Invitation to ETI list of Names

An Invitation From ...

In issuing this invitation to you, we are acting simply as individual human beings, not as representatives or spokespersons from any organization, employer, or country.

Many of us as individuals, however, have formal and informal links to highly relevant organizations. For instance, 16 of us are members of the IAA SETI Committee, which is the key international committee in the field.  And our group includes key leaders from 12 other organizations that seek or study contact with intelligent life in the universe.  These links to a variety of organizations could be very valuable at some stage of our interaction with you.

Here is a list of the people who are inviting you to make contact, whatever form of extraterrestrial life you are.  Your reply can be sent to the group's coordinator, Allen Tough, who will relay your message to the other members of the group.

Dr. Ivan Almar holds a senior position in Budapest at the Konkoly Observatory of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences.  He has served as co-chair of the IAA SETI Committee since 1984.  He is also chair of the IAA Committee on Multilingual Terminology and a member of the executive committee of IAU Commission 51 (Bioastronomy).  In Hungary, he serves as president of the Hungarian Space Research Council and honorary president of the Hungarian Astronautical Society.  He is a member of the International Academy of Astronautics and the New York Academy of Sciences.

Ms. Valeria Ascheri is a 23-year-old Italian Ph.D. student in philosophy.  In 1999 she completed her final dissertation ("The Problem of Language in SETI") in the philosophy of language and science in the University of Genoa's Department of Philosophy.   At Bioastronomy '99 in Hawaii, her poster paper on "A Methodological Approach to Communicate with Extraterrestrials" wrestled with the problem of how to communicate with a distant intelligence whose characteristics are unknown to us.  She chooses chemistry as the most likely common ground, and proposes transmitting an artificial chemical encyclopedia (the spectra of abundant elements and then the spectra of chemical elements that we have created in laboratories).

Mr. Stuart Atkinson lives in the north of England.  His three books are Journey Into Space, The Kingfisher Facts and Records Book of Space, and Understanding Science: Astronomy.  He is particularly interested in SETI and the possibility of learning about alien art and culture from a super-smart probe, and his fresh insightful ideas are evident in his contributions to the Contact email discussion list.  Stu says that "I have been an amateur astronomer since my junior school days and now, at the age of 34, I am very busy speaking in schools (120 so far).  I hope some of these girls and boys will end up working on the Moon or Mars when they grow up."

C Bangs is a professional artist whose work has been exhibited throughout the United States and in Europe, South America, and Australia.  Her art is included in the permanent museum collections at the Chrysler Museum (Norfolk, Virginia), the Mint Museum (Charlotte, North Carolina), and the Natural History Museum and the Panterra Contrade Museum (Siena, Italy).  In New York City, her art is represented by Art Resources Transfer, Inc. at 210 11th Avenue.  Her drawings are the chapter frontispieces for The Starflight Handbook, The Urban Astronomer, and Telescope Power by Gregory Matloff.  Her work has also been included in exobiology issues of the Journal of the British Interplanetary Society (a modified version of the "man and woman" Voyager plaque) and in Analog, Science Fiction and Fact.

Dr. Ragbir Bhathal's courses on "Astronomy and Life in the Universe" are popular among students at the University of Western Sydney Macarthur in Australia, and with the general public.  As the foundation chair of the SETI Australia Centre from 1995 to 1998, he spearheaded their 1998 conference on SETI science and society, which attracted 100 participants from 15 countries.  He is project director of the OZ OSETI (optical SETI) project.  He wrote Australian Astronomers, Profiles, and Searching for ET.

Mr. Robert Bigelow has initiated and funded several scientific research projects to study the possibility that ETI from a mature civilization has reached Earth in one form or another.   In 1998 he sponsored an international essay contest with the three winners each receiving $5000.  He is the founder and President of the National Institute for Discovery Science.  A Las Vegas entrepreneur, he is also president of Bigelow Aerospace.

Mr. Robert Bradbury thinks big about the possibilities of super-smart intelligence. He has presented his ideas on his extensive website and at Bioastronomy '99.  These ideas have deep implications for SETI and for humanity's future.  Robert began his working life with 15 years in the computer industry, followed by keen interest in genetic research.

