Description

Project-based course that addresses one of the most important scientific questions of our time: Are there other civilizations in the universe? Material from astronomy, computer science, signal processing, and statistics. Design of observational program, acquisition of telescopic data with the largest fully steerable telescope on Earth, development of algorithms to analyze data, and presentation of results. Introduction to the abundance and characteristics of extrasolar planetary systems; radio astronomy, including wave propagation and Doppler shift; signal processing, including sampling theory and Fourier transforms; random processes, including Gaussian and binomial statistics, and algorithm development. P/NP or letter grading. Students are invited to co-author a peer-reviewed publication that describes the search results.

Audience

The course is intended for graduate students and advanced undergraduate students.

Format

Lectures (two hours/week) are supplemented with laboratory exercises (two hours/week).

Course requirements

Recommended: Math 31B (or equivalent), Phys 1C or 5C (or equivalent), Computer Science 31 or Program in Computing 10A (or equivalent).

Grading

Grading is based on up to five problem sets (20%), course participation (25%), submitting a course evaluation (5%), and a final project (50%).

Syllabus

Here is the course syllabus.

Course evaluations

The median course/instructor scores reported in anonymous course evaluations in 2018, 2019, and 2020 were 9/9, 8.5/8.5, and 9/9, respectively, on a scale from 1 to 9.

Register for the course

Course listing information can normally be found at the UCLA Registrar's website by selecting Spring Quarter, and Earth, Planetary, and Space Sciences.

History

A SETI reading group was held in Summer 2014. A pilot course was taught in Spring 2015. The course in its present form was approved by UCLA in May 2015. The first eight offerings of the course were taught annually in Spring 2016 through Spring 2023. The course is tightly connected to SETI efforts at UCLA. To our knowledge, the UCLA SETI course is the first full-length university SETI course in existence.