Introduction

I’m a machine-learning researcher specialising in computer vision, with a focus on applications in neutrino physics. I began my journey in 2018 and carried out my PhD research at CERN. Since 2021, I’ve been a member of the Rubbia group at ETH Zurich. My work primarily involves event reconstruction in neutrino experiments. I have contributed to DUNE in the United States and am currently involved in T2K and Hyper-K in Japan, as well as FASER at CERN. Within T2K, I serve as the convener for machine-learning activities for the near detector. I have presented my research at international conferences and published in respected journals, particularly on applying deep learning to neutrino analysis.

I also teach AI applications in neutrino physics and have previous teaching experience in Computer Architecture, Operating Systems Design, and Distributed Systems.

Neutrino event display

Experience

Selected publications

  • "Towards foundation-style models for energy-frontier heterogeneous neutrino detectors via self-supervised pre-training" Saúl Alonso-Monsalve, Fabio Cufino, Umut Kose, Anna Mascellani, André Rubbia, Nature Machine Intelligence, 2026.
  • "An ultrafast plenoptic-camera system for high-resolution 3D particle tracking in unsegmented scintillators" Till Dieminger, Saúl Alonso-Monsalve, Christoph Alt, Claudio Bruschini, Noemi Bührer, Edoardo Charbon, Kodai Kaneyasu, Matthew Franks, Tim Weber, Davide Sgalaberna, Nature Communications, 2026.
  • "Submanifold sparse convolutional networks for automated 3D segmentation of kidneys and kidney tumours in computed tomography" Saúl Alonso-Monsalve, Leigh H. Whitehead, Adam Aurisano, Lorena Escudero Sanchez, Scientific Reports, 2026.
  • "Deep-learning-based low-energy trigger algorithms for the Hyper-Kamiokande experiment" Katharina Lachner, Saúl Alonso-Monsalve, Benjamin Richards, Davide Sgalaberna, Physical Review D, 2026.
  • "Transformer-Based Pulse Shape Discrimination in HPGe Detectors with Masked Autoencoder Pre-training" Marta Babicz, Saúl Alonso-Monsalve, Alain Fauquex, Laura Baudis, Machine Learning Science and Technology, 2026.
  • "Contrastive learning for robust representations of neutrino data" Alex Wilkinson, Radi Radev, Saúl Alonso-Monsalve, Physical Review D, 2025.
  • "AI-based particle track identification in scintillating fibres read out with imaging sensors" Noemi Bührer, Saúl Alonso-Monsalve, Matthew Franks, Till Dieminger, Davide Sgalaberna, Journal of Instrumentation, 2025.
  • "Deep-learning-based decomposition of overlapping-sparse images: application at the vertex of simulated neutrino interactions" Saúl Alonso-Monsalve, Davide Sgalaberna, Xingyu Zhao, Adrien Molines, Clark McGrew, André Rubbia, Communications Physics, 2024.
  • "Artificial intelligence for improved fitting of trajectories of elementary particles in dense materials immersed in a magnetic field" Saúl Alonso-Monsalve, Davide Sgalaberna, Xingyu Zhao, Clark McGrew, André Rubbia, Communications Physics, 2023.
  • "Adversarial methods to reduce simulation bias in neutrino interaction event filtering at liquid argon time projection chambers" Marta Babicz, Saúl Alonso-Monsalve, Stephen Dolan, Kazuhiro Terao, Physical Review D, 2022.
  • "Graph neural network for 3D classification of ambiguities and optical crosstalk in scintillator-based neutrino detectors" Saúl Alonso-Monsalve, Dana Douqa, César Jesús-Valls, Thorsten Lux, Sebastian Pina-Otey, Federico Sánchez, Davide Sgalaberna, Leigh H. Whitehead, Physical Review D, 2021.
  • "Neutrino interaction classification with a convolutional neural network in the DUNE far detector" B. Abi et al. (DUNE Collaboration), Physical Review D, 2020.
  • "Image-Based Model Parameter Optimization Using Model-Assisted Generative Adversarial Networks" Saúl Alonso-Monsalve, Leigh H. Whitehead, IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks and Learning Systems, 2020.
  • "Convolution on neural networks for high-frequency trend prediction of cryptocurrency exchange rates using technical indicators" Saúl Alonso-Monsalve, Andrés Suárez-Cetrulo, Alejandro Cervantes, David Quintana, Expert Systems with Applications, 2020.

For a comprehensive list of publications, please refer to the following profiles.

Invited talks

Public outreach talk at T3chFest (in Spanish)

Events organised

Highlighted awards and grants

  • ETH Zurich Spark Award 2026 (Top-five finalist) ETH Zurich: finalist with Till Dieminger and Davide Sgalaberna for the invention "A sharper eye for PET scanners".
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  • Swiss AI Initiative compute grant (Principal investigator) Swiss AI Initiative: 50,000 GPU hours on the Alps supercomputer for the project "Scalable and Transferable AI for Neutrino Physics", 2026.
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  • NERSC AI for Science award (Principal investigator) National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC), Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory: 5,000 Perlmutter GPU node-hours for the project "Deep Learning for Neutrino Event Reconstruction", 2025–2026.
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  • Swiss AI Initiative compute grant (Principal investigator) Swiss AI Initiative: 30,000 GPU hours on the Alps supercomputer for the project "Artificial Intelligence for Neutrino Physics", 2025.
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  • NSF HDR Machine Learning Challenge (Third place) Third place in the A3D3 Gravitational Wave Challenge, jointly with Marta Babicz, for detecting anomalous events in LIGO O3 data, 2025.
    Results
  • Enrique Fuentes Quintana Award Funcas: national award for the best doctoral thesis in Engineering, Mathematics, Physics and Architecture, Dec 2022.
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  • SCIE–Fundación BBVA Young Computer Science Research Award Awarded for international research experience, industry collaborations, and contributions to deep learning, Nov 2022.
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  • Margarita Salas Research Award — Basic Sciences Madrid City Council: accésit for one of the best doctoral theses in Basic Sciences, Nov 2022.
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  • UC3M Outstanding Doctoral Thesis Award Doctoral Programme in Computer Science and Technology, 2020–2021 cohort; awarded Dec 2021.
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  • UC3M Social Council Excellence Award — Alumni Recognising excellent professional development within three to five years of graduation, Jun 2021.
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  • Spanish National Parallel Programming Competition Jornadas SARTECO: second place in Málaga (2017) and third place in Salamanca (2016), solving tasks with OpenMP, MPI, and CUDA.
    Results
  • T3chFest Programming Contest First place in the individual algorithmic-programming contest, using Python; UC3M, Madrid, Feb 2016.
    Results

Media & features

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