personnel. There are those for whom it is an investment toward their own compelling goal; those for whom it is an inspiration; those for whom it is a dream. The value of an interstellar mission will be enhanced to a great degree by the level of engagement it has with humans who would stay behind. Beyond those who finance, plan, design, analyze, and publish, is a multitude to be included. The effect of the mission on them should not go without regard. How do we—might we—invite a fragmented World to look up in awe at the wonders of the universe? How to generate and maintain excitement at the prospect of interstellar discovery missions? How to consider a project’s impact on human knowledge and systems? How to create a sense of community, personal engagement, and ownership from the start? Public engagement projects within the 100-Year Starship initiative provide examples of dialogues that an interstellar mission can engage in on the streets, in schools, and around dinner tables worldwide. Let’s examine the enhanced value of an interstellar mission as measured by the humans in the loop.

EVENING SPEAKERS

Our Expanding Sense of Place — what we know and don’t know about our cosmic neighborhood

Natalie Batalha

UC Santa Cruz

Natalie Batalha is the UC Presidential Chair, Professor of Astronomy & Astrophysics, and Director of Astrobiology at UC Santa Cruz. She uses ground and space-based observatories to detect and characterize planets orbiting other stars in the galaxy, with the ultimate goal of finding evidence of life beyond the Solar System. Prior to UCSC, Dr. Batalha was a research scientist at NASA Ames where she served as Science Team Lead and Project Scientist for NASA’s Kepler mission from 2011 to 2017. Batalha was involved with the Kepler Mission since the proposal stage and contributed to many different aspects of the science, from studying the stars themselves to detecting and understanding the planets they harbor. She led Kepler's first efforts to generate high reliability catalogs of planet detections. She also led the analysis that yielded the discovery in 2011 of Kepler-10b — the mission's first confirmation of a rocky planet outside our solar system. For her work on Kepler, Batalha was awarded a NASA Public Service Medal (2011) and the Smithsonian Ingenuity Award (2017). In 2017, Batalha was named one of the 100 Most Influential People of the World by TIME Magazine. Currently, Dr. Batalha is leading the science community’s efforts to acquire and analyze the first observations of transiting exoplanets with the James Webb Space Telescope.

Gibor Basri

UC Berkeley

Gibor Basri is Professor Emeritus of Astronomy at UC Berkeley. He obtained his BSc in Physics from Stanford University in 1973 and a PhD in Astrophysics from the University of Colorado, Boulder in 1979. After becoming a Chancellor's Postdoctoral Fellow at Berkeley he joined the faculty in 1982. His work initially concentrated on star formation and continuing studies of stellar magnetic activity. In the 1990s he became a discoverer of and expert on brown dwarfs, including rotation and activity on them and low mass stars. Concurrently he invented the "lithium dating" method for young cluster ages. In the 2000s he was a Co-Investigator on NASA’s Kepler Mission, which revolutionized our understanding of exoplanets. He uses Kepler data to study starspots and stellar rotation. In 2023 he was elected a Fellow of the American Astronomical Society.

Professor Basri has written over 200 technical publications along with many review articles. He has served on committees awarding major NASA and NSF grants and projects and observing time on the Lick and Keck telescopes. He was awarded a Miller Research Professorship in 1997 and a NASA Faculty Fellowship in 2002. He received the Chancellor’s Award for Advancing Institutional Excellence in 2006 for efforts in faculty diversity and encouraging the participation of minorities in science. From 2007-2015 he was the founding Vice Chancellor for Equity and Inclusion at Berkeley. In 2016 he received Wonderfest’s Carl Sagan Prize for Science Popularization. He has served on the Boards of the Chabot Space and Science Center (1998-2007), the Oakland, I Have a Dream Foundation (1994-2000), the Science Advisory Board for the Astrophysical Institute of Potsdam (2014-2020), and the Astronomical Society of the Pacific (2016-2021).

