Program: Data Science
Home Country: Jamaica
Universities: The University of the West Indies, Mona
Languages: English, French
Pronouns: He/Him

I am a Computer Scientist, Technology Consultant, and aspiring AI researcher from Kingston, Jamaica, and my career has been shaped by a single conviction: that the most important technology is the kind that actually reaches the people who need it most.

My path into computing began not in a classroom but in a crowded government office. I watched citizens wait for days in a system that moved far too slowly. That experience redirected me from medicine toward technology. It wasn't an escape from service, but a different form of it. I went on to graduate as Valedictorian of the Faculty of Science and Technology at The University of the West Indies, Mona, earning First Class Honours in Computer Science with a GPA of 4.01.

During my undergraduate years, I built eLife, a digital verification system that replaced Jamaica's weeks long proof of life process for pensioners with minutes of biometric confirmation. My team and I developed it entirely with free and open source tools, by design. The project is currently being assessed for recognition as a Digital Public Good. I also served as a Summer Research Scholar at the STORM Lab, University of Leeds, where I developed two keypoint aware surgical motion tracking algorithms called PatchTracker and ShrinkTracker. They achieved up to 5.5× speedups more than state-of-the art algorithms on resource constrained hardware. This work was supported by an Emergent Ventures grant from the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, which inducted me into its inaugural Caribbean cohort of high potential innovators.

I currently work as a Technology Consultant at EY, where I lead AI readiness assessments and digital transformation projects for Caribbean enterprises. I also serve on the Researcher Council of the Jamaica Artificial Intelligence Association, contributing to Project Iris, a national initiative to develop sovereign AI models trained on Jamaican data.

My long term goal is to establish a research institute in Jamaica dedicated to designing AI systems tuned to the Caribbean's infrastructure, languages, and realities. I want to help transform the region from a consumer of technology into a creator of it.

What I like most about Rice/Houston

What draws me most to Rice is something I wrote about in my application: the belief that a unified community is not built on sameness, but on the deliberate work of engaging difference. Rice takes that seriously. Its culture of care, the intentionality behind its multicultural student organizations, and its commitment to collaborative rather than competitive academic life all reflect a community that invests in its people, not just its rankings.

Houston deepens that appeal. As one of the most linguistically and culturally diverse cities in the United States, Houston feels like a place where a Jamaican with a Caribbean research agenda wouldn't need to explain himself. The city's scale, its proximity to industry, and its global character all make it an unusually fitting environment for someone whose work sits at the intersection of technology, public service, and international development.

Together, Rice and Houston represent something I've been looking for: a serious research institution embedded in a genuinely diverse city, where the work I want to do feels both relevant and possible.

What I like most about Fulbright

What I value most about Fulbright is what it asks of its fellows beyond the degree. The expectation isn't simply to study abroad and return with new credentials. It's to become someone who builds understanding between nations through the quality of their work and the depth of their engagement. That framing resonates with me because it matches how I think about my own goals.

I am not pursuing graduate education to leave Jamaica and my Caribbean region behind. I am pursuing it to return with the tools to do something meaningful at home. Fulbright's emphasis on cultural exchange and global connection means that the time I spend at Rice wouldn't be a detour from my mission but rather, it would be part of it. The relationships built, the perspectives encountered, and the responsibility to represent my country well are not secondary to the academic work. For someone who believes that the Caribbean deserves a stronger voice in the global AI conversation, that sense of ambassadorship is my motivation.

Fun Fact about me:

I am a theatre nerd and enjoy writing full plays and musicals in my free time.