[Note: This is a “living” post which I update periodically as I learn about people who have done graduate work in the field. If I’m missing a name please email me.]

SETI is not a field that has a large presence in academia, especially in terms of graduate education. Indeed, there are only two regularly numbered graduate courses in the world on the topic that I’m aware of (at Penn State and UCLA).

Because of this, it’s hard to get a PhD while having the primary focus of your dissertation be searching for technological extraterrestrial life. In fact, so far as I can tell (speaking with many of the people in the field) it’s only been done fourteen times:

1. Darren Leigh (May 1998, Horowitz, thesis)
2. Alexey Arkipov (December 1998, Litvinenko)
3. Stephen Brown (2000, Dixon & Kraus, thesis)
4. Charles Coldwell (2002, Horowitz, thesis)
5. Andrew Howard (2006, Horowitz, thesis)
6. Andrew Siemion (2012, Bower & Werthimer, thesis)
7. Laura Spitler (2013, Cordes, thesis)
8. Curtis Mead (2013, Horowitz, thesis)
9. Ian Morrison (2017, Tinney, thesis)
10. Emilio Enriquez (2019, Falcke)
11. Sofia Sheikh (Spring 2021, Wright)
12. Paul Pinchuk (Summer 2021, Margot)
13. Macy Huston (Summer 2023, Wright)
14. Matías Suazo (Spring 2024, Zackrisson)

Paul Horowitz, SETI PhD adviser extraordinaire.

Except for a brief spell from 1999-2002, until 2018, Paul Horowitz was responsible for supervising at least half of all doctoral SETI dissertations! Thanks, Paul!

Of the 9 before 2018, four are professional astronomers today. Mead is at Apple, Coldwell works in a astronomy-related industry, Brown is apparently a scientist at Harris Corporation, and Darren Leigh describes his career here. We’re not sure what became of Arkipov.

I’m also aware of some terminal master’s degrees on the topic (many are EE degrees related to the Argus SETI array):

1. Dennis Cole (1976, Dixon & Kraus, thesis)
2. Jim Bolinger (1988, Dixon & Kraus)
3. Hyung Joon Kim (1999, Ellingson & Burnside)
4. Tom Alfernik (2000, Ellingson & Burnside)
5. Emarit Ranu (2000, Ellingson & Burnside)
6. Amy Reines (2002, Marcy & Cool)
7. Mikael Flodin (2019, Mattsson, thesis)
8. Andreea Dogaru (2019, Kerins & Breton, thesis)

This is not to say that no other graduate students have done work on the topic. Here are a few of the (presumably many) theses that had a significant SETI component:

1. Maggie Turnbull
2. Jayanth Chennamangalam
3. Hayden Rampadarath
4. Kimberley M. S. Cartier
5. Branislav Vukotic

And there has also been a lot of doctoral work in the humanities and social sciences studying SETI itself, for instance in this theses by Daniel Romesberg, Claire Webb and Rebecca Charbonneau.

I’m also aware of some current graduate students who have or have planned for major (50-100%) components of their dissertation work to be searching for intelligent life in the universe:

1. Bryan Brzycki (Siemion/dePater)
2. Megan Li (Margot)

And three more with at least a portion of their thesis about SETI:

1. Gerry Zhang (Siemion/dePater)
2. Maren Cosens (S. Wright)
3. Neda Stojkovic
4. Daniel Giles (Walkowicz)

So the number of thesis is going up by a lot in the span of just a few years! This is (weak) evidence of what certainly feels like a resurgence in the field. Still, these numbers are tiny compared to the perception of the amount of SETI work being done, and illustrate how young the field really is, despite the nearly 60 years that have elapsed since its inception.