About the Invitation to ETI: PI's Memo to Signatories, June 2007

Memo to Signatories, June 2007
from Principal Investigator H. Paul Shuch

Dear Signatories,

For the past three years, the number of Signatories to the Invitation to ETI has been hovering just below our ultimate capacity. I am pleased to announce that last month we reached a significant milestone, with the appointment of our 100th Signatory. Please join me in welcoming Anne Hartman into our ranks. For the past year or so, Anne has served as Research Assistant to Allen Tough, our project's founder and Chief Scientist. With the recent relocation to Beijing of IETI program manager Scarlett Wang, Anne has graciously volunteered to replace Scarlett on the leadership team, as IETI Researcher. Anne, Allen, and I wish Scarlett well in her new venue. She will, of course, continue as an IETI Signatory.

My personal IETI activities since my last Update (December 2006) have been restricted to website maintenance and updating of Signatory profiles (hint: if yours hasn't been updated lately, or if you wish to add a photo, please contact me). However I will be traveling extensively during the coming months, promoting IETI and SETI science at the Bioastronomy Conference in Puerto Rico in July, at the International Astronautical Congress in India in September, and in Moscow in October, where I am privileged to be joining IETI Signatory Alexander L. Zaitsev at the Sputnik Jubilee Celebration marking 50 years of the Space Age.

Although he is supposed to be retired, Professor Allen Tough continues to serve the Invitation to ETI as benefactor and chief scientist. In addition, Allen has proposed and arranged a series of lectures at the annual meetings of the International Academy of Astronautics SETI Permanent Study Group. These lectures are called the Billingham Cutting-Edge Lectures to honor Dr. John Billingham, who was Allen's mentor within the IAA. The inaugural 2006 lecture was delivered by Signatory Dr. Steven Dick in Valencia, Spain and this year's lecture will be delivered by Signatory Dr. Kathryn Denning in Hyderabad, India. Kathryn recently agreed to serve as the next coordinator for the lecture series.

Allen also continues to serve on the editorial advisory board for the online journal Contact in Context and for JBIS (the Journal of the British Interplanetary Society). And, he continues his involvement with the Best Ideas Awards. He is also working to improve his allentough.com website.

The December 2006 report on Allen's health is still accurate. He is cheerful, active, productive, and happy. Drop him an email sometime, to tell him how much you appreciate his contributions to SETI science.

One of the underlying assumptions of the Invitation to ETI is that advanced extraterrestrial intelligence (whether biological or robotic) might find a way to monitor the terrestrial Internet. To maximize our chances that ETI will find our Invitation, it should be linked from as many web pages as possible. If you haven't already done so, I encourage you to create a link to http://ieti.org from your personal or professional website. If we 100 Signatories all do this, our page should rank toward the top of GooglETI!

Yours for ETI contact,
Paul

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