Kevin Stevenson

Johns Hopkins APL

Dr. Kevin Stevenson is an astrophysicist at Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory. He enjoys working in the phase space overlapping planetary sciences, astrophysics, and astrobiology. His research primarily focuses on the study of exoplanets, which are planets outside of our solar system. Stevenson uses the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) to characterize exoplanet atmospheres and better understand their nature and origin. He is also involved in the development of exoplanet mission concepts to measure the composition and chemical properties of nearby, potentially-habitable worlds. Stevenson in the principal investigator (PI) of CHAMPs, an interdisciplinary research consortium whose goal is to understand if M-dwarf planets can support life and how best to characterize them. He is also the PI of a large JWST Cycle 1 program to determine the prevalence of atmospheres around terrestrial planets orbiting nearby M-dwarf stars.

David Kipping

Columbia University

Fascinated by the solar system since childhood, David Kipping, Assistant Professor of Astronomy at Columbia University, is widely known for his research of extrasolar planets and exomoons, including their impact on the origins of our solar system and beyond. (Extrasolar planets are planets located outside our solar system, while exomoons are moons that orbit these extrasolar bodies.) “I seek to understand our home’s uniqueness in the universe,” says David in explaining his work. “Our parent star, solar system, home planet and companion moon have all played a role in the story of how we came to be. My passion is to follow the trail of cosmic breadcrumbs left behind to reveal whether this story played out elsewhere across the ocean of stars.”

At Columbia, he leads the Cool Worlds Lab where he and his team study extrasolar planetary systems with a particular focus on the detection and analysis of worlds found at longer orbital periods. He is also principal investigator of The Hunt for Exomoons with the Kepler (HEK) project, in addition to being active in science outreach, including operating a YouTube channel called Cool Worlds, which, with more than 100,000 subscribers, serves as an international platform to discuss his group’s research and related science.

David earned his Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees at the University of Cambridge and received his Ph.D. in Astrophysics from University College London. He spent time doing postdoctoral work at Harvard University before joining Columbia University in 2015, and has authored more than 90 scientific publications.

HOSTS

Cynthia K. Larive

Chancellor

UC Santa Cruz

Cynthia K. Larive is chancellor of UC Santa Cruz, a public research institution leading at the intersection of innovation and social justice. As a first-generation college graduate, a common thread throughout her career has been her commitment to student success, inclusion and equity. As chancellor, Dr. Larive has prioritized improving retention and graduation rates and eliminating equity gaps for students from groups traditionally underrepresented in higher education. Other priorities include advancing UCSC’s research profile and impact, which were highlighted by our selection to join the Association of American Universities in 2019. She earned a bachelor’s degree from South Dakota State, a master’s from Purdue, and a Ph.D. in analytical chemistry from UC Riverside. She is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the American Chemical Society, and has received campus and national awards for her teaching, research and leadership.

Lori Kletzer

Provost and Executive Vice Chancellor

UC Santa Cruz

Campus Provost and Executive Vice Chancellor Lori Kletzer, UC Santa Cruz’s chief academic officer, is responsible for all academic divisions and units of the campus, including the University Library and UCSC Extension. She is the chief budget officer for the campus, aligning campus expenditures with campus goals and our academic mission. Kletzer works closely with Chancellor Cindy Larive in providing guidance to the senior leadership team and ensuring the efficient and effective operation of the campus. She is the administration's primary liaison with the university’s Academic Senate.

Kletzer's priorities include supporting faculty in their teaching, research, creative scholarship, and service; advancing the diversity of the faculty; ensuring the academic needs of students are met; seeking new support and resources for our academic mission; growing our commitment to serving a diverse student population; and fostering an inclusive community for students, faculty and staff.

Kletzer is a labor economist. Her research has focused on the domestic labor market effects of globalization and policy responses. She has been affiliated with UC Santa Cruz since 1992, and has contributed to campus as chair of the economics department, Academic Senate chair and vice chair, vice provost and dean of graduate studies and acting/interim dean of the Division of the Arts. She was awarded an Academic Senate Excellence in Teaching award in 2003. Kletzer was provost and dean of faculty at Colby College from 2010 to July 2017. She earned her Ph.D. in economics from UC Berkeley and her undergraduate degree from Vassar College.

Natalie Batalha

UC Santa Cruz

Steven Khan

Dean of Mathematical & Physical Sciences

UC Berkeley

Co-Chair: Michael Garrett

University of Manchester

Steven Kahn is an experimental astrophysicist and cosmologist. His current research is geared around the Vera C. Rubin Observatory. He is working on the commissioning of the active optics system, with particular emphasis on the application of new techniques associated with machine learning and reinforcement learning. Scientifically, his main interests lie in constraining the nature of dark energy through weak gravitational lensing and other statistical methods. He is also interested in the use of Rubin to discover ultrafast optical transient sources through novel methods.

