SETI Wissenschaftskreuzfahrten - Swan Hellenic

Lernen Sie unsere Referenten kennen

Erstklassige Wissenschaftler des SETI Institute, die unsere Expeditionskreuzfahrten als Gastdozenten begleiten.

Bill Diamond

Bill Diamond is a Silicon Valley technology veteran and current President and CEO of the SETI Institute in Mountain View, California. The SETI Institute is a nonprofit astrophysics and astrobiology research, and education organization focused on the study of life in the Universe. Prior to joining the Institute, Mr. Diamond held various executive management positions in applied technologies, most recently at the optical networking company, Oclaro, Inc. Mr. Diamond has over 30years’ experience in laser photonics and optical communications networks, X-ray imaging, and semiconductor processing technologies. His corporate background ranges from venture-backed start-ups to Fortune 100 multinationals, including CEO positions at WaveSplitter Technologies, Denselight Semiconductor (Singapore) and Xradia, Inc, (now part of Zeiss). He was also President of COMET Technologies USA, leading US operations for the Swiss COMET, AG corporation. Mr. Diamond holds a B.A. in physics from Holy Cross College and a Master’s in Business Administration from Georgetown University. He is a past member of the Advisory Board for the McDonough School of Business Administration at Georgetown and is a current member of the Optical Society of America, the International Astronomical Congress and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He also serves on the Board of Directors of the Bay Area Science and Innovation Council, BASIC, in San Francisco

Cristina Dalle Ore

Cristina ist Planetenwissenschaftlerin und anerkannte NASA-Forscherin, deren Arbeit sie in die entlegensten Regionen unseres Sonnensystems geführt hat, ohne dabei jemals die Erde zu verlassen. Mit besonderem Interesse an der Entschlüsselung der Geheimnisse eisiger Welten im All war sie eine bedeutende Mitarbeiterin der New-Horizons-Mission zu Pluto und der Cassini-Mission zu Saturn. Ihre Entdeckung von Ammoniak auf Pluto war ein Meilenstein in den Planetenwissenschaften. Cristina promovierte in Astronomie und Astrophysik an der UC Santa Cruz und hat ihre Erkenntnisse bei TEDx und internationalen Wissenschaftsforen geteilt. Heute bringt sie ihre Leidenschaft für Erkundung zurück auf die Erde und bietet eine kosmische Perspektive auf die eisigen Landschaften, denen wir auf unserem Planeten begegnen.

Eduardo Bendek

Dr. Eduardo Bendek is an astronomer with over 20 years of experience in optical instrumentation for ground- and space-based telescopes, specialising in high-precision astrometry and exoplanet detection. He began his career at the Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile before earning his PhD in Optical Sciences at the University of Arizona. He has held research positions at NASA Ames Research Center and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), where he contributed to the coronagraph instrument of the Roman Space Telescope. Currently a Senior Optical Scientist at the SETI Institute working for NASA Ames, his research focuses on technologies for the future Habitable Worlds Observatory — a mission designed to search for potentially life-bearing planets

Mark Showalter

Die Forschungskarriere des Planetenastronomen Mark Showalter hat sich stetig nach außen durch das Sonnensystem entwickelt. Er war an Bord einiger der medienwirksamsten Missionen der NASA zu den äußeren Planeten, nahm teil an Voyagers „Grand Tour“ der Riesenplaneten, an Cassinis umfassender Erforschung des Saturnsystems und an der New-Horizons-Mission zu Pluto und dem Kuipergürtel.

Marziye Jafariyazani

Dr. Marziye Jafariyazani is a Data Scientist for NASA’s TESS Mission at the SETI Institute, where she is part of the Science Processing Operations Center of the mission at NASA’s Ames Research Center. TESS (Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite) is designed to discover new exoplanets by monitoring stars and looking for tiny dips in their brightness caused by planets passing in front of them. Before shifting her focus to our own galaxy and analyzing stellar time-series data to help discover Earth’s cousins, Marziye dedicated her Ph.D. thesis and subsequent postdoctoral research at the University of California, Riverside, Carnegie Observatories, and Caltech/IPAC to exploring distant galaxies. She studied the processes of star formation within them, their chemical composition, and what these factors can reveal about formation and evolution of galaxies

Michael Lam

Michael Lam is a research scientist working with the SETI Institute and as part of the North American Nanohertz Observatory for Gravitational Waves (NANOGrav). He completed his PhD from Cornell University, was a postdoctoral fellow at West Virginia University, and was an assistant professor at the Rochester Institute of Technology before joining the SETI Institute. His research ties together many fields of astronomy: radio telescopes, observations of pulsars, physics of interstellar gas, and the newly-opened field of gravitational wave observation

Orkan Umurhan

Dr. Orkan Umurhan is a mathematical physicist and planetary scientist at the SETI Institute, where he investigates how planets form and how icy landscapes evolve on Earth, and from Mars and all the way out to Pluto. He has served as a NASA mission scientist on enterprises like New Horizons and studies how dust and gas chaotically swirl into the building blocks of planets in young solar systems. He’s involved in new mission design concepts to visit comets and is currently writing a book on cosmic turbulence. A dedicated science communicator and educator of decades, he shares the wonders of planetary science with audiences of all ages—and has even appeared on TV from time to time! When contemplating sublime cosmic mysteries, he's a baseball-dad musician who enjoys trekking through exotic wild landscapes of this planet with his partner and son

Peter Tenenbaum

Peter Tenenbaum joined the SETI Institute to analyze data for NASA’s Kepler mission, helping detect and characterize exoplanets—contributing to discoveries that now number over 3,000. He later worked on Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, becoming Lead Software Engineer at NASA Ames Research Center, where he oversaw data processing systems. Today, he adapts TESS software for broader scientific use. He holds a Ph.D. in Physics from the University of California, Santa Cruz, and previously worked at CERN in Geneva and SLAC in Palo Alto

Simon George

Dr. Simon J. George ist experimenteller Forschungswissenschaftler am SETI-Institut mit dem Schwerpunkt auf der Rolle von Metallen wie Eisen, Nickel, Zink und Molybdän in der Chemie des Lebens. Seine Arbeit umfasst die Entwicklung innovativer Instrumente zur Untersuchung dieser Metalle mit dem Ziel, ihre Bedeutung für den Ursprung des Lebens zu verstehen. Dr. George war in staatlichen Laboratorien, an Universitäten und in der Industrie tätig, bevor er 2023 zum SETI-Institut kam. Als Astrobiologe erforscht er die Entstehung, Evolution, Verbreitung und Zukunft des Lebens im Universum. Besonderes Interesse gilt Extremophilen (Organismen, die in extremen Umgebungen gedeihen) und den komplexen metallhaltigen Proteinen, die vermutlich eine Schlüsselrolle in frühen Lebensformen spielten