About Me
From Pixels to Impact: Guiding Vision AI for People, Planet, and Science
I guide startups and science-driven teams to fight cancer, track climate change, and advance discovery with AI.
After two decades bouncing between academia and industry, I discovered my real strength: acting as a bridge between them. My superpower is distilling cutting-edge research and translating it into products and services that make a difference in the real world.
I’ve been working in computer vision and machine learning for over 20 years — before deep learning became mainstream. In the early days, I was simply fascinated by writing code that could analyze images and automatically extract insights.
During my Master’s at Carnegie Mellon University and an internship at the Mars Space Flight Facility, I applied machine learning to detect and categorize rocks and craters on Mars. But I quickly realized the same skills could make an even bigger difference here on Earth.
My PhD at the University of North Carolina brought me into cancer research. Traditional machine learning approaches struggled, but deep learning opened new doors in predicting molecular properties of tumors that no pathologist could see. Since then, I’ve applied computer vision to detect tumor tissue missed in surgery, predict treatment response, and even estimate emissions from power plants to track global contributors to climate change.
But alongside these successes, I saw a hard truth: most machine learning models don’t survive the leap from research to the real world. Success depends on aligning data, modeling, and domain expertise — and anticipating the variability, trust, and adoption hurdles that derail most projects. That disconnect between lab results and real-world impact is the challenge I’ve spent my career helping teams overcome.
Through Pixel Scientia Labs, I’ve devoted my career to helping teams make vision AI work in the real world. I help teams:
- Align data, modeling, and domain expertise to build models that hold up under variability.
- Anticipate risks early and avoid costly setbacks.
- Earn the confidence of executives, investors, and regulators.
Because when models survive the real world, the impact is profound — improving health outcomes, advancing sustainability, and accelerating scientific discovery. That’s the difference between stalled potential and meaningful progress.
With my kids now growing up in a world with different challenges than I was raised in, I feel the urgency more than ever. To apply what I’ve learned – and continue to learn – to create a better future.
What real-world impact could your AI deliver — if it truly worked beyond the lab?
Heather D. Couture, Ph.D.
Founder & Computer Vision Consultant
Raleigh, NC, USA
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