Steven Kahn received his A.B. (summa cum laude) from Columbia in 1975 and his Ph.D. in physics at Berkeley in 1980. In addition to Berkeley, he has served on the faculties of Columbia, where he was the I.I. Rabi Professor of Physics, and at Stanford, where he was the Cassius Lamb Kirk Professor in the Natural Sciences. He was the U.S. Principal Investigator for the Reflection Grating Spectrometer on the European Space Agency's XMM-Newton Observatory, which was launched in December 1999 and is still flying. More recently, he was the Director of the Vera C. Rubin Observatory which will begin operations in 2024. Kahn is a Fellow of the American Physical Society, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Takalani Nemaungani

Chief Director Astronomy

African Astronomical Society

Takalani Nemaungani is currently the Chief Director for the Astronomy portfolio at the Department of Science and Innovation (DSI) in South Africa – Astronomy is a flagship project receiving the single largest investment in the budget within the DSI. Trained as an engineer from Wits University, he began his career in 1994 in the private sector in companies such as Samancor and Sasol before joining the CSIR. He has played a pivotal role in the development of Astronomy in Africa and beyond, as highlighted through his roles in projects like the Square Kilometer Array (SKA), the African Very Long Baseline Interferometry (AVN), the HESS telescope, the African Astronomical Society (AfAS), the IAU-OAD, NASSP, and providing strategic and funding support to developing the multiwavelength astronomy community in South Africa. He serves as the secretariat for the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) Astronomy Working Group. Before joining the Astronomy division, he was the Director of the Global Projects unit within the International Cooperation and Resources division of the DSI, where he was the Project Coordinator of the Promoting Africa-Europe Research Infrastructure Project (PAERIP).

Thebe Medupe

President

African Astronomical Society

Prof. Thebe Rodney Medupe is a professor of Astronomy at the North-West University, South Africa. He obtained his PhD in Astronomy from the University of Cape Town in 2002 on the research area of stellar astrophysics with specialization in stellar pulsations. His PhD studies was a collaboration between UCT and the Danish university of Aarhus. He has co-authored over 55 articles with co-authors from all around the world. His h-index is 15. He has experience in both observational and theoretical (numerical) modelling of pulsations in stars. He has successfully supervised 5 PhD and 6 MSc students and many Honours students at NASSP and at North-West University. He was a co-founding member of the National Astrophysics and Space Science Programme (NASSP). From 2015 until 2018 he was the chairperson of the NASSP consortium. He pioneered the NASSP Winterschool as a vehicle of including South African students from universities that did not have astronomy research programmes into the astronomy community. The success of the Winterschool changed the face of astronomy in South Africa significantly. He has taught stellar structure both at Honours and MSc at the NASSP as well as at North West University in Mahikeng campus. Prof. Medupe founded the astronomy research group at the Mahikeng campus in 2010.

David Korsmeyer

Deputy Center Director for Research and Technology

NASA Ames Research Center

David Korsmeyer is the acting deputy center director at NASA's Ames Research Center in California's Silicon Valley. Korsmeyer leads the center’s overall efforts in research, science and engineering developments that support NASA’s missions in aeronautics, science, exploration, and technology. Key achievement include initiating NASA’s next lunar rover, the VIPER or Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover.

Korsmeyer earned his bachelor’s degree in Aerospace Engineering from Pennsylvania State University in State College, Pennsylvania, and both his master’s and doctorate in Aerospace Engineering from the University of Texas in Austin. He is a Sloan Fellow with a master’s degree in Management from the Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business and is active in the International Astronautical Federation, the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, and the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers.

