Dr. David Friar, MD, is a psychiatrist who lives in Volcano on Hawaii's Big Island. A student of human consciousness in its wide range of states and processes, he has had a lifelong fascination with the possibility of communication with alien minds. He believes that searching for other forms of intelligence in the universe is a developmental task embraced by most intelligent species at some stage. He attended Bioastronomy '99 in order to meet SETI social scientists.