Dr. David Brin wrote Earth, The Postman, The Uplift War, The Transparent Society, and (at the request of Isaac Asimov's heirs) a grand finale to Asimov's Foundation Universe.  Much of his writing features provocative thought experiments about alien intelligence and SETI.  He describes himself as living in San Diego county with his wife, three children, and a hundred very demanding trees.

Mr. Richard Burke-Ward, who lives in London (England), is a 36-year-old TV journalist and writer specializing in science. His current interests include astronomy, SETI, alien intelligence, and extraterrestrial probes. He has made several science documentaries for British and American television. He is currently completing a science fiction novel about SETI and a short story about an extraterrestrial artefact in the solar system.  His website presents his fresh ideas and questions concerning probes.

Professor Eric Chaisson wrote The Life Era, Cosmic Dawn, and The Hubble Wars. He is co-author of Astronomy Today, the most widely used college astronomy textbook in the United States.  He is Research Professor of Physics at Tufts University and director of the Wright Center for Innovative Science Education.

Mr. Bob Citron has a long-standing interest in intelligent life in the universe, and has supported SETI for several years.  He is the Executive Director of the Foundation For the Future, which studies the factors that will have the greatest impact on the next thousand years.  In 1999 it sponsored an international seminar on the cultural impact of extraterrestrial contact.  He founded Earthwatch in 1970 and Spacehab in 1983, and he co-founded Kistler Aerospace Corporation in 1993.

Dr. Jack Cohen is an internationally known reproductive biologist.   His present position, at Warwick University in the United Kingdom, bridges the Ecosystems Unit of the Biology Department and the Mathematics Institute.   His books include several in reproductive biology and, with the mathematician Ian Stewart, The Collapse of  Chaos and Figments of Reality.   His most recent book is The Science of Discworld (co-author).  He is consultant to top science fiction authors, designing alien creatures and ecologies.  And he has initiated and participated in the production of several TV programmes, including The Natural History of an Alien (BBC and Discovery, ’98).   His hobbies include boomerang throwing and keeping strange animals (from Hydras to mantis shrimps, and octopi to llamas).

Professor Jim Dator has taught futures studies, including the futures of space settlement, for more than thirty years. He is director of the Hawaii Research Center for Futures Studies and Head of the Alternative Futures Option, Department of Political Science, University of Hawaii. He is also co-director of the Space and Society department, of the International Space University, Strasbourg, France. Well known in many countries, he writes and speaks about alternative long-term futures for robotics, space exploration, and humanity.

Dr. Paul Davies has written more than 20 books, including The Mind of God, The Last Three Minutes, About Time, Are We Alone? (philosophical implications of the discovery of extraterrestrial life), and The Fifth Miracle (the search for the origin of life).  He says that he likes to focus on "the deep questions of existence, such as how the universe came into existence and how it will end, the nature of human consciousness, the possibility of time travel, the relationship between physics and biology, and the interface of science and religion."  He is a British citizen but has lived in Australia for about ten years.  An asteroid is named after him, and in 1995 he was awarded the Templeton Prize for progress in religion.

Dr. Steven J. Dick wrote The Biological Universe: The Twentieth Century Extraterrestrial Life Debate and the Limits of Science (1996), abridged and updated as Life on Other Worlds (1998).  An astronomer and historian of science, he also wrote Plurality of Worlds: The Origins of the Extraterrestrial Life Debate from Democritus to Kant (1982).  At Bioastronomy 99 he spoke on the cultural implications of astrobiology.

Dr. Bob Dixon is noted for leading the longest duration SETI project ever. He is now developing the Argus telescope, which looks in all directions at once and hence can be used in radio SETI to detect transient signals.

Mr. Bruce Dorminey is a print journalist with a long-standing interest in SETI, science, and astronomy.   His report on the 1996 Capri bioastronomy conference was published in a major international newspaper, and he also attended the 1999 bioastronomy conference in Hawaii.  He is currently researching and writing an astronomy book for Copernicus/Springer-Verlag New York.