Nathalie Cabrol

Director, Carl Sagan Center for the Study of Life in the Universe

SETI Institute

Biography Nathalie is an astrobiologist and the Director of SETI Institute Carl Sagan Center for Research where she spearheads a new multidisciplinary roadmap to bridge astrobiology and SETI. She has a background in planetary and environmental sciences, and astrobiology. Her research focuses on the exploration of habitability and life beyond Earth. She counts over 470 peer-reviewed publications and proceedings of professional conferences and is the author of three books and 10 chapters of books on the subject of planetary science and exploration, astrobiology, and terrestrial extreme environments. Nathalie is the recipient of NASA and other research awards. She is a Carey Fellow (Wings Worldquest Women of Discovery - Air and Space, 2007), and a Fellow of the California Academy of Sciences since 2016. She was honored to present the Sagan Lecture at AGU in December 2016. Nathalie has given over 400 public lectures on the subjects of planetary science, exploration, and the search for life beyond Earth, including a TED Talk in 2015. In March 2018, the New York Times Sunday Magazine featured a portrait of her work and life. Nathalie holds the women's world record for diving at altitude (scuba and free diving).

Rob Fender

Head of Astrophysics

University of Oxford

Rob Fender is Head of Astrophysics at The University of Oxford. He also holds a long standing Visiting Professorship at The University of Cape Town.

His particular research interests are in the areas of accretion and feedback around relativistic objects, mostly advanced via observations with radio telescopes such as AMI-LA, e-MERLIN and MeerKAT and, most recently, the Allen Telescope Array. As well as targeted studies, he is also involved in wide field commensal searches for radio transients.

Rob led the national collaboration via which the UK joined the LOFAR project, was awarded in 2011 an ERC Advanced Investigator Grant, in 2022 an ERC Synergy grant, was chair of the SKA Transients Science Working Group, and was awarded the 2020 Herschel Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society for "investigations of outstanding merit in observational astrophysics".

Harry Atwater

Otis Booth Leadership Chair, Division of Engineering and Applied Science

California Institute of Technology

Harry Atwater is the Otis Booth Leadership Chair, Division of Engineering and Applied Science, Howard Hughes Professor of Applied Physics and Materials Science, and Director, Liquid Sunlight Alliance at the California Institute of Technology. Atwater’s scientific effort focuses on nanophotonic light-matter interactions. His work spans fundamental nanophotonic phenomena and applications, including optical propulsion and active wavefront shaping of light using metasurfaces, as well as solar energy conversion. Atwater was an early pioneer in nanophotonics and plasmonics; he gave the name to the field of plasmonics in 2001. He is Chair of the LightSail Committee for the Breakthrough Starshot program. Currently Atwater is also the Director for the Liquid Sunlight Alliance (LiSA), a Department of Energy Hub program for solar fuels, and is also the founding Editor-in-Chief of the journal ACS Photonics. Atwater is a Member of the US National Academy of Engineering, and a Web of Science Highly Cited Researcher.

Buell T.Jannuzi

Head, Department of Astronomy

University of Arizona

Professor Buell T. Jannuzi has served as the seventh Director of Steward Observatory and Head of the Department of Astronomy at the University of Arizona since 2012. Jannuzi was previously the Director of Kitt Peak National Observatory and Associate Director of the National Optical Astronomy Observatory (2005-2010) during his 17 year tenure as a member of the scientific staff of NOAO (1995-2012). Jannuzi earned degrees at Harvard College and the University of Arizona (Ph.D. in Astronomy). He then spent five years as a member of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, N.J., and was recognized in 1993 with the award of a NASA Hubble Fellowship. His main scientific interests include the formation and evolution of individual, groups, and large-scale structures of galaxies and the determination of the physical processes that produce quasars and other active galactic nuclei. Jannuzi has been heavily involved in many major surveys of the universe, including one of the original three “Key Projects” for the Hubble Space Telescope, the Quasar Absorption Line Survey, and serving as co- Principal Investigator for an ambitious survey of galaxy evolution, the NOAO Deep Wide-Field Survey. He has served on the Board of Directors or Science Advisory Committees of numerous major ground-based and space observatories, including the Gemini Observatory, Spitzer Space Telescope, Fermi Space Telescope, Large Binocular Telescope, Large Synoptic Survey Telescope Corporation, and the Giant Magellan Telescope. He has also served as President of the Board of Directors of the International Dark-Sky Association.

