Rebecca Charbonneau is a historian of science at the American Institute of Physics and an adjunct assistant scientist at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO). She specializes in the history of radio astronomy and the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI), with particular focus on the Cold War period. Her research explores how SETI emerged during the 1960s, tracing how ideas about intelligence, communication, and civilization were shaped by the era's institutions, ideologies, and technologies.

She earned her PhD in History and Philosophy of Science from the University of Cambridge in 2021 and subsequently held a postdoctoral fellowship at the Harvard|Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics before becoming NRAO's first-ever social science Jansky Fellow. Her first book, Mixed Signals: Alien Communication Across the Iron Curtain (Polity 2024), was published in 2024 to critical acclaim, and was named one of the Best Books of the Year by both the New Yorker magazine and the Financial Times.

Through her work, Charbonneau demonstrates how the search for life beyond Earth has long been entangled with terrestrial politics and culture. She is passionate about applying historical methods to contemporary scientific challenges and has served the astronomy community through various leadership roles, including on executive committees for the American Astronomical Society and as a member of NRAO's archive council.