Dr. Ben Finney, an anthropology professor at the University of Hawaii, actively participates in both the SETI Committee and the annual Contact conference. In the early 1970s he founded the Polynesian Voyaging Society to revive Polynesian voyaging for research and cultural purposes.  The Society's first voyaging canoe has now sailed over 100,000 nautical miles.  This provided an excellent basis for thinking about human prospects in space.  As a result he co-edited Interstellar Migration and the Human Experience, and still frequently writes and speaks about this topic.  He chairs the Space and Society department at the International Space University's peripatetic summer sessions.

Mr. Joseph Firmage is Chairman of the International Space Sciences Organization, which organizes and funds research into advanced propulsion, energy generation, and consciousness.  He is the primary author of The Truth, which presents a highly positive view of extraterrestrial intelligence and its importance to humanity.  He has sponsored two unique high-level workshops to study several contact scenarios and how to prepare for them.  He is  the founder and former CEO of USWeb, "the world's largest Internet engineering and communications services firm," but recently left at age 28 in order to pursue his new interests.

Mr. Robert A. Freitas Jr. was, in the 1980s, the world's leading thinker and writer about the search for extraterrestrial probes.  He is one of the few scientists ever to actively look for such probes.  He conducted the first search for probes and other extraterrestrial artifacts in Earth orbit and at a Lagrange point, he wrote extensively about the rationale for such searches, and he conducted the first radio SETI search at the tritium line.  In the 1990s he has turned his attention to the closely related topic of nanotechnology and is currently completing the first volume of a 3-volume work on nanomedicine.

Dr. David Friar, MD, is a psychiatrist who lives in Volcano on Hawaii's Big Island.  A student of human consciousness in its wide range of states and processes, he has had a lifelong fascination with the possibility of communication with alien minds.  He believes that searching for other forms of intelligence in the universe is a developmental task embraced by most intelligent species at some stage.  He attended Bioastronomy 99 in order to meet SETI social scientists.

Professor Jim Funaro is the founder and program chair of the annual Contact conference, which explores various scenarios of what might happen when contact occurs between human and extraterrestrial beings. When he founded Contact in the early 1980s, it consisted largely of anthropologists, artists, and science fiction writers interested in thinking about contact with other intelligent life forms. It has now evolved into an international interdisciplinary forum on humanity's future as well as extraterrestrial contact. It attracts scientists, humanists, and educators from the SETI and astrobiology fields, and from space-oriented programs such as NASA.  He is an anthropology instructor and also an award-winning poet. He presented a paper at the 1999 NASA meeting on the societal aspects of astrobiology.

Mr. Jerome (Jerry) Glenn is the co-author of Space Trek and the author of Future Mind: Artificial Intelligence.  He is the executive director of the American Council for the United Nations University.  And he spearheads the Millennium Project's worldwide efforts to examine global issues and opportunities, alternative future scenarios, and the implications for policy makers.  These ideas are presented each year in a State of the Future report.

Dr. Albert Harrison wrote After Contact: The Human Response to Extraterrestrial Life.  A professor of psychology at the University of California, he is also a board member for the annual Contact conference, a regent of United Societies in Space, and chair of the NIDS Science Advisory Board.  His new book (in press) is tentatively called High Expectations: Human Spacefaring in the New Millennium.

Mr. Carl Helmers, owner of the trade magazine company Helmers Publishing Inc., started and published 15 issues of SETIQuest, the magazine of SETI and bioastronomy, from 1994 until September 1998.  He originally entered the magazine world by co-founding Byte magazine.

Mr. David Hines has degrees in fine arts and makes his living as a painter of landscapes. In his paintings of the western Mojave Desert of Southern California at night, "isolated lights denoting human presence are mirrored by stars that may denote life in the vastness of space as well.  There is in the most successful of these paintings a mood of expectant uncertainty, as though one of those stars could suddenly approach us or make contact with us."  He has a long-standing interest in extraterrestrial intelligence, and attended the 1999 seminar on the cultural impact of extraterrestrial contact as well as Bioastronomy 99.

Ms. Donna Hines was the administrative coordinator of the 1999 seminar on the cultural impact of extraterrestrial contact on the Big Island of Hawaii, and is coordinating the seminar proceedings.  Because of her long-standing interest in SETI, she also attended Bioastronomy 99.  She is deputy director of the Foundation For the Future, which studies the highest-impact factors affecting the next thousand years.  She notes that contact with extraterrestrial intelligence might well turn out to be one of these factors.  Prior to joining the Foundation in 1997, she was employed by Kistler Aerospace Corporation in Kirkland, Washington.