SCIENCE ORGANIZING COMMITTEE

S. Pete Worden

Breakthrough Initiatives

Simon Peter “Pete” Worden, (Brig. Gen., USAF, Ret., PhD) is the Chairman of the Breakthrough Prize Foundation and Executive Director of the foundation’s Breakthrough Initiatives. He holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Physics and Astronomy from the University of Michigan and a PhD in Astronomy from the University of Arizona. Prior to joining the Breakthrough Prize Foundation, Dr. Worden was Director of NASA’s Ames Research Center at Moffett Field, California until his retirement on March 31, 2015. He has held several positions in the United States Air Force and was research professor of astronomy at the University of Arizona, Tucson, USA. He is a recognized expert on space and science issues, both civil and military, and has been a leader in building partnerships between governments and the private sector internationally.

Jamie Drew

Breakthrough Initiatives

Jamie Drew is Deputy Executive Director for the Breakthrough Initiatives, a suite of scientific and technological space exploration programs searching for life in the Universe. Prior to his current role, Drew worked at the NASA Ames Research Center on agile-spacecraft technologies. At NASA he also served as an International Relations specialist for public-private partnerships in the Office of the Center Director, and Science Manager in the Office of the Chief Scientist. Drew holds a B.A. from Malmö University, Sweden and an M.S. from the Intl. Space University (ISU), France. Drew’s technical research interests lie in mobility systems on and off our planet; his humanities-based research interests focus on questions regarding the future survival of the human species…

Pete Klupar

Breakthrough Initiatives

Pete Klupar has worked in the Aerospace Industry for more than 35 years. Holding positions in Government (US Air force and NASA) and industry( startups to multinational corporations). Prior to being the Engineering Director at the Breakthrough Foundation, Pete Klupar was Director of Engineering at NASA’s Ames Research Center. While at Ames he helped develop the Aquila, LADEE, TESS, Pharmasat, OREO and other small spacecraft missions while aiding in the development and operations of Kepler and SOFIA projects.

James Schalkwyk

Breakthrough Initiatives

Born and raised in Cape Town, South Africa, James Schalkwyk’s professional interest in interstellar travel began in 2011 with DARPA’s ambitious 100-Year Starship study. The one-year program aimed to understand and build the organizational – rather than technological – underpinnings of an organization capable of building a starship within 100 years. After DARPA awarded the grant to Mae Jemison’s 100YSS organization, James moved to NASA’s Ames Research Center where he worked variously in the Communications and New Ventures Directorate, the NewSpace-focused “Space Portal” and in the Strategic Partnerships Division. During this time, his work ran the gamut, ranging from SmallSat technology to low-cost lunar settlements, and from asteroid cataloguing to space resource extraction.

James spent several months consulting for the Breakthrough Initiatives shortly after their inception in 2016. After completing graduate school at Columbia University in 2018 he rejoined the team to manage the growing Starshot program, bringing him squarely back to the starship business.

Kyran Grattan

Breakthrough Initiatives

Kyran Grattan is Associate Director of the Breakthrough Initiatives and Program Manager of Breakthrough Watch. He is an alumni of the International Institute of Air and Space law in Leiden, the Netherlands, the International Space University in Strasbourg, France. Kyran ran the Space Generation Advisory Council Space Law and Policy Project Group for three years and is a former student representative of the European Centre for Space Law.

Dillon O'Reilly

Breakthrough Initiatives

Dillon is a dedicated aerospace engineering postgraduate student, specializing in the field of spacecraft power electronics converters for electric propulsion of small satellites. His journey with SETU Carlow began in 2014, culminating in a first-class honours Level 8 degree in 2019. Dillon then expanded his horizons with Breakthrough Initiatives in Luxembourg, contributing to projects involving the search for extraterrestrial life and the development of advanced propulsion systems. His exceptional work earned him the Irish Research Council’s postgraduate scholarship in 2020, facilitating his return to SETU Carlow to pursue his PhD. Dillon has since published two major works, further advancing the field of aerospace engineering. He has a particular interest in the use of Pulsed Plasma Thrusters (PPTs) for small satellites, and his research has led to the development of a novel power converter that increases power efficiency, reduces mass and size, and mitigates the issue of spacecraft debris. Despite his rigorous academic pursuits, Dillon finds balance in activities like running, hiking, and cold water swimming. His passion for exploration, whether terrestrial or celestial, defines his approach to life and work.

