Institute for Caribbean Studies
Tuesday, November 8, 2022
Eric Adolphe, CEO of Forward Edge-AI, Inc., SBIR, SkillBridge, and Microsoft for Startups Pegasus Company is set to be honored with an award for Excellence in Science and Technology at the 29th Annual Caribbean American Heritage (CARAH) Awards. The CARAH Awards is presented by the Institute of Caribbean Studies (ICS), the leading Caribbean-American advocacy organization responsible for securing Presidential Proclamation of June as National Caribbean American Heritage Month. The prestigious honors recognize the contributions and accomplishments of Caribbean leaders in various fields while celebrating Caribbean pride and the great promise of Caribbean immigrants to America and the world.
The 29th staging of the CARAH Awards will return to its in-person format this year at the JW Marriott in Washington DC on Friday, November 18, 2022. In 2020 and 2021, the CARAH Awards were held virtually as the world grappled with the novel coronavirus.
Derived from Haitian heritage, he is a technology-savvy executive with over thirty years of success building high-growth firms focused on mission impact, revenue, and margin attainment. Eric leverages expertise in deep technology including Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning, Quantum Encryption, and Blockchain/Distributed Ledger Technology to solve complex social, public safety and national security challenges. As PI under a NASA Small Business Innovative Research, Eric developed a data analytics solution designed to facilitate the interpretation of large volumes of data that can be retrieved from distributed sources to provide a highly efficient method to extract causal factors underlying aerospace mishaps attributable to human factors. Each source providing data on aerospace mishaps was modeled as an information retrieval system. A uniform identification scheme - based on a uniform resource identifier (UFI) made up of descriptors from a controlled set - would be used to encode the ‘raw data’, thus insuring comparability in data reports from different sources.
Eric has led cross-disciplinary R/R&D teams (biology, computation, chemistry, engineering, psychology) of typically 3 to 28 researchers on 25 SBIRs over his career. Eric’s products have been installed in every air traffic control facility in the US. And Eric’s EPIC SBIR won NASA’s Most Innovative SBIR Software Product of the Year award. As a result, Eric received one of NASA’s highest civilian commendations, and is one of 11 Black American honorees at the National Inventor’s Hall of Fame. EPIC is in use today by the commercial space launch industry. Eric also developed a DNN to detect aircraft in high clutter radar images (ASDE-X radar), under Phase I/II SBIR projects for the DOT/Volpe Center. Full key personnel resumes and publications are provided in Volume 5.
Eric holds a Bachelor of Engineering Degree in Electrical Engineering from CUNY City College of New York and is a Cum Laude graduate from Catholic University of America, Columbus School of Law, and a Member of the Maryland Bar. Eric is a winner of the Maryland High Tech Entrepreneur of the Year. Eric is also a National Capital Business Ethics, and Service to the Citizens awards winner, and National Inventors Hall of Fame Honoree. Eric is also a winner of one of NASA’s Highest Civilian Honors, and a SBIR Tibbetts award winner.
“Innovation is the outcome of a habit, not a random act” quotes Dr. Claire Nelson (Founder and President of the Institute of Caribbean Studies) “Eric has left a trail of innovation in whatever he does, and he deserves to be honored for it” continue Dr. Nelson.
