What does it mean to listen to the universe? Today, the search for alien technology isn’t just about telescopes—it’s about patterns, noise, creativity, and interpretation. Scientists now use custom-built computers and real-time algorithms to sift through oceans of cosmic data, looking for signals that don’t belong to stars or galaxies, but to technology. In this talk, I’ll share how modern SETI works as a kind of cosmic signal-processing art: turning raw noise into meaning, deciding what counts as “artificial,” and designing systems that listen continuously while the universe moves. We’ll explore how imagination, aesthetics, and human bias shape the search, why false signals are as interesting as real ones, and how scientists need creative thinking to ask the questions—what patterns matter, and why? No physics background required—just curiosity about light, systems, and the possibility that someone else might be out there, broadcasting into the dark.

Cosmology, the study of the origin and evolution of the Universe has entered a new era of precision driven by increasingly accurate observations. The landmark detection and detailed measurements of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) have enabled tight constraints on the contents of the Universe, including baryons, dark matter, and dark energy, within the framework of the widely used and remarkably successful ΛCDM model. Yet, despite its success, ΛCDM remains incomplete: several observations hint at inconsistencies or gaps, and many alternative models remain viable due to degeneracies in current data. Breaking these degeneracies requires independent and complementary measurements of key cosmological parameters. In this talk, I will present a range of emerging experiments designed to provide such independent constraints, with a focus on the Hydrogen Epoch of Reionization Array (HERA). I will highlight recent results from HERA, discuss how they inform our understanding of early cosmic evolution, and outline some of the experimental and theoretical challenges that lie ahead