In addition to ongoing research, my SETI duties involve helping to organise the now bi-annually dedicated International Astronautics Association's SETI Conference,- Searching for Life Signatures - as well as being the editor for two special editions of the journal "Acta Astronautica" on SETI and Searching for Life Signatures.

My main area of interest is in the field of unsupervised natural language learning. In particular, the search for generic human and inter-species language universals to devise computational methods by which language can be discriminated from non-language and core structural syntactic elements of unknown languages can be detected. Aims of this research include: contributing to the understanding of language structure and the detection of intelligent language-like features in signals, to aid the search for extra-terrestrial intelligence.

“…. I believe your work is of great importance and hope it results in some positive findings in my life time.” (Sir Arthur C Clarke, private correspondence)

For my PhD, I investigated and developed purely computational approaches to identify language structure at its varying levels of abstraction: from its physical level to the parts-of-speech, which encode internal and external ontologies. The results of my work will hopefully contribute towards the decoding of unknown languages, whether terrestrial or extra-terrestrial and a better understanding of what language structure actually is. My research draws from and incorporates many disciplines, which include: computational linguistics, linguistics, information theory, computer visualisation, psychology, neuroscience and statistics. It is by using such a multi-disciplinary approach, which I believe is essential in attacking such a problem, that will hopefully contribute and ultimately answer some of the questions.

Membership of Boards, Committees and Advisory Panels:

International Academy of Astronautics, SETI Permanent Committee member;

Member of an International Task Group for the Post-detection identification of unknown radio signals. This is a select number (12) of academics from around the world who are recognised experts, in their related fields, and are on a secure 24-7 hotline;

Committee member for Computational Linguistics in the United Kingdom

Member of the Tomorrow Project: a programme of research, consultation and communication about people's lives in Britain in the next twenty years, which is supported by a number of government agencies

Academic Background

2008 to date: Reader (Professor) of Intelligence Engineering at Leeds Metropolitan University., UK

2002 to 2008: Senior Lecturer and Academic Leader for Artificial Intelligence at Leeds Metropolitan University., UK

1999 - 2003: PhD [University of Leeds] in Computational Linguistics looking at Language universals and language discovery

1998 - 1999: MSc [University of Leeds] in Distributed Multimedia Systems

1995 - 1998: BSc(Hons) [University of Leeds] degree in Information Systems with Artificial Intelligence.

Publications

Main Publication outputs in SETI area, since 2008

JOURNALS

Elliott, J. (2010) Detecting the Signature of Intelligent Life: Acta Astronautica, Journal of the International Academy of Astronautics Elsevier Science Ltd, England.

Elliott, J. (2010), First stage identification of syntactic elements in an Extraterrestrial Signal: Acta Astronautica, Journal of the International Academy of Astronautics Elsevier Science Ltd, England.  Acta Astronautica 68: 389–398

Elliott, J. (2010), The Filtration of Inter-Galactic Objets Trouvés and the identification of the Lingua ex Machina hierarchy: Acta Astronautica, Journal of the International Academy of Astronautics Elsevier Science Ltd, England. Acta Astronautica 68: 399 -- 405

Elliott, J. (2010), A Human Language Corpus for Interstellar Message Construction:  Acta Astronautica, Journal of the International Academy of Astronautics Elsevier Science Ltd, England.  Acta Astronautica 68: 418–424

Elliott, J. (2010), A Semantic ‘Engine’ for Universal Translation: Acta Astronautica, Journal of the International Academy of Astronautics Elsevier Science Ltd, England. Acta Astronautica 68: 435 – 440

Elliott, J. (2010), A Post-Detection Decipherment Strategy: Acta Astronautica, Journal of the International Academy of Astronautics Elsevier Science Ltd, England. Acta Astronautica 68: 441–444

PRESENTATIONS

Elliott. J. (2011) Increasing Our Ignorance [of language] for Communication, Royal Society UK. "Towards a scientific and societal agenda on extra-terrestrial life" : http://royalsociety.org/extra-terrestrial-life/

BOOKS:

Elliott J. & Baxter S (2010)Communication with Extraterrestrial Intelligence, ed. Douglas A. Vakoch, Chapter - The DISC Quotient: a post detection strategy, SUNY Press, New York, USA.

Elliott, J and Atwell, E. (TBC) Chapter 18, ‘Decomposing bodies - Corpus Linguistics and Reply Messages’, Between Worlds, MIT Press, USA

Elliott, J. (2002) The Action Hero Handbook, Chapter 3: How to Communicate with an Extraterrestrial, Quirk Books, USA. Borgenicht, D and Borgenicht, J. (Editors).

CONFERENCE PAPERS

Elliott J. & Baxter S (2010) The DISC Quotient: a post detection strategy: in proceedings of the 2nd conference on “Searching for Life’s Signatures”, Royal Society - Kavli International Centre, Milton Keynes UK.

Elliott, J. (2010) Constructing the Matrix: in proceedings of the Searching for Life’s Signatures,: Royal Society - Kavli International Centre, Milton Keynes, UK.

Baxter. S. & Elliott, J. (2010) SETI Meta Policy: in proceedings of the 2nd conference on “Searching for Life’s Signatures”, Royal Society - Kavli International Centre, Milton Keynes UK.

SCIENCE MAGAZINES:

Scientific American: Interview due out Feb 2011

GEO International Science Magazine: Interview, March 2009 publication.

Elliott, J. (2008) If He’d Know What They Where Saying: New Scientist Magazine 18th October 2008 pp 12.