Steve Brumby, PhD

Steve is the Co-Founder and CEO/CTO of Impact Observatory, a mission-driven technology company bringing AI-powered geospatial monitoring to environment, climate, and sustainability risk analysis. Impact Observatory produced the world’s first fully automated, high resolution land use and land cover annual maps using deep learning at global scale in commercial cloud, released as a digital public good via our partners Esri Living Atlas and Microsoft Azure Planetary Computer. Impact Observatory's maps are also available via the UN Biodiversity Lab (powered by Impact Observatory), and have been used by the New York Times to analyze the impact of catastrophic flooding in Pakistan due to the climate crisis and by National Geographic Magazine mapping animal migrations across Africa.

Steve has built and led applied science teams at the National Geographic Society and at the US Department of Energy's Los Alamos National Laboratory. He is the technical founder of venture-backed AI+space startup Descartes Labs. His PhD is in theoretical particle physics, and he is the author of over 150 science publications.