Scientific Imaging
PromptMoE, SAM refinement, instance segmentation, and SEM powder morphology.
Founder Background
Computer Science &
Materials Engineering
Accomplished researcher in applied computer vision and natural language processing across academic and corporate environments.
Stephen Price
Founder & Lead Researcher
NSF Graduate Research Fellow
Ph.D. Candidate in CS • WPI (GPA 4.0/4.0)
Background & Research Focus
National Science Foundation (NSF) Graduate Research Fellow & Ph.D. Candidate in Computer Science with a focus in AI/ML. Accomplished researcher in applied computer vision and natural language processing across academic and corporate environments.
An 11x published author (8x first-author), including a first-author paper at CVPR 2026, and co-author of research presented at the 2022 Nobel Symposium. Awarded Best Student Research at TMS 2024, Best Graduate Student Project by ASM International (2024), and recognized as an Honorable Mention by the Computing Research Association (CRA) for Outstanding Undergraduate Researchers in North America.
His doctoral dissertation research at Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) focuses on promptable segmentation for scientific and materials imaging under Dr. Elke Rundensteiner and Dr. Danielle L. Cote. He previously served as a Data Scientist and Generative AI Research Intern at the Fidelity Center for Applied Technology (FCAT).
Research Areas
Unstructured Data & LLMs
Structured literature extraction, program-aided language models, and bias/nondeterminism evaluation.
Process Optimization
Wire-Arc DED bead shape prediction and cold spray processing datasets.
Selected Publications
CVPR 2026 Highlight Paper
Reviewer Score: 6/5/5
PromptMoE: A Segmentation Refinement Framework Leveraging Mixture of Experts for Improved Prompting
S. Price, D. L. Cote & E. A. Rundensteiner. IEEE/CVF Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR), 2026.
Cold Spray Benchmark 2026
ArXiv:2605.04257
HUGO-CS: A Hybrid-Labeled, Uncertainty-Aware, General-Purpose Dataset for Cold Spray
S. Price, K. Miller, M. Musto, K. Kroelein, J. Saal, K. Tsaknopoulos, E. A. Rundensteiner, & D. L. Cote. ArXiv, 2026.
TMLR 2025
Mastering SAM Prompts: A Large-Scale Empirical Study in Segmentation Refinement for Scientific Imaging
S. Price, D. L. Cote & E. A. Rundensteiner. Transactions on Machine Learning Research (TMLR), 2025.
Scientific Reports 2025
DualSight: Multi-Stage Instance Segmentation Framework for Improved Precision
S. Price, K. Judd, K. Tsaknopoulos, R. Neamtu, & D. L. Cote. Nature Scientific Reports, 2025.
IMMI 2021
Automated and Refined Application of CNN Modeling to Metallic Powder Particle Satellite Detection
S. Price, M. Gleason, B. Sousa, D. L. Cote, R. Neamtu. Integrating Materials and Manufacturing Innovation, 2021.
Fellowships & Honors
NSF Graduate Research Fellowship (GRFP) Recipient
National Science Foundation (2024)
National fellowship recognizing outstanding research potential in computing.
CSAT 2026 Student Poster Competition — First Place
Cold Spray Action Team (2026)
People's Choice Award Winner for physics-informed synthetic data generation for cold spray.
ASM & TMS Graduate Presentation Awards — First Place
ASM & TMS International (2024)
Best Graduate Student Project (ASM) and Best Student Research (TMS 2024).
WPI Salisbury Prize & Two Towers Prize
Worcester Polytechnic Institute (2022–2023)
The Salisbury Prize honors exceptional graduating seniors; the Two Towers Prize recognizes juniors who unite academic strength, leadership, research, and practical work.
CRA Outstanding Undergraduate Researcher — Honorable Mention
Computing Research Association (2023)
Recognizing undergraduate research excellence in computer science across North America.