Most teens spend their summer vacation sleeping in, playing video games, and doing as little as possible. But not Matteo Paz… He put his time to much better use, devising a system that analyzed NASA data and discovered 1.5 million previously unidentified objects in the sky!

It all started in 2022 when Paz joined the Caltech Planet Finder Academy, intended to give Pasadena high school students a taste of astronomy. He worked with mentor Davy Kirkpatrick on analyzing an enormous archive of data from NASA's NEOWISE satellite, originally intended to detect near-Earth asteroids. While doing that work, the infrared telescope also detected heat variations in more distant objects. Kirkpatrick's notion was to use some of this data to discover these objects. 

However, Paz had other ideas. He wanted to put his knowledge of math, programming, and AI to use analyzing the complete dataset, covering the entire sky, to detect these objects automatically. 

With cooperation from other Caltech astronomers, Paz programmed his own algorithm, which broke down 200 billion data entries into bite-size chunks, then analyzed them for the telltale infrared signatures that identify distant objects like binary stars, quasars, and black holes. 

In recognition of his work, Paz won the prestigious Regeneron Science Talent Search. It includes a $250,000 prize that he intends to put toward college.

I have a feeling this kid is going places on a scholarship in the future. Just imagine seeing this on a college application!