Seth Shostak
Host and Producer, Big Picture Science
Senior Astronomer, SETI Institute

Seth is the Senior Astronomer at the SETI Institute, in Mountain View, California. He has an undergraduate degree in physics from Princeton University, and a doctorate in astronomy from the California Institute of Technology. For much of his career, Seth conducted radio astronomy research on galaxies, and has published approximately fifty papers in professional journals. He also founded and ran a company producing computer animation for TV.

Seth has written several hundred popular magazine and Web articles on various topics in astronomy, technology, film and television. He has edited and contributed to a half dozen books. His first popular tome, Sharing the Universe: Perspectives on Extraterrestrial Life appeared in 1998. He has also authored Life in the Universe (2006, 2nd edition, textbook, with Jeff Bennett) and Cosmic Company (2003, with Alex Barnett). His most recent book is Confessions of an Alien Hunter (2009).