Dr. Sohail Inayatullah is a Pakistani futurist living in Australia. He brings an Islamic and Indian tantric perspective to understanding the Other, space travel, and alternative futures. In addition to a recent CD-ROM on futures studies, his recent books include Coherence and Chaos in Our Uncommon Futures; Macrohistory and Macrohistorians; Islam, Postmodernism and Other Futures; The University in Transformation; Situating Sarkar; and volume 4 of The Knowledge Base of Futures Studies.

Professor Chris Jones is a futurist involved in the far-future solar system simulation affiliated with the annual Contact conference. He wrote his master's thesis (1983) on alternative futures of space development and was a founding member of the Honolulu L5 Society.

Dr. Stuart Kingsley is an expert in fiber optics, with a Ph.D. degree in electronic and electrical engineering.  Since 1990, he has vigorously promoted the idea of optical SETI.  In particular, he has created an extensive web site, and he has spearheaded two optical SETI conferences with a third scheduled for 2001.  Largely due to his efforts, optical SETI has now gained much greater acceptance within the SETI field than it had a few years ago.

Mr. Larry Klaes is the Northeastern U.S. regional coordinator for the SETI League, and the general coordinator for the Columbus Optical SETI Observatory. He is also the former editor of SETIQuest magazine, the co-founder and former editor of the Electronic Journal of the Astronomical Society of the Atlantic,  and former president of the National Space Society's Boston chapter.

Dr. Guillermo A. Lemarchand is a 36-year-old physicist who leads the southern hemisphere META II SETI project at the Argentine Institute for Radio Astronomy. He is also working in a long-term futures research program at the Center for Advanced Studies of the University of Buenos Aires, Argentina. Within the SETI field, he writes about the range of approaches that could be used to detect ETI. He serves as editor of Bioastronomy News, a publication of Commission 51 of the International AStronomical Union, published by The Planetary Society.  He also co-edited the proceedings of the 1996 SPIE optical SETI conference and edited the proceedings of Bioastronomy '99: A New Era in the Search for Life in the Universe. Earlier he worked with Carl Sagan at Cornell University on an ICSC World Laboratory Scholarship. He wrote a 1992 transdisciplinary book about SETI (El Llamado de las Estrellas, The Call from Stars) and he co-authored a 1995 book (Vida y Cosmos, Life and Cosmos).

Mr. Jon Lomberg is an artist whose work is deeply inspired by astronomy and SETI. One of the world's leading science and space artists, he was a long-time collaborator with astronomer Carl Sagan in many projects, including the TV series COSMOS. His artwork includes the mural "Portrait of the Milky Way" at the National Air and Space Museum, and the astronomical animation for the film CONTACT. He was the Design Director for NASA's Voyager Interstellar Record, and has helped create long-term communication artifacts that will be sent to Mars aboard a NASA spacecraft in 2001. Everyone who attended the 1996 or 1999 bioastronomy conferences is familiar with his artwork on the program books and T-shirts.  He has also designed a nuclear waste facility for the US government, intended to survive intelligibly for 10,000 years. He is currently Creative Director for the Mauna Kea Center at the University of Hawaii at Hilo.

Mr. Mark Lupisella is a 33-year-old NASA engineer, previously a Hubble Space Telescope software development manager and systems engineer.  He is presently finishing his master's degree in philosophy and the philosophy of science, and pursuing a Ph.D. in biology.  He is particularly interested in astrobiology, artificial life research, human Mars missions, and cosmocentric world views and their relevance to SETI.  He writes and speaks about the philosophical and ethical aspects of the search for life and intelligence in the universe.  He has a free one-size-fits-all Hubble T-shirt set aside for the first genuine extraterrestrial caller.

Dr. Claudio Maccone, an Italian space scientist, is an active leader and innovator at meetings on interstellar travel and on SETI.   Scholarships enabled him to study in London, New York, and Turin.  The Sun as a Gravitational Lens: Proposed Space Missions won the 1999 Book Award of the International Academy of Astronautics.  His earlier book is Telecommunications, KLT and Relativity.  He is a member of IAA and COSPAR, and serves as Secretary of the IAA Interstellar Space Exploration Committee.

