Dr David DeBoer

Senior Researcher, Breakthrough Listen

Dr DeBoer has been involved in SETI since the early 1990’s, starting his involvement by developing a radio frequency interference (RFI) database and search code that was used in the SETI Institute’s Project Phoenix. He started his career as a contractor at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center to study ozone in the Earth’s atmosphere. For a short time, Dr DeBoer was an Assistant Professor at Georgia Tech before moving to the SETI Institute to work on the Allen Telescope Array (ATA), initially as the Project Engineer then later as the Project Manager as well.

Dr DeBoer next served as an Assistant Director at Australia’s Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO) to start and develop a large research interferometer and lead their SKA technical developments before heading to Berkeley. Currently he is focussed on building and operating HERA, a large interferometer in South Africa, and helping to manage the world’s most comprehensive search for technosignatures with Breakthrough Listen.

Dr DeBoer has earned a Bachelor degree cum laude in Astronomy and Astrophysics at Harvard University and PhD at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Electrical and Computer Engineering. He is married and has three essentially grown children that have as yet not served any jail time.