Eliot joined the SETI Institute in 2015 to develop a new type of Optical SETI instrument. Prior to that, he was the Director of Engineering for Hotmail and Outlook.com at Microsoft. His experience includes scientific computing, signal processing, and he worked with a multimedia startup before joining Microsoft.

Passionate about computers and technology his whole life, Eliot graduated from Cornell University, BS in Computer Science. It was during an elective astronomy course, Life in the Universe, when he first met Frank Drake; in turn, leading him to an alumni talk by Jill Tarter the next year. Eliot was hooked on the study of life and the universe, particularly as embodied by the SETI Institute. After joining the SETI Institute, Eliot spent every spare moment exploring every aspect of the development of a new optical SETI telescope, from optical design, to candidate detection coding and data reduction, to vendor selection, to funding. Eliot’s background in software, distributed systems, automation, and heuristic design, has matched very well with expertise from other Institute scientists. With the explosion of discovery of habitable exoplanets, Eliot strongly believes the question is not, “Is there life out there?” but instead, “When, if ever, will we find it?” He feels that SETI has unimaginable potential to unify the human race, and while the outcome may be unknown, the journey of discovery is, itself, an incredible prize.