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2025 Fellowships:
Frank Drake Postdoctoral Fellowship
Focusing on “Innovation in the Search for Life in the Universe.”
William J. Welch Postdoctoral Fellowship
Focusing on "Engineering the Future of Cosmic Exploration."
Davie Postdoctoral Fellowship in Artificial Intelligence for Astronomy
Focusing on refining and expanding ML-driven pipelines for exoplanet discovery.
2025 Timelines
Frank Drake Postdoctoral Fellowship
| January 15, 2025 | Accepting applications. |
| March 15, 2025 | Applications are due. |
| April 15, 2025 | Selected candidates for interviews are notified. |
| April 30, 2025 | Fellowship offer made. |
| August 1, 2025* | Start of the Fellowship. * Adjustment can be made on the start date |
The Frank Drake Postdoctoral Fellowship research program offers an exceptional opportunity for talented early career scientists to contribute significant advances in all the fields of the Drake Equation, including: Astronomy & Astrophysics, Astrobiology, Environmental Science, Geoscience, Life Science, Planetary Science, Planetary and Space Exploration, Cognitive Science focusing on intelligence and consciousness, Biosignature and Technosignature detection, Computing and Data Science, and Epistemology, the latter focusing on the framing of new paradigms and intellectual frameworks in the search for life in the universe.
William J. Welch Postdoctoral Fellowship
| November 13, 2024 | Accepting applications. |
| December 20, 2024 | Applications are due. |
| February 1, 2025 | Candidates selected for interviews will be notified. |
| March 1, 2025 | Fellowship offer(s) made. |
The William J. Welch Postdoctoral Fellowship aims to support exceptional early-career scientists to develop and employ novel instrumentation to answer fundamental questions in astronomy and astrophysics, with a particular focus on the search for extraterrestrial intelligence or technosignatures. The proposed research program should broadly contribute to the mission of the SETI Institute, which is to lead humanity’s quest to understand the origins and prevalence of life and intelligence in the universe and share that knowledge with the world.
Davie Postdoctoral Fellowship in Artificial Intelligence for Astronomy
| January 15, 2025 | Accepting applications. |
| March 15, 2025 | Applications are due. |
| April 15, 2025 | Selected candidates for interviews are notified. |
| April 30, 2025 | Fellowship offer made. |
| August 1, 2025* | Start of the Fellowship. * Adjustment can be made on the start date |
The SETI Institute is accepting applications for the Davie Postdoctoral Fellowship in Artificial Intelligence for Astronomy from researchers interested in refining and expanding ML-driven pipelines for exoplanet discovery. The incumbent Fellow will work with a rapidly growing team of highly talented, dynamic, and motivated scientists led by Dr. Vishal Gajjar, as well as the broader SETI Institute research ecosystem and Dr. Vikram Khaire at the IIT Tirupati in India. The successful candidate will enhance existing supervised CNN architectures and couple them with robust anomaly-detection techniques to uncover subtle or unconventional signals buried in the datasets. This position offers a unique opportunity to pioneer high-impact research within a collaborative team, integrating cutting-edge machine learning, astrophysical modeling, and interpretability strategies for next-generation exoplanet discoveries.
