Effiong uduakobong Blessing

I started my journey in technology very early, entering college at age 16 to study computer science after losing my father. My mother, a single mom of five with three children in university at once, encouraged me to pursue this path even though I originally wanted to be a chemical engineer. I began freelancing as a full-stack software engineer in 2016 to help support my family financially while still in school. After completing my bachelor's degree in four years, I earned a World Bank Scholarship, ranking number 7 in a competitive exam that drew candidates from across Africa. During my 18-month master's program in AI and deep learning, I developed a disease detection model for cassava crops attached to drones, which caught the attention of a professor in Missouri who invited me to the US. However, I realized that no matter how effective AI models were, the high cost and energy consumption of data centers remained a critical problem. This led me to neuromorphic computing. Now, as a PhD candidate and co-founder of Project Phaser, I focus on creating brain-inspired, energy-efficient AI systems that can perform complex tasks without the massive energy requirements of traditional models. I recently became the first person to deploy green AI in real time for Frontier AI memory mechanisms, with my work featured in Quantum Zygus Journal and accepted at IEEE NICE. I also teach undergraduates and graduate students, believing strongly that knowledge shared is knowledge gained.