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| Personal background |
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| I was originaly born and raised on the Mississippi River in Illinois then in Iowa. I recieved my B.Sc. degree in Evolution and Ecology from University of California-Davis and am now working on a PhD in Biology at Pennsylvania State University. I study the ecology of extreme deep-sea communities, such as hydrothermal vents and methane seeps. I am also interested in taxonomy and some of my favourite groups include gastropods (snails), hydroids, barnacles and polychaetes (segmented worms), but I am broadly interested in invertebrate biology, evolution and ecology. I am married to a lovely swede, have one beautiful baby boy and 2 cats. I enjoy reading books on science history, play guitar, banjo and mandolin, exercise and playing sports (volleyball, badmitton, soccer). |
| Thoughts about SETI and SETI@home |
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I have been a SETI@home user since 2003. Here is a link to my previous (and hopelessly outdated) profile: http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/view_profile.php?userid=911184
Here is a copy and pasted excerpt from that previous user profile:
"Statistically speaking, there is other life out there. If even life has only a one in trillion probability of developing and persisting, there are possibly still as many systems. Whether we can detect that life or not or if they are in range of detection or not remains a mystery. I think there are costs and benefits to such a discovery, but "life seeks out life" and we have to know and we have to make contact. This is the ultimate test for evolutionary theory, we move from n=1 to n=2 . If the process of evolution happens in another system totally isolated from any effects of our system, then there is alot to be said and alot to be predicted. It is impossible to say what humans should be sending out as a beacon. Perhaps a helix since helices are so prevalent biochemically. Maybe a picture of water, such as a wave or something, since most scientists agree that liquid must be present in some form for the evolution of life to be made possible. But I definitely do agree we should actively seek, in some way, extraterrestial life. So many questions can be answered and many new questions can be formed. This new life might be dangerous? Yes, it most certainly can be dangerous, but all the life we have found on our planet is certainly dangerous to some extent as well; from viruses to bears to other populations of humans. Yet we still persist and grow. I joined the SETI network to put in my two cents in the search for extraterrestial signals, and I urge other to do the same. It is a great project with high ambitions that is relevant to all life currently found here on Earth." |
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