From a vaccine institute in Rio to the air in your building
Born in Rio. Trained among scientists.
Raphael wrote his first professional software at the Fundação Oswaldo Cruz (Fiocruz), Brazil's renowned public-health research institution, home to vaccine development and some of Latin America's most important laboratories. There he learned a principle he has never let go of: in science, data is not a report. It is evidence, and evidence has to be kept intact.
A decade inside the systems that move money.
In 2010 he founded Hashtag AI Labs, an engineering lab whose work now runs for companies from Halliburton to BMW. In 2015 GreenModel®, the universal sub-ledger and cloud reporting platform whose engineering he led, was named a SWIFT Innotribe Semi-Finalist. He then architected, from the ground up, the ledger behind a pan-African remittance and wallet platform used by more than 20 million people in 70+ countries, a system where nothing is lost, nothing is overwritten and every entry can be traced.
Taking the ledger to the mine.
In 2019 he co-founded Sentinel AI and became named inventor on the patented DustScout technology (international filing WO 2020/250007; South African patent 2021/10088, granted 2023): rugged sensors that ride on haul trucks and record silica, dust and road condition in real time. The platform now serves operations linked to Anglo American, Rio Tinto, Fortescue and Whitehaven, and grew into RoadScout AI and VoltScout AI.
Making the air visible.
When COVID-19 closed the world, Raphael, a father of four, asked why the air in a classroom or a ward had no audit trail. In 2020 he co-founded SensusAir and wrote down The Ledger Method. Today SensusAir measures viral, mould and ventilation risk in the USA, South Africa, the UK, Australia and the Philippines, and was recognised with two international awards in 2025.
From building it to teaching it.
Raphael is now invited to share the method with healthcare, mining and technology audiences, from When Air Becomes Data at Healthcare Innovation Summit Africa to APIC 2026 in the USA. He is an MSc candidate at the University of Hull in the UK, and through AI4DFuture and mentoring programmes he helps young founders build AI that serves people and the planet.
