About the Editor Douglas A. Vakoch, Ph.D. is Director of Interstellar Message Composition at the SETI Institute, as well as Professor of Clinical Psychology at the California Institute of Integral Studies. He serves as chair of both the International Academy of Astronautics (IAA) Study Group on Interstellar Message Construction and the IAA Study Group on Active SETI: Scientific, Technical, Societal, and Legal Dimensions. Through his membership in the International Institute of Space Law, Dr. Vakoch examines policy issues related to interstellar communication. His research spans the fields of psychology, anthropology, environmental studies, and space sciences, and his books include Psychology of Space Exploration: Contemporary Research in Historical Perspective (NASA, 2011); Communication with Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SUNY Press, 2011); Ecofeminism and Rhetoric: Critical Perspectives on Sex, Technology, and Discourse (Berghahn Books, 2011); Feminist Ecocriticism: Environment, Women, and Literature (Lexington Books, 2012); Altruism in Cross-Cultural Perspective (Springer, 2013); On Orbit and Beyond: Psychological Perspectives on Human Spaceflight (Springer, 2013); Archaeology, Anthropology, and Interstellar Communication (NASA, 2013); and Astrobiology, History, and Society: Life Beyond Earth and the Impact of Discovery (Springer, 2013). D. A. Vakoch (ed.), Extraterrestrial Altruism, The Frontiers Collection, 309 DOI: 10.1007/978-3-642-37750-1, Ó Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2014 About the Authors William Sims Bainbridge, Ph.D. earned his doctorate in sociology from Harvard University in 1975, writing a dissertation on the history of the space program conceptualized as a social movement, and joined the Sociology Department of the University of Washington. In 1992, after a five-year return to Harvard, he joined the National Science Foundation to manage its sociology program, where he represented the social sciences on many computational programs, notably the Digital Library Initiative, before transferring in 2000 to NSF’s Computer Science Directorate. After managing a variety of programs, such as artificial intelligence, and serving as Deputy Division Director, Dr. Bainbridge helped create the new program in human-centered computing. He is the author of 21 books, including Dimensions of Science Fiction and Goals In Space, as well as the editor of 10 volumes, most recently Leadership in Science and Technology. Jerome H. Barkow, Ph.D. is Professor Emeritus of Social Anthropology at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Canada and Honorary Professor at the Institute of Cognition and Culture at Queen’s University Belfast in Northern Ireland. He is an anthropologist with a career-long interest in evolution and human behavior. Dr. Barkow’s particular focus is the adaptations that make it possible for human populations to edit local culture with each generation in a manner that, at least until recently, kept cultural information pools at least somewhat adapted to local conditions. His current research deals with the attentional mechanisms involved in socially mediated culture-editing. Among Dr. Barkow’s publications is Darwin, Sex, and Status: Biological Approaches to Mind and Culture. He is a co-editor, along with Leda Cosmides and John Tooby, of The Adapted Mind, as well as editor of Missing the Revolution: Darwinism for Social Scientists. Frank Drake, Ph.D. is Professor Emeritus of Astronomy and Astrophysics at the University of California, Santa Cruz, where he was previously Dean of the Natural Sciences Division. He is also Chairman Emeritus of the Board of Trustees of the SETI Institute, as well as former Director of the Carl Sagan Center for the Study of Life in the Universe at the SETI Institute. In 1960 Dr. Drake conducted Project OZMA, the first organized search for radio signals from extraterrestrial intelligence. The following year he devised the widely-known Drake Equation, D. A. Vakoch (ed.), Extraterrestrial Altruism, The Frontiers Collection, 311 DOI: 10.1007/978-3-642-37750-1, Ó Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2014 312 About the Authors giving an estimate of the number of communicative extraterrestrial civilizations that we might find in our galaxy. In 1974 he constructed and transmitted the Arecibo interstellar message. Three additional messages were sent to outer space using the techniques and methods he developed: the Pioneer 10 and 11 plaques and the Voyager interstellar recording. He is author of Is Anyone Out There? (with Dava Sobel). David Dunér, Ph.D. is Professor of History of Science and Ideas at Lund University, Sweden and researcher at the Centre of Cognitive Semiotics, Lund University. His research concerns the development of science, medicine, mathematics, and