2009 TED Prize winner Jill Tarter serves as the Director of the SETI Institute’s Center for SETI Research.  The mission of the SETI Institute is to explore, understand and explain the origin, nature and prevalence of life in the universe. They believe they are conducting the most profound search in human history – to know our beginnings and our place among the stars. The hope is that Jill’s wish will help fulfill this mission by tapping into the power of open-source initiatives to globalize the search for extra-terrestial intelligence and empower a new generation of SETI enthusiasts.

Learn more about  Jill and her TED Prize wish in Robert Lee Hotz profile from the Wall Street Journal:

In a display of private sector science, [Tarter's] cause — the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) — has been embraced by a geek-chic collective of technocrats, info-moguls, activists and wishful thinkers, from Bill Gates to Cameron Diaz, who gathered in Long Beach, Calif., last week at the conclave of an influential enterprise called TED.

[...]Within minutes of announcing her TED wish, she started hearing offers of assistance.

An Australian electronics magnate volunteered his company’s engineers to improve the telescope’s signal processing capabilities. A computer scientist donated his patented search algorithms for better data analysis. Marketing experts offered to create Spanish-language Web sites to spread her message throughout Central and South America. A senior developer from Google Inc. volunteered to persuade his company to incorporate searchable star maps into Google Earth.

If you want to participate in this endeavor, offer your support here.

This entry was posted on Friday, February 13th, 2009 at 5:18 pm and is filed under Jill Tarter's Wish Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.