Steve Croft

UC Berkeley

Steve Croft grew up in England, where he received a PhD in astro- physics from Oxford University in 2002, before moving to California to work as a postdoctoral researcher at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Since 2007, Croft has been a researcher in the Astronomy Department at UC Berkeley. Croft’s research has included the study of supermassive black holes and their environments, as a principal investigator for both the Hub- ble and Spitzer Space Telescopes, in addition to over 100 nights on ground-based optical and infrared telescopes including Keck and the Lick 3-meter. He has performed surveys for variable and transient radio sources with the Allen Telescope Array, the Very Large Array, and the Murchison Widefield Array, and looked for the signatures of black hole collisions as a member of the NANOGrav collaboration. Croft has been a full-time scientist on the Breakthrough Listen program since 2015. He serves as Listen’s Project Scientist for the Green Bank Telescope, and is the Director of the NSF-funded Berkeley SETI Re- search Center ”Research Experience for Undergraduates” Site. He is also involved in many aspects of the planning, execution, analysis, and publication of results from the program, as well as proposal writing, documentation, coordinating and writing press releases, donor cultiva- tion, industry engagement, outreach, education, and social media.

Vishal Gajjar

UC Berkeley

Vishal Gajjar is a researcher with the Breakthrough Listen team at the Berkeley SETI research centre. He received his PhD from the National Center for Radio Astrophysics in Pune in 2015. His PhD gave him expertise in understanding pulsar emission physics by studying various single-pulse phenomena. Vishal completed an Engineering degree from the Shan- tilal Shah Engineering College (Bhavnagar, Gujarat) in Electronics and Communication. At present, Vishal is working with the Breakthrough Listen team as a project scientist for international collaborative facilities to enable SETI experiments across the globe using several radio telescopes. Vishal is also leading an observing campaign to survey the Galactic centre region with the Breakthrough Listen program across a large part of the radio spectrum using some of the most sensitive tele- scopes in the world to search for extra-terrestrial intelligence (ETI). Vishal is also interested in searching for transient dispersed signals. In August 2017, he led the discovery of the first and so far, the only detec- tion of a Fast Radio Burst (FRB) at the highest radio frequencies. In his spare time, when he is not looking for ETIs and FRBs, he likes to go on hiking trips with his wife and kid. One of his personal goals is to visit all the national parks in the US over the next few years.

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DAY ONE – June 28

SESSION ONE: The Search for Technosignatures from Space

Co-Chair: Sofia Sheikh

Co-Chair: Michael Garrett

Hector Socas-Navarro

Tzu-Ching Chang

Alanna Krolikowski

Mary Knapp

Joe Lazio

Darryl Seligman

MIT"Interstellar Interlopers and Dark Comets"

SESSION TWO: Mapping our Stellar Neighborhood

Co-Chair: Anne-Marie Lagrange

Co-Chair: Ewan Douglas

Nikku Madhusudhan

Rebecca Jensen-Clem

Clarissa Luk

Sascha P. Quanz

Giovanna Tinetti

Shawn Domagal-Goldman

DAY 2 – JUNE 29

Keynote: Harry Atwater

SESSION THREE: The Pursuit of Interstellar Missions & Science

Co-Chair: Mae Jemison

Co-Chair: Karl Aspelund

Peter A. Swan

Ronke Olabisi

Sonya Teresa Smith

Philip Lubin

Antoine Faddoul

Co-Chair: Karl Aspelund

EVENING SPEAKERS

Our Expanding Sense of Place — what we know and don’t know about our cosmic neighborhood

Natalie Batalha

Gibor Basri

Kevin Stevenson

David Kipping

HOSTS

Cynthia K. Larive

Lori Kletzer

Natalie Batalha

Steven Khan

Co-Chair: Michael Garrett

Takalani Nemaungani

Thebe Medupe

David Korsmeyer

Nathalie Cabrol

Rob Fender

Harry Atwater

Buell T.Jannuzi

SCIENCE ORGANIZING COMMITTEE

S. Pete Worden

Jamie Drew

Pete Klupar

James Schalkwyk

Kyran Grattan

Dillon O'Reilly

Steve Croft

Vishal Gajjar

SESSION ONE:
The Search for Technosignatures from Space

MIT
"Interstellar Interlopers and Dark Comets"

SESSION TWO:
Mapping our Stellar Neighborhood

SESSION THREE:
The Pursuit of Interstellar Missions & Science