Dr Karen Perez

Breakthrough Listen Visiting Scholar

Karen I. Perez first set her sights on a PhD in Astronomy in 8th grade after discovering the field of SETI while watching science documentaries with her dad. In 2019, she earned her B.A. in Astronomy with a concentration in Astrophysics from Cornell University, where she found her calling in radio astronomy during a course with Prof. Jim Cordes. That same year, Karen joined the Berkeley SETI Research Center (BSRC) REU program under the mentorship of Dr. Vishal Gajjar, where she helped test pulsar search pipelines and develop the observing strategy for the Breakthrough Listen (BL) Galactic Center Survey to search for both astrophysical signals and technosignatures. This work earned her the 2020 SETI Forward Award. 

Karen began her PhD in Astronomy at Columbia University in Fall 2019 under Prof. Jules Halpern. Her thesis focuses on multi-wavelength (especially in the radio) searches for pulsars in both the Galactic field and center, targeting redback and transitional millisecond pulsars in the field, as well as canonical and millisecond pulsars near the supermassive black hole at the heart of the Milky Way. She has also continued collaborating with the BL team for the past six years and has co-mentored REU students, leading surveys of the Galactic Center and Plane using the Green Bank, Parkes, and Sardinia Radio Telescopes. Karen is a recipient of the Gates Millennium Scholarship (2015-2025), which has supported her studies from college through graduate school.