John Traphagan

John Willis Traphagan is professor emeritus of Human Dimensions of Organizations and Anthropology at the University of Texas at Austin and a visiting professor at the Center for International Education at Waseda University. Traphagan's research has largely focused on rural Japan, with most of his research conducted in Iwate Prefecture. He has published extensively on science and culture, aging, health, and life in rural Japan. In the late 2000s, he developed a second stream of research focused on the culture and ethics of space exploration. He has made significant contributions in the study of risk associated with the search for extraterrestrial intelligence.

In 2010 he was elected Secretary General of the Japan Anthropology Workshop, the world's largest organization of anthropologists working on Japan, serving until 2014. Traphagan also serves on the Advisory Council of METI (Messaging Extraterrestrial Intelligence) International and the Advisory Board of the College of Fine Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences at the University of Massachusetts Lowell. Provided by Wikipedia