Dr. Greg Matloff is a leading expert in possibilities for interstellar propulsion and is affiliated with four universities.  He co-authored The Starflight Handbook (Wiley, 1989) and wrote two Wiley astronomy books.  His papers on interstellar travel have been published in JBIS, Acta Astronautica, Spaceflight, Journal of Astronautical Sciences, and Mercury.  He recently won a $5000 prize in the international essay contest on ETI sponsored by the National Institute for Discovery Science.  In 1999, he served as a summer faculty fellow (working on interstellar flight) at NASA Marshall Spaceflight Center, and as chair of the IAA symposium in Amsterdam on interstellar space exploration.  He will chair a session at STAIF-2000.

Dr. Stelio Montebugnoli, in Bologna (Italy), leads a major European SETI effort called Project Starvoice.  He is the engineer in charge of the Medicina radioastronomy station (consisting of the big Northern Cross telescope and the VLBI 32 m dish antenna).  He started his SETI activity in the early 1990s with the design of a high resolution spectrometer.  He used it to study the effect of the SL-9 comet / Jupiter crash (July 94) and he detected the emission of water on the E fragment impact zone, a finding that is relevant to the bioastronomy perspective. This finding was published in Planetary Space and Science (Elsevier) in 1996.  Now he is performing SETI observations (in piggy back mode) at the 32 m dish with a 15 MHz @24 million channel Serendip IV system.

Mr. Michael Michaud was an American professional diplomat for 32 years, including service as Director of the State Department's Office of Advanced Technology and as Science and Technology Counselor at the American embassies in Paris and Tokyo. Under the auspices of the International Academy of Astronautics, he coordinated the drafting of the Declaration of Principles Concerning Activities Following the Detection of Extraterrestrial Intelligence.  He chaired the Academy's Subcommittee on Issues of Policy Concerning Communication with Extraterrestrial Intelligence for nearly a decade. He is the author of 102 published works, including 23 articles and papers on ETI. Now a full-time writer living in Geneva (Switzerland), he is completing a novel about the interaction of two civilizations: Mexico and Southern California.

Major Gerald D. Nordley, USAF (ret.), is an astronautical engineer and freelance writer who focuses on interstellar travel and other space-related subjects. He has degrees in physics and systems management. In addition to his papers and articles, he writes science fiction as G. David Nordley. He serves as chief financial officer of Contact, which he describes as an interdisciplinary educational group focused on the evolution and eventual interaction of intelligent beings.  At the International Astronautical Congress in 1987, he presented a paper on potential interstellar propulsion systems of the far future, including antimatter.

Prof. Ray Norris is head of the astrophysics group and computing group at Australia's national radio telescope (the CSIRO ATNF). As well as actively participating in SETI, his astrophysical research includes understanding the difference between galaxies with black holes and those without, and his technological research includes the development of new radio-astronomical techniques. He is also active in the promotion and communication of science, particularly to the next generation of potential scientists.  His 1999 paper at the IAA SETI sessions in Amsterdam refined his thinking about the likely age of ETI.

Ms. Carol Oliver, a university-based science journalist, specializes in the relations between SETI and media/education, a topic on which writes and speaks at international meetings.  As Executive Officer of SETI Australia, she has helped it become one of the world's leading SETI organizations. She also coordinated the 1998 SETI conference at the University of Western Sydney Macarthur.

Professor Alexander Ollongren is in the computer science and astronomy departments of a major university in The Netherlands, where he teaches a course on communication with ETI in the astronomy department.  He has developed a new universal language (called Language for Cosmic Intercourse) for communicating with ETI.  At the age of 70, he has the distinction of being the oldest member of this "Invitation to ETI" group.

Mrs. Mary Reed has, at one time or another, been a travel agent, technical writer, administrative assistant, insurance agent, and owner of a stained glass business.  Now she is a graduate student in English literature.  She is particularly interested in exosemiotics ("the branch of knowledge that deals with the production of meanings by sign-systems in communication to and from extraterrestrials") and how to achieve successful human-ETI communication.  As her next step she plans to focus on teaching SETI via literature and film.  In October 1998 she presented a paper on exosemiotics during the IAA SETI sessions in Melbourne, Australia.

