Miguel Moctezuma, a Chevening Scholar from Mexico, says his time on the UK scholarship programme led him to co-found FOUND, an initiative that applies technology to the search for people who have disappeared. His account was published on GOV.UK. The claims below about FOUND's results are his own.
A personal starting point
Moctezuma writes that he grew up in Zacatecas, where violence cost him friends. Some came back, and others vanished, among them a friend named Rafa. When Rafa's body was eventually located, Moctezuma recalls, Rafa's mother told him: "Now I know where I can take him flowers." He says that remark changed how he thought about absence, memory and dignity. In his telling, his Chevening story started at that moment, long before he applied to the scholarship, which later gave him the chance to study for a master's degree in the UK.
What FOUND does
According to Moctezuma, FOUND operates where frontier technologies meet the practical experience of search groups. Searching mothers, academics and authorities work together through the initiative, which aims to strengthen official responses when people go missing. He says the mothers' experience is paired with remote sensing, geophysics and machine learning so that knowledge held by citizens can become a capability for institutions.
The project started out as a Jalisco pilot, he says, and has since expanded into a transnational programme operating in both Mexico and Colombia.
Jalisco result in July 2026
Moctezuma writes that in July 2026 a machine-learning platform built by CentroGeo, FOUND's implementer, played a part in the recovery of human remains of people who had disappeared in the state of Jalisco. He says the work was carried out together with the Jalisco Search Commission and the National Guard. His account gives no figures on how many people were identified, and the published material does not include independent verification of the result.
The Chevening lesson
Moctezuma says Chevening connected him with networks where humanitarian needs and academic and institutional know-how overlap, and that it showed him communities frequently already hold the answers outsiders are looking for. He credits the programme with giving him the networks, perspective and confidence to act, and says its impact extends across the UK, Mexico and Colombia. Technