Matteo Paz is still in high school, but his work has already drawn global attention in the field of astronomy. Paz has discovered more than 1.5 million previously unidentified “variable” objects in space by using artificial intelligence to analyse the archived telescope data, as per a report by Futura. What commenced as a summer research project later became a peer-reviewed scientific study and was published in The Astronomical Journal.
Who is Matteo Paz?
Matteo Paz is a California high school student whose research work identified unknown variable objects in the archived space-telescope data. Paz’s fascination with space started at an early stage. As per a report by Phys.org, his mother took him to public stargazing lectures at the California Institute of Technology when he was in grade school. Those visits created a curiosity about how scientists observe and understand the universe.
In the summer of 2022, Paz joined the Caltech Planet Finder Academy, which helps in exposing high school students to real-world research platforms. During this programme, he started working under the guidance of Davy Kirkpatrick, a senior scientist at Caltech IPAC, and got access to data from NASA’s NEOWISE, as per a report by Futura.
Turning a summer project into a published research paper
Since the beginning, Paz has aimed for higher rather than a short-term assignment. “I am so lucky to have met Davy….He did not discourage me. He said ,’Ok, so let’s talk about that.’…I think that’s why I have grown so much as a scientist,” Pax stated, as quoted by Phys.org. Krikpatrick underlined the significance of mentoring young talent. “If I see their potential, I want to make sure that they are reaching it. I will do whatever I can to help them out,” he mentioned, Phys.org reported.
NEOWWISE had scanned the sky in infrared light for more than a decade, making a dataset of nearly 200 billion rows, Futura explained in its report. While the telescope was made mainly to detect asteroids and near-Earth objects, it also managed to capture signals from distant cosmic sources whose brightness changes over time and are known as variable objects.
What did his AI actually discover?
Instead of manually examining a small portion of the data, Pax created a machine learning pipeline in about six weeks that could identify extremely subtle changes in infrared light. By using mathematical techniques like Fourier transforms and wavelength analysis, his system detected patterns related to objects like binary star systems, exploding stars, and (very bright objects that are far away in space), as per a report by Futura.
As the model was enhanced, it was expanded to examine the entire sky’s dataset, leading to a catalogue of over 1.5 million variable light sources. The catalogue was released publicly in late 2025. It is now being used to guide follow-up observations at major facilities such as Vera C. Rubin Observatory.
What’s ahead for Matteo Paz?
Paz has continued his work beyond the summer programme. As per Phys.org, he became a paid research assistant at IPAC. He has refined the AI systems further and has mentored other students.