Richard Cloete

Harvard Galileo Project computer scientist building AI detection and tracking for its sky observatory, named to the UAP Science Advisory Council in 2026.

Current role: Laukien-ʻOumuamua Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian; Galileo Project researcher; member of the UAP Science Advisory Council (data analysis and AI tools)

Former roles:

Postdoctoral researcher, University of Cambridge

Background

Richard Cloete is a computer scientist and the Laukien-ʻOumuamua Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian, after a postdoctoral position at the University of Cambridge. He works on Avi Loeb's Galileo Project, where he develops the AI models that detect and track objects crossing the sky in video from the project's hemispherical camera array, and he built AeroSynth, a synthetic-data tool for training those models on aircraft and birds seen from upward-facing cameras. He also works with the Minor Planet Center on AI for identifying interstellar objects. On 13 June 2026 Loeb named him to the UAP Science Advisory Council for data analysis and AI tools, as reported by DefenseScoop. The council is advisory only: it works from unclassified data, its members hold no clearances, and it has no published charter or budget.

On the record

2026-10-09 – "AI & Aliens: New Eyes on Ancient Questions", Agentic AI Foundation video – described the Galileo Project's sensor suite and detection pipeline, said triangulation for range, speed and size is still in development, that some observations remain unexplained for lack of corroborating multi-instrument data, and that the team wants to "let the data speak for itself." Video page
2026-06-13 – named to the UAP Science Advisory Council (data analysis and AI tools) in Avi Loeb's announcement. DefenseScoop · The Sentinel
2025-02 – MLOps Community podcast – discussed developing AI models for detecting and tracking aerial objects for the Galileo Project. Episode listing
2023-05-29 – arXiv, published in the Journal of Astronomical Instrumentation 12(1), 2340006 (2023) – one of 39 co-authors, with Loeb, of the Watters-led "The Scientific Investigation of Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP) Using Multimodal Ground-Based Observatories", which sets out the Galileo Project's observatory design. arXiv

Timeline of involvement

2023-05-29 – co-author on the Galileo Project observatory paper
2025-02 – podcast on AI detection and tracking for the Galileo Project
2026-06-13 – named to the UAP Science Advisory Council
2026-10-09 – video talk on the project's AI pipeline posted

Relevant links

Part of the Key People in Disclosure series. Verified 2026-10-10. Spotted an error? Reach out.