Dr. Reed Riner is Professor of Anthropology at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff, where he regularly teaches a graduate research seminar on the theory and methods of futures research.  He has published numerous articles on topics in anthropological futures and served as editor of Cultural Futures Research.  He is a member of the board of directors for the annual Contact conference, where he often coordinates the far-future simulation of the solar system.

Dr. Martha Rogers wrote Learning about Global Futures and, more recently, Canadian Nursing in 2020. Particularly interested in future scenarios and health care, she is an associate professor at a major Canadian university.

Mr. Monte Ross, an electrical engineer, is a pioneer in laser communications (a paper in 1965, a book in 1966, and leader of the team that developed the first space laser communication system) and in the concept of optical SETI.  He received a Fellow award from IEEE and another from McDonnell-Douglas, both awards for his work in space laser communications.  He is currently president and CEO of a company that produces electronic information systems.  He is active in optical SETI, and presented a poster paper at Bioastronomy 99.

Dr. Salvatore Santoli, FBIS, an Italian physical chemist, is a Director of the INT-International Nanobiological Testbed Ltd., a London-based company. He has authored papers tackling the problem of human/alien communication of semantic information, and has edited eight issues of the Journal of the British Interplanetary Society (JBIS) on exobiology and the origins of life in the Universe. As a nanobiologist, he has published papers on the origins of life and exobiology, and has co-authored the book "Self Organization in the Universe and Life" as well as papers formulating and developing the Impulse Paradigm of self organization of matter in the Universe by the four fundamental interactions (in order to estimate ETI distribution in space and time and the ultimate evolution of humanankind). His paper "Life and Intelligence in the Universe from Nanobiological Principles" will be published in the SETI 6 special issue of Acta Astronautica.

Dr. Wendy Schultz is a futurist who lives in Oxford (England) and Houston (Texas), where she is a visiting professor in studies of the future. Interested in space and technology, she works to help people imagine, envision, and plan positive futures for Earth.

Mr. Donald M. Scott works as an aerospace educator for Oklahoma State University and NASA-Ames Research Center. And he is working with colleagues at Contact, NASA-Ames, and Oroville High School to develop a curriculum in astrobiology. He is a member of the Contact board of directors.  He has also been a college professor, national park ranger-naturalist, and professional photographer.  He wants ETI to realize that he is a teacher and wanderer: "What could be of greater interest to wanderers through the universe?"  He adds that "my latest project is the long-overdue creation of a work of encouragement--a work which also might be of some interest to those observing us."

Dr. Paul Shuch has rapidly built up the SETI League, its membership base, its web pages, and its search efforts conducted by dedicated amateurs. As a result, the SETI League is now a major force within the SETI field.

Mr. Scot Stride, a telecommunications engineer with NASA/JPL, has worked with spaceflight and telecommunications hardware since 1980. During his spare time, his current research focuses on the use of existing sensing and computer technology, in rigorous scientific experiments, to detect robotic extraterrestrial probes that may have reached Earth. A journal article in progress presents the rationale for the search strategy and describes an autonomous scanning platform for measuring anomalous phenomena.

Ms. Keiko Tokunaga is a young Buddhist priest in Hawaii.  At the August 1999 seminar (on the Big Island of Hawaii) on the cultural impact of extraterrestrial contact, she presented fresh and insightful ideas.   She emphasized the need for each of us to prepare for contact by enhancing our compassion, our openness to new experiences, and our ability to deal with anything alien.

Dr. Bruce Tonn describes himself as "a researcher who lives in Knoxville, Tennessee with his wife and three (growing) children." He is known for his writings on potential futures (including 500-year planning and the voices of future generations) as well as issues and research in environmental and energy policy.

Dr. Allen Tough is a Canadian futurist and SETI researcher.  He is the founder and coordinator of this "Invitation to ETI" group, and the author of these web pages. A professor emeritus at the University of Toronto, he presents papers at most SETI conferences around the world.  Further information is provided in his informal and formal biographies. You can communicate with Allen Tough directly, and he will relay your communications to the rest of the group.

Dr. Giovanni Vulpetti writes extensively about interstellar flight, and prepared a comprehensive overview of that topic for the 1998 International Astronautical Congress. He serves as the chair of the Interstellar Space Exploration Committee, International Academy of Astronautics. He is based in Rome (Italy).

Mr. Tobias Wabbel is a 25-year-old science fiction writer who lives in Essen, Germany.  His forthcoming novel and many of his articles focus on contact with extraterrestrial intelligence.  His imaginative writing emphasizes that the impact of this contact could be positive, negative, or an unexpected mixture.  He is currently recruiting chapter authors for a book of readings called About Aliens, to be published by Future Zone Press, which he owns.  He circulated an international petition to restore American government funding to SETI, and has also provided leadership to a European SETI program called Project Starvoice.  He cares passionately about making contact: his biggest fear is that he will not experience contact in his lifetime despite his vigorous efforts.

Ms. Lori Walton has been passionately interested in ETI since the age of 6.  A Canadian currently living in Whitehorse, she is a geologist and graduate gemologist.  In addition to working as a senior policy advisor in government and enjoying her family, she thinks about humanity 100,000 years from now and serves as the SETI League coordinator for the Yukon and Northern Canada.  She attended the Bioastronomy 99 conference in Hawaii and is on the planning committee for the SETI League's Toronto conference in March 2000.

Ms. Tianhong Wang is a 29-year-old Ph.D. student at the University of Toronto. She has been particularly interested in ETI ever since her early years in Beijing, and has contributed several fresh insights to the Invitation to ETI project.  She says, "Because I come from an old oriental culture, I am particularly interested in the cultural and values system of ETI, and how it shapes their society.  For example, I am curious about their purpose of life, their definition of happiness, and their way of coping with challenges."

Dr. Kelvin Wellington is an Australian radio astronomer and microwave engineer involved in Southern SERENDIP and in SETI Australia's project to introduce SETI into high schools.  He recently took early-retirement from CSIRO to devote more time to other interests but maintains his links with CSIRO and with the University of Western Sydney Macarthur.  He is Deputy Chairman of SETI Australia and has been actively involved in SETI radiosearches since 1990. When Project Phoenix used CSIRO's Parkes telescope in 1995 he was the Australian co-ordinator.  Kel attends various SETI and bioastronomy conferences, and spent nine months at the SETI Institute. For several years now he has participated in an international project to construct a square kilometre size radiotelescope.

Dr. David Whitehouse, based in London, is senior science correspondent at the British Broadcasting Corporation. A former astronomer, he is currently science editor for BBC News Online.

Dr. Bobbie Vaile, astronomer and senior lecturer at the University of Western Sydney in Australia, helped with ideas in the very early stages of this project.   A dynamic and wonderfully caring person, Bobbie was intensely interested in SETI and used it as a cornerstone of an innovative and stimulating physics course. In 1995 she served as a full-fledged member of the Project Phoenix observing team and also played a key role in founding SETI Australia. She died on November 13, 1996, age 37, after a seven-year struggle with a brain tumor.
 

Mr. Chris Boyce, who lived in Glasgow, Scotland, was an enthusiastic and stimulating member of the Invitation to ETI group.  He wrote Extraterrestrial Encounter and two science fiction novels, and his web pages provided many fresh ideas about extraterrestrial probes.  He died suddenly on June 30, 1999, at the age of 55.

The email address for coordinator Allen Tough is WelcomeETI@aol.com.
His fax number is 1-416-444-5538.
His telephone is 1-416-444-3135.

The URL for this page ("Who we are") is http://members.aol.com/WelcomeETI/5.html.  This page was first uploaded on October 27, 1998.  A major revision and expansion was uploaded on September 21, 1999.

Some closely linked pages are:
A note to members of the "Invitation to ETI" group
Invitation to ETI
Toward a worldwide dialogue
About Allen Tough and the invitation
A page for humans
Dr. Tough's biography and publications

Copyright © 1998 Allen Tough. All rights reserved.

• Invitation to ETI

Copyright ©, 1996, 1998, 1999, Allen Tough