Lehigh Valley’s NASA chief offers teen a job and fighter jet ride after he uncovers 1.5 million space objects
LEHIGH VALLEY, Pa. — NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman, a Lehigh Valley billionaire and founder of payment company Shift4, publicly offered a job at the space agency to an 18-year-old scientist after the teen used artificial intelligence to make a major space discovery.
Matteo Paz received the public invitation after developing a machine learning model to analyze data from NASA’s NEOWISE space telescope. His work led to the identification of about 1.5 million previously unclassified celestial objects, including variable stars, supernovae and black holes.
The model flagged 1.9 million sources in total, of which approximately 1.5 million had no prior record in existing astronomical catalogs.
Isaacman praised Paz’s work on social media, encouraged him to apply to NASA, and highlighted the role of young scientists and artificial intelligence in advancing space exploration.
Isaacman also joked that a fighter jet ride could come with the job. “Matteo please apply to work at NASA and I will personally throw in a fighter jet ride as a signing bonus,” Isaacman wrote on X. Paz replied the same day with a photo of himself smiling and giving a thumbs up, captioned, “Where do I sign?”
Where do I sign? pic.twitter.com/iV49Oagn37
— Matteo Paz (@matteopaz06) December 27, 2025Stay informed on Lehigh Valley technology
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Paz’s research resulted in a single-author paper published in The Astronomical Journal and earned him the top prize at the Regeneron Science Talent Search, including a $250,000 award. The competition, overseen by the Society for Science, is the nation’s oldest and most prestigious pre-collegiate science and math competition.
Isaacman, who lives in Palmer Township in Northampton County, has emphasized innovation and emerging technologies as key to NASA’s future.
He was confirmed as the 15th NASA administrator on December 17, 2025, following a turbulent nomination process in which President Trump initially withdrew his nomination in May before renominating him in November.
“I just wish to see NASA continue to shine as the world’s most accomplished space agency,” Isaacman said last year.
Paz, a Pasadena, California, native preparing to attend the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to study electrical engineering and computer science, continues to work with researchers at Caltech’s Infrared Processing and Analysis Center.
He has been employed by Caltech since completing his research, working under his mentor, Davy Kirkpatrick, at IPAC.
His AI model, known as VARnet, analyzed years of infrared data originally collected to track near-Earth objects. The model processed nearly 200 billion rows of data from the NEOWISE mission, producing a catalog of variable objects called VarWISE.
Paz’s interest in astronomy began in grade school, when his mother brought him to public stargazing lectures at Caltech, and his research career launched through the university’s Planet Finder Academy program in summer 2022.
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