Adrian Dunkley, founder of StarApple AI, recognised by the Faculty of Science and Technology at UWI Mona.
The Faculty of Science and Technology at UWI Mona has selected StarApple AI founder Adrian H. Dunkley as the 2026 recipient of the CIBC Caribbean Alumni Excellence Rising Star Award. The Faculty's citation, given in its own words, honours him "for pioneering work in artificial intelligence to provide solutions for Jamaica and the Caribbean."
For everyone at StarApple AI Jamaica, this recognition matters twice. It matters as validation for our founder, who has spent 15 years building applied AI in a region that was told for a long time it did not need to build any of its own. And it matters as validation for a wider argument: that Caribbean-built AI, made by people who live inside the problems it is meant to solve, is a real thing worth recognising at the level of a Faculty award.
What the Faculty Recognised
The record behind the citation is substantive. Adrian founded StarApple AI as the first AI company established in the Caribbean. The company's applied work spans fraud detection, financial inclusion, operational decision-making inside regulated industries, and public safety. These are the classes of problem that most affect ordinary Jamaicans and ordinary Caribbean people, and they are the classes of problem where an imported model, trained on someone else's economy, tends to fall short.
Around the company, Adrian has built a wider set of institutions. He is President of the Caribbean AI Association and Chairman of the Caribbean AI Risk Management Council (CAIRMC), the two regional bodies that carry the collective voice of the Caribbean's AI industry on strategy, governance and safety. Section 9 AI Lab, which he leads, runs research into financial crime, criminal networks and national security. He has contributed AI capability to Crime Stop Jamaica. Through the Climate Studies Group Mona at the UWI Physics Department, he is building AI world models for hurricane prediction, drought, agriculture and disaster planning.
Outside the AI work, and arguably closer to the heart of the citation, sits The Genius Project. In three years, the non-profit has trained over 200 Caribbean youth aged 6 to 18. That is a long-horizon investment in the region's next AI generation, made through free classes and structured programmes rather than through slogans.
His Own Take on What UWI Actually Gave Him
Asked about the award, Adrian pushed the credit back to the institution that trained him. In his words:
"I think people get school wrong. It's not a place to get a certificate with your name on it to get a job interview. It is a time machine to success..."
For an award that goes to alumni whose careers illustrate what the Faculty is trying to produce, that answer is close to the ideal case. It puts the emphasis back where the Faculty puts it: on what a science and technology education is supposed to build in a person before it builds anything else.
Why This Matters Beyond One Founder
Caribbean AI as a category has spent much of its recent history arguing for its own existence. The region receives a small share of global AI investment, and Caribbean businesses still adopt generative AI at rates well below global averages. In that context, a Faculty at UWI Mona giving its Rising Star Award to a Caribbean AI founder is more than a courtesy. It is an institutional signal that AI built in the region, for the region, is now part of what a Jamaican university is willing to hold up as excellence.
StarApple AI has been supported through this journey by AWS and NVIDIA, and Adrian mentors AI founders across the Caribbean and Latin America. The Rising Star Award follows earlier recognition: the EY Entrepreneur of the Year Jamaica title in the Start-Up category in 2024, and the Caribbean AI Innovator of the Year award. Taken together, that pattern suggests the field is no longer waiting to be taken seriously. It is being taken seriously, by institutions inside and outside the region, on the strength of the work.
Everyone at StarApple AI Jamaica extends congratulations to our founder. The recognition is his. The mandate the citation implies, to keep providing AI solutions for Jamaica and the Caribbean, is one the whole team carries.