Microsoft Research Lab – Africa, Nairobi

August 2026 Seminar:

AI, Radio Astronomy, and the Search for Life Beyond Earth

Radio astronomy combines astronomy, physics, signal processing, engineering, and computing to study the Universe through radio-frequency observations. As modern radio telescopes generate vast volumes of data, AI is becoming an essential tool for advancing the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI).

In this talk Ramiro Caisse Saide will present a multimodal deep-learning approach for technosignature detection using observations from the Breakthrough Listen backend at MeerKAT. He will share investigations into whether combining spectrograms with in-phase and quadrature (I/Q) signal representations can improve signal detection and classification, particularly in low signal-to-noise environments where traditional spectral features become less distinct.

Speaker Bio:

Ramiro Caisse Saide is a PhD student in Astrophysics at the University of Manchester, researching Earth radio signatures, deep learning, and the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI). A former researcher and telescope operator at the SETI Institute, he has developed large-scale analysis pipelines for spectral data from the Allen Telescope Array and presented his work at NASA Technosignature Seminar, PSETI conferences at Penn State University, and meetings at the University of Oxford. He also builds AI and data platforms for scientific and industrial applications including Matilho (opens in new tab), a tool designed to support data labeling and dataset preparation for computer vision projectsand currently. He currently serves as Scientific Director of the Mozambique Astronomy Society.