Eventide is a major corporate sponsor of the SETI League, in part to the extent of providing the physical facilities for League headquarters. We are looking for a full/part time Intern to work on a project here in Northern New Jersey. Since the project is mostly software, only part-time attendance at HQ will be necessary.
The League has received a major donation of equipment, including high-speed A/D converters, digital receivers, and Quad-TI6701 floating point DSP boards. These are all "VME" boards which together can form the foundation of a microwave receiver capable of searching a million channels or more for narrowband signals possibly transmitted by extraterrestrial aliens. This is all modern hardware (most manufactured by Pentek) with enormous processing power. In order to be useful, software will have to be written to unify the boards into a working receiver, and to process the data to find signals in the noise. This potentially enormous job is simplified somewhat by resources available on the Internet, but it is still a lot of work.
We are looking for someone who is willing to work on this for several months, or longer if possible. It will require selfless devotion for minimal reward. (We have no budget.) However it will be an intellectual challenge of the highest order, and will allow the budding scientist to get some practical experience in electronics, DSP, advanced math, and other disciplines that will look good on a resume and be pretty interesting, too. (And if your receiver actually finds that elusive alien signal, a little fame may come along.)
You will need these skills:
| Understanding of DSP, FFT and possibly the KLT |
| Ability to program same in C |
| Sufficient mental versatility to deal with lots and LOTS of hardware registers, VME cards, etc., (in a software sort of way) |
| Reasonable charisma with mathematics |
Although hardware skills would be desirable, there should be sufficient help around HQ to assist with electronic hardware and construction issues.
This "position" is open immediately. Of course we understand that you will more likely be available during the summer. If you think you might be interested, contact SETI League president Richard Factor, whose email is "rcf" at the SETI League address SETILeague (org).