Mike Smith
AstroAI Fellow at Aspia Space
Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States
Summary
👤
Senior🎓
Top SchoolMike Smith is an AstroAI Fellow and co-founder with 9 years of experience applying self-supervised, unsupervised, and generative models to unusual data modalities, especially satellite and astronomical imagery. Based in Cambridge, MA, he leads AI product development at Aspia Space—authoring a patented generative ClearSky algorithm for SAR-to-visible translation—and now develops open ML models for astrophysics at the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian. His PhD work produced high-impact generative tools (GANs and diffusion models) for synthetic astronomical surveys and ultra-fast galaxy profile extraction, with outputs featured by NASA and published in leading journals. Comfortable moving between research and product, he has spun research into commercial offerings like EarthPT, the first temporal Earth-observation foundation model, and downstream models for biomass, land use, and yield prediction. Adept at turning niche scientific problems into scalable ML systems, he combines deep academic rigor with entrepreneurial drive and a knack for making “weird” modalities tractable.
9 years of coding experience
3 years of employment as a software developer
Doctor of Philosophy - PhD, Astronomy and Astrophysics, Doctor of Philosophy - PhD, Astronomy and Astrophysics at University of HertfordshireMPhys, Physics, First, MPhys, Physics, First at University of LeedsGCSEs and A Levels, GCSEs and A Levels at Dame Alice Owen's School
Github Skills (28)
diffusion-probabilistic10
generative-model10
denoising9
probabilistic8
astronomy8
artificial-intelligence7
deep-learning7
transformer6
galaxy6
pytorch6
spect6
transfer-learning5
machine-learning5
calculator5
orange4
Programming languages (5)
Github contributions (5)
Smith42/heart-cnn
Jul 2017 - Jul 2018
CNN to diagnose heart disease in SPECT images
Contributions:135 commits, 2 PRs, 125 pushes in 1 year
deep-learningheartdiagnoseheart-diseasespect
Smith42/astroPT
Feb 2024 - Mar 2025
Transformer for galaxy images (and general astronomy)
Contributions:3 releases, 2 reviews, 26 PRs in 1 year 1 month
astronomylarge-observation-modeltransformer
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