Douglas Vakoch, Ph.D., is President of METI International, a nonprofit research and educational organization dedicated to innovative programs in Messaging Extraterrestrial Intelligence (METI), the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI), and astrobiology. Prior to founding METI International, for sixteen years Dr. Vakoch worked at the SETI Institute, where he was Director of Interstellar Message Composition.

He is the editor of a dozen books, including Communication with Extraterrestrial Intelligence (2011), Psychology of Space Exploration (2011), Feminist Ecocriticism (2012), Astrobiology, History, and Society (2013), Archaeology, Anthropology, and Interstellar Communication (2014), Extraterrestrial Altruism (2014), and (with Matthew F. Dowd) The Drake Equation: Estimating the Prevalence of Extraterrestrial Life through the Ages (2015).

Dr. Vakoch serves as general editor of Springer’s Space and Society series, as well as Lexington Books’ Ecocritical Theory and Practice series. His work has been featured in such publications as the New York Times, Nature, Science, and Der Spiegel, and he has been interviewed on radio and television shows on the BBC, NPR, ABC, The Science Channel, The Discovery Channel, and many others. In addition to his work in METI and SETI, he is Professor in the Department of Clinical Psychology at the California Institute of Integral Studies.

(Photo Credit: Per Bifrost)