dan @ thetelegraphic . com

Breakthrough Listen

I'm excited to be part of the Breakthrough Listen initiative: the most comprehensive search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) ever undertaken. We are using the largest telescopes in the world to systematically search for artificial signals of unknown origin. I am working on the digital signal processing systems and data analysis pipelines, and running the science program on the Parkes telescope in Australia.

Detecting the dark ages

I also worked on the Large Aperture Experiment to Detect the Dark Ages, or LEDA. We've built a 256-antenna array along with a powerful GPU-based correlator in Owen's Valley, California. We're looking for highly-redshifted Hydrogen in the early Universe, and will image the entire sky at radio wavelengths.

A LEDA all-sky image at 47 MHz (data reduced by Stephen Bourke).

Searching for Fast Radio Bursts

At Swinburne University, as part of the UTMOST-2D project, we upgraded the Molonglo telescope, to convert it into a Fast Radio Burst detection and localization machine (UTMOST). Fast Radio Bursts (FRBs) are rare and enigmatic astrophyical events that last only a few milliseconds. They appear to originate from billions of light years away; how and why they occur remains an outstanding mystery that we are hoping to solve.

Radio astronomy instrumentation

I work mainly on digital instrumentation: designing and implementing signal processing systems for radio telescopes. I work a lot with FPGAs and I'm an active part of the CASPER collaboration. I've helped build instruments at the Parkes (HIPSR), Owen's Valley (LEDA), Medicina (BEST-2), and Tidbinbilla (TAMS) observatories.