Research Student of the Media Arts and Sciences, Fluid Interfaces Lab
Okezue is a high school student and current intern with the Fluid Interfaces group, where he is helping to develop assistive cognitive tools. In 2022, he was 1 of 81 students worldwide to be named a Research Science Institute (RSI) Scholar by MIT and the Center for Excellence in Education. He was also the 1st Place winner (Biomedical science) of the National Junior Science and Humanities Symposium sponsored by the Department of Defense, and the engineering recipient of the Yale Science and Engineering Association award.
Before working at the Media Lab, Okezue worked at Microsoft Research on developing machine learning diagnostic systems for COVID-19 and other respiratory diseases that applied to a larger variety of demographics. He collaborated with the American College of Radiology (ACR) through his work in computer science under the lead data scientist at the AI For Good Lab at Microsoft.
He has also studied neuroengineering at Harvard Medical School's Massachusetts General Hospital, applying his learnings to build neuro-robotic systems at UPitt's Rehabilitation Neural Engineering Labs and Hanson Robotics, and is rolling out and optimizing his solution for amputees as a youth advisor at Billion Strong.
Okezue directed Fidutam, which aims to provide an alternative to big banks for underserved communities. The project won the 2021 DECA ICDC Competition and was named top 10% of all applicants by Y-Combinator. As a champion of social justice, Okezue speaks with corporate leaders and youth across the world. He recently spoke at Web Summit, SwissCognitive, and WorldSummit AI.
He is an avid writer, producing content for Medium and the top Nigerian magazine Sundiata as a part of his outreach efforts, which has a subscriber base of over 1 million people. He has also written on CellAgri, and UNICEF Voices of Youth, receiving over 16,000 views on his writings.
Aside from his current research and startup, Okezue advises on sustainability and healthcare on the leading food companies, such as at Perfect Day, where he also helped to found their inaugural Gen Z board. Additionally, he directly advises Aleph Farms and their CEO and is working with the Cellular Agriculture Society to author the world's first cellular agriculture textbook. He was recently interviewed by Accenture for his work in sustainability.
Okezue's work is supported by various companies, including Softbank Group's Masason Foundation, OpenBCI, and more. In addition to his research and entrepreneurial efforts in enterprise technology and science, Okezue has been spotlighted in various news outlets, including Forbes, Power Lunch Live, GettingSmart, Yahoo News, Market/Business Insider, Cision PR Newswire, Authority Magazine, and more. He was also a 2020 Congressional App Challenge finalist, and was honored by Susan Wild for his project in detecting COVID from medical images.