Dear friends,
In this end-of-year message, I would like to express my gratitude. Gratitude for the privilege of participating in an ambitious search for cosmic companionship. Gratitude to those who have sustained UCLA SETI's mission over the years with moral, intellectual, or financial support. I am especially grateful to Carol Rattray and the Rattray Kimura Foundation, Joe and Andrea Straus, Larry Lesyna, and Arnie Boyarsky for generous gifts in 2024. I am grateful to the UCLA students (Megan, Liam, and Alex) who have joined the search. I am grateful to NASA, The Planetary Society, and Carrie Menkel-Meadow and Robert Meadow for enabling the Are we alone? platform, to the polyglots who have translated it into Bengali, Japanese, French, Italian, and Portuguese, and to the thousands of volunteers who have carefully classified SETI data and reported interesting signals. Special thanks go to Larry Lesyna, who is encouraging me to pursue bold and creative ways to expand our search, Fritz Demopoulos, who is challenging me to think outside the box, Dimitrios Lazarou, who is sharing his machine learning expertise to improve the performance of our algorithms, and to senior SETI scientists, who periodically send me notes of encouragement. I also owe much gratitude to my parents, teachers, and mentors, who have made it all possible, and to my down-to-Earth wife, Sabina, who has supported an elusive search for aliens for almost 10 years. Last month, I was fortunate to highlight Carl Sagan's impact on SETI in a tribute on the occasion of the 90th anniversary of his birth. The international petition that he signed in 1982 with 68 eminent scientists provides strong support for SETI observational programs and concludes with the following message: "We urge the organization of a coordinated, worldwide, and systematic search for extraterrestrial intelligence." Here is hoping for a prosperous year for SETI efforts.
With best wishes for a healthy and happy new year,
Jean-Luc Margot
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