technology during the scientific revolution and onwards. His latest book is The Natural Philosophy of Emanuel Swedenborg: A Study in the Conceptual Metaphors of the Mechanistic World-View. Dr. Dunér studies the history of astrobiology, and he was guest editor of the special issue ‘‘The History and Philosophy of Astrobiology’’ of the journal Astrobiology. His astrobiological research includes ‘‘astrocognition,’’ the study of cognition in space, detailed in his chapter ‘‘Astrocognition: Prolegomena to a Future Cognitive History of Exploration,’’ which appeared in Humans in Outer Space—Interdisciplinary Perspectives. Dr. Dunér’s work on the semiotic and cognitive foundations of interstellar communication appeared in the volume Communication with Extraterrestrial Intelligence. Yvan Dutil, Ph.D. is a researcher in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the École de Technologie Supérieure in Montréal. Over the years, his researcher interests and jobs have varied widely. With training in astrophysics, he drifted to remote sensing, then on to the design of various instruments for remote sensing by satellite. Later he taught in a college, worked as a science journalist, and has been a consultant in sustainability. Now his research interests are mostly concentrated on biophysical economics as a decision-making tool for energy policy, especially in the context of sustainable building. He is most known for his participation in the conception of the interstellar message sent from the Evpatoria radar facility in the Ukraine in 1999 and 2003. For this project, he introduced the use of noise hardening technique, optimum formatting, and functional redundancy in interstellar message design. George F. R. Ellis, Ph.D. is Emeritus Distinguished Professor of Complex Systems in the Department of Mathematics and Applied Mathematics at the University of Cape Town. He obtained his doctorate at Cambridge University in 1964. Dr. Ellis is a relativist and cosmologist who has written on the philosophy of cosmology as well as the science and religion interface, and he is co-author with Stephen Hawking of The Large Scale Structure of Space-Time, and with Nancey Murphy of On the Moral Nature of the Universe. He is past President both of the International Society on General Relativity and Gravitation and of the International About the Authors 313 Society for Science and Religion. Dr. Ellis is a Fellow of the British Royal Society, and in 2004 he was awarded the Templeton Prize. Harold A. Geller, D.A. is Term Associate Professor and Observatory Director at George Mason University (GMU). From 2006 to 2008 he was Associate Chair of the Department of Physics and Astronomy at GMU. In 2008 Geller was awarded the GMU Faculty Member of the Year and he authored Astrobiology: The Integrated Science. In 2009 and 2010 he shared six Telly Awards for online educational videos in association with Astrocast.TV. In 2012 he became a Solar System Ambassador for NASA/JPL. Dr. Geller’s past achievements include being an award-winning tour guide and lecturer with NASA/GSFC, President of the Potomac Geophysical Society, producer of two educational multimedia CD-ROMs, faculty at Northern Virginia Community College, doctoral fellow of the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia, and lecturer/operator at the Einstein Planetarium in the Smithsonian Institution’s National Air and Space Museum. Dr. Geller has contributed to publications in education, astrophysics, astrobiology, and biochemistry. Abhik Gupta, Ph.D. is Professor in the Department of Ecology and Environmental Science at Assam University, which is located at Silchar in Assam, India. As a zoologist and animal ecologist, he started his research by studying the ecology of hill streams in the mountains of Meghalaya, India, and later on the bioaccumulation and toxicity of heavy metals in aquatic ecosystems. Presently, he is also investigating with his students the issue of arsenic contamination of groundwater in North East India, which constitutes an important concern for human and ecosystem health. Other areas in which he has written include the intricacies of human altruism towards non-human animals, plants, and even non-living entities, as well as the role of nature religions in generating and nurturing this form of altruism in India. The ethical, ecocentric facets of traditional community conservation through sacred groves and other mechanisms remain yet another area of his interest. Albert A. Harrison, Ph.D. is Professor Emeritus in the Department of Psychology at the University of California, Davis. He is the author or co-author of over 100 papers in a wide range of journals, and his books on space exploration and astrobiology include Spacefaring: The Human Dimension; Living Aloft: Human Requirements for Extended Spaceflight (with