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On Dec 2, 2019

Basseterre, St. Kitts, December 2, 2019 (ZIZ News): Kittitian national Daricia Wilkinson has been awarded Facebook Fellow 2019 and the Women’s Techmaker Scholar of 2019.

The Facebook Fellowship program was designed to encourage and support doctoral students who are engaged in innovative research in areas related to computer science and engineering at an accredited university.

The winner receives a $37,000 stipend each year and up to $5,000 in conference travel support.

Upon receiving the award Dericia gave advice to aspiring students stating ‘Start where you can and look at others who have been successful and see what they have done. Remember, “we small but we tallawah”!’

Daricia earned a bachelor’s degree at the University of the Virgin Islands in St. Thomas where she founded a student club for Innovation and Entrepreneurship called UVIDEA. This group was able to start the campus’s first innovation lab, securing 3D printers and teaching code lessons.

She is currently a student at Clemson University in South Carolina in the Human Centered Computing PHD program. Her work there includes how to create design solutions that help people understand how apps share their data and searching for new ways to explain how ads are presented.

For her dissertation her focus will be on creating better safety tools for marginalized communities in the Caribbean.