Our Founder Adrian Dunkley Honoured by UWI: The 2026 Rising Star Award for Caribbean AI

The Genius Project is in its third year. Over 200 Caribbean youth, ages 6 to 18, have come through our programmes, learning to build with AI rather than just use it. Every one of those young people has been developed inside a philosophy set by our founder, Adrian Dunkley: that the region's future in artificial intelligence starts with the people we teach today, at the age they are today, in the places they are already growing up.

That philosophy has now been formally recognised. The Faculty of Science and Technology at The University of the West Indies, Mona has awarded Adrian the 2026 CIBC Caribbean Alumni Excellence Rising Star Award. The citation is short and specific: “for pioneering work in artificial intelligence to provide solutions for Jamaica and the Caribbean.” He earned it as a physicist, an entrepreneur, and an AI scientist with 15 years of applied AI experience. He built StarApple AI, the first AI company founded in the Caribbean. He leads the Caribbean AI Association and chairs the Caribbean AI Risk Management Council. His work spans fraud detection, financial inclusion, operational decision-making, public safety, and climate resilience through the Climate Studies Group Mona at UWI Physics.

Why This Recognition Matters to Us

The Genius Project exists because we believe expertise in AI does not have to wait for university, or for a professional career, or for someone else in a bigger country to build it first. A 12-year-old in Kingston, a 15-year-old in Montego Bay, an 8-year-old in Portmore, can learn to build real AI systems if the environment around them is designed to make that possible. We have proved it, again and again, across three cohorts.

When UWI Mona recognises the person who set that direction as a Rising Star for pioneering AI work in Jamaica and the Caribbean, it validates more than the individual. It validates the idea that Caribbean-based AI leadership is real, that it can be built at home, and that young Caribbean people who learn to build here belong in the same conversation as anyone else in the world. That is the entire premise of the programme our students go through.

School as a Time Machine

Reflecting on the award, Adrian described what UWI meant to him in his own words. He said this is an honour he was not expecting, that UWI was the environment where he learned to learn, and that at the time he did not realise the university was also building up the skills he would need to excel as an entrepreneur and business owner. It is a specific point, and it is exactly the point we make to every student and every parent who comes into the Genius Project.

School, when it is done right, is a time machine. The skills you build in it show up years later in situations you could not have predicted the day you were learning them. A young Caribbean person sitting in a Genius Project session today, working on a machine learning model or debugging a Python script, is not just learning a tool. They are building a mind that will be able to reach for the right idea when a problem lands in front of them at 25, at 30, at 40, on a job that has not yet been invented. That is what university did for our founder. That is what the Genius Project is trying to do earlier, and for many more Caribbean children.

The 200-plus young people who have already come through the programme are the working proof. Some are still in primary school. Some are already applying to university. All of them have handled real AI systems and worked on real problems, mentored by people who have actually built and shipped AI in the region. That pipeline did not exist in the Caribbean before organisations like ours started building it. Now it does, and now it has a Rising Star recipient behind it.

The Work Being Recognised

The citation names four applied domains: fraud detection, financial inclusion, operational decision-making, and public safety. Behind each of those there are real deployments across Jamaica and the wider Caribbean. Fraud detection systems that protect financial institutions. Financial inclusion tools that help people who cannot easily be scored by traditional credit bureau data. Operational decision-making systems that help Caribbean businesses run better on a daily basis. Public safety work including Crime Stop Jamaica and the Section 9 AI Lab.

The climate work sits alongside all of it. Adrian collaborates with the Climate Studies Group Mona in UWI's Department of Physics on AI world models for hurricane prediction, drought monitoring, agricultural yield, and disaster response. In his own description of that work, he said: “We are building AI models that will one day do more than predict if a hurricane is coming, it will tell us where it will hit with amazing accuracy, tell us how strong it will be and most importantly how to stop loss of life.” That is the ambition. For Caribbean children growing up in the hurricane belt, it is not abstract.

The Rising Star recognition also joins earlier honours: EY Entrepreneur of the Year Jamaica start-up 2024, Caribbean AI Innovator of the Year, and formal support from AWS and NVIDIA for the compute and frameworks StarApple AI relies on. He is an active AI mentor to Caribbean and Latin American entrepreneurs.

What This Means for The Genius Project

Practically, the recognition strengthens the case we make to every partner, funder, school, and parent we talk to. The person who set our direction is not a passing figure. He is a physicist and AI scientist recognised by the region's flagship university for a body of applied work that runs across every sector Caribbean societies depend on. When we say we teach children to build the way we do because our founder is teaching the region to build the same way, the Rising Star citation is now the public evidence for that claim.

Symbolically, it means something to the students themselves. A young person deciding whether it is worth putting the hours into a Genius Project session can see a direct line from the work they are doing in the room to a formally recognised Caribbean AI leader who came out of the same educational system that surrounds them now. That line matters. It is what makes ambition local.

Congratulations to Our Founder

From every student who has ever sat in a Genius Project session, every parent who has trusted us with their child's learning, and every mentor and staff member who has spent hours with our cohorts, congratulations Adrian. This one is earned, and it belongs to the region as much as it belongs to you.

The 200 young Caribbean builders you have helped develop through The Genius Project are the reason the work will keep going. The next 200 are already applying.

“This is an honour I was not expecting. UWI was the environment where I learned to learn. At the time I did not realise they were also building up the skills I needed to excel as an entrepreneur and business owner.”
Adrian Dunkley, on receiving the 2026 CIBC Caribbean Alumni Excellence Rising Star Award