Dr. Joseph Burkes was born in New York City in 1949. After attending UCLA as an undergraduate, in 1976 he received his MD degree from Tufts University in Boston. From 1979 until retiring in 2008 he was a staff physician for Kaiser Permanente in Panorama City California. His area of specialization is general internal medicine. Dr. Burkes has worked in the adult primary care, geriatrics, occupational medicine, hospitalist and in the emergency room departments of his medical group.

Joseph Burkes MD has participated in a number of peace and social justice movements of the last century. During the 1960s he was a student activist working to end the war in Vietnam. The following decade as a young doctor he served as an organizer and medical consultant to the Los Angeles Committee on Occupational Safety and Health. That group was part of a nation-wide coalition of health and legal professionals who labored to make the American workplace safer. In the 1980s he was a member of Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR). Its educational campaign focused on ending the nuclear arms race. In the Los Angeles chapter of PSR Dr. Burkes served as head of Speaker Training and co-produced the physicians’ radio show, “Prescription for Survival.” He briefly served on the national board of Directors of PSR. During the cold war he traveled to the former Soviet Union four times as part of the umbrella organization International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War. This group received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1985 for its educational campaign to warn world citizens and governments of the growing dangers of the nuclear arms race.

In May of 1992, less than a year after the fall of the Soviet Union, Dr. Burkes met fellow ER physician Dr. Steven Greer. For the next five years Dr. Burkes was closely associated with Dr. Greer’s Center for the Study of Extraterrestrial Intelligence(CSETI). This research organization studied the UFO phenomenon by attempting to directly interact with an extraterrestrial intelligence presumably responsible for the appearance of some UFOs. CSETI under Dr. Greer’s leadership devised a set of contact protocols that allowed field investigators to carry out real-time research of the flying saucer phenomenon. On Dr. Burkes’ first fieldwork session, with multiple other witnesses present, he observed an anomalous nocturnal light that fulfilled his definition of a UFO. Human initiated contact with the presumed intelligence responsible for UFOs is designated by CSETI as a Close-Encounter of the Fifth Kind(CE-5).The CSETI project facilitating these encounters has been called the CE-5 Initiative. In August of 1992 Dr. Burkes was named as Los Angeles Working Group Coordinator for the CE-5 Initiative. He held this CSETI post till 1998. In the course of his contact work Dr. Burkes reports witnessing multiple CE-5s in the US, Mexico and England.

Dr. Burkes views his work with the contact movement as an extension of his past efforts to establish peace and social justice. If the ET hypothesis is correct, as CSETI maintains, and non-human intelligence of an Extraterrestrial nature is present on our planet, then a citizens’ diplomatic movement will be required to promote peaceful contact with our newly found neighbors.

In 1998 as the result of family and professional responsibilities, Dr. Burkes resigned from his leadership position in the Center for the Study of Extraterrestrial Intelligence. He continues to be interested in the UFO phenomenon and the need to further peaceful contacts with the non-human intelligence presumably responsible for it.

Dr. Burkes has been married to Yael Bentovim since 1975. They have two adult offspring, Julia and Jonathan Burkes. The Burkes enjoy the company of 4 dogs, Hyme, Moussa, Batman, Masha,  and a 99 year old desert tortoise called Moishe.