Matthew Szydagis
PersonScientistMatthew Szydagis
PersonScientistMatthew Szydagis is a University at Albany dark-matter physicist who applies detector methods to UAP field research and joined the UAP Science Advisory Council in 2026.
Matthew Szydagis is a University at Albany dark-matter physicist who applies detector methods to UAP field research and joined the UAP Science Advisory Council in 2026.
Matthew Szydagis is an American experimental physicist and associate professor of physics at the University at Albany, State University of New York, where his main research is the direct detection of dark matter. Alongside that work he has become known for applying detector physics to the study of unidentified anomalous phenomena, working with UAPx and the Scientific Coalition for UAP Studies. In 2026 he was named to a new federal UAP science advisory body while testing one of the alleged "Art's Parts" metal samples in his Albany laboratory.
Szydagis earned his PhD at the University of Chicago in 2010 and was a postdoctoral associate at the University of California, Davis, from 2010 to 2014 before joining Albany. His group works on LZ, or LUX-ZEPLIN, which the university describes as the largest current-generation direct search for dark matter, and in 2011 he created NEST, publicly available software for modeling how particle interactions register in noble-element detectors. His listed research interests also include neutron activation and detector development for rare-event searches, the background he brings to questions of how faint or fleeting signals should be measured.
He brought those methods into the field in 2021, joining Albany colleagues Kevin Knuth and Cecilia Levy and UAPx's Ben Kugielsky on an expedition at Laguna Beach, California. The team combined visible and infrared cameras, public Doppler weather radar, Cosmic Watch radiation detectors and C-TAP, software Szydagis developed that pairs artificial intelligence with human verification. In a methods paper he led in Progress in Aerospace Sciences in 2025, the team plausibly explained all but one potential anomaly; Szydagis said they "did not find evidence indicating that UAP have anything to do with non-human intelligence" but could not fully explain the remaining ambiguity. He also co-wrote a 2025 review of UAP science led by Kevin Knuth, and that November an endowment gift from businessman Tony Gorman launched UAlbany Project X, a university collaboration continuing the UAPx mission.
In June 2026 Avi Loeb named Szydagis a founding member of the UAP Science Advisory Council, describing him as bringing "expertise in instrumentation and data collection." In a September 2026 NewsNation interview with Ross Coulthart, Szydagis described what the council can and cannot do without security clearances, said its members had already filed more than 50 declassification requests, and named the 1996 Varginha case as the one he most wants disclosed. The same interview covered his ongoing tests of the Art's Parts sample, which had been entrusted to him by Tom DeLonge and Hal Puthoff.
According to NewsNation, his examination found millimeter-scale holes in the sample that point toward a human origin, and he said the harassment that followed came not from debunkers but from people who want the sample to be alien. Across his 2026 interviews he also discussed dark matter detection, the energy a reported Tic Tac maneuver would demand and why he regards the argument that interstellar distances rule out visitation as a misreading of relativity. Szydagis's combination of mainstream particle-physics credentials, published field methods and a seat on a federal advisory body has made him a frequent source on how UAP claims can be tested in the laboratory and in the field.
This is an outstanding interview. Congrats to Dr. Loeb & Dr. Szydagis https://t.co/OoqwNs0hp7 [Quoted] I was on CBS Sunday Morning alongside my brilliant fellow UAP Science Advisory Council members, Prof. Matthew Szydagis and our newest member, Ryan Graves (@uncertainvector), to discuss UAP and the Council’s work. I appreciate Stephen Miller’s (@StephenM) leadership in advancing the administration’s PURSUE initiative to bring greater transparency to UAP records. Our scientific efforts aim to...
[Retweeted] I was on CBS Sunday Morning alongside my brilliant fellow UAP Science Advisory Council members, Prof. Matthew Szydagis and our newest member, Ryan Graves (@uncertainvector), to discuss UAP and the Council’s work. I appreciate Stephen Miller’s (@StephenM) leadership in advancing the administration’s PURSUE initiative to bring greater transparency to UAP records. Our scientific efforts aim to build on this important work by bringing scientific analysis to the evidence made available.
I was on CBS Sunday Morning alongside my brilliant fellow UAP Science Advisory Council members, Prof. Matthew Szydagis and our newest member, Ryan Graves (@uncertainvector), to discuss UAP and the Council’s work. I appreciate Stephen Miller’s (@StephenM) leadership in advancing the administration’s PURSUE initiative to bring greater transparency to UAP records. Our scientific efforts aim to build on this important work by bringing scientific analysis to the evidence made available.
CBS News says UFOs are "definitely something Americans seem interested in" and new polling indicates that nearly 1 in 5 Americans have seen a UFO themselves. h [Quoted] Nearly 1 in 5 Americans say they have seen a UFO, according to CBS News polling. Finding evidence of aliens and Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena — or UAPs — would be “the greatest discovery in human history,” Dr. Matthew Szydagis, a physics professor, says. Luke Burbank looks the decades-old question, is anybody out there?
We have enough indirect evidence to say that the existence of non-human intelligence is no longer laughable, that it’s not irrational. - Professor Matthew Szydagis on CBS News "Seven decades after the first reported sightings of Unidentified Flying Objects, a scientific council is investigating records and video released by the government of Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAPs), to possibly answer the question: Are we alone?"
Overall, not a bad segment on UFOs. But where's the Stratton interview? A clip from "The Age of Disclosure" isn't enough. And how about showing Grusch talk a [Quoted] Nearly 1 in 5 Americans say they have seen a UFO, according to CBS News polling. Finding evidence of aliens and Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena — or UAPs — would be “the greatest discovery in human history,” Dr. Matthew Szydagis, a physics professor, says. Luke Burbank looks the decades-old question, is anybody out there?
Part 18 of a series reassessing the documentary record behind the 1933 Magenta narrative. TL;DR The public history begins with anonymous shipments in 1996. The claimed 1947 recovery remains unverified. Nolan reported ordinary isotope ratios for Art’s Parts. His unusual-isotope claims concern other specimens. ORNL favors terrestrial manufacture. Puthoff and Davis accept key laboratory findings while disputing the proposed historical origin. Yates’s microscopy adds detail, but the proposed func...
This week on "Sunday Morning" (Nov. 1)
A look at the features for this week's broadcast of the Emmy-winning program, hosted by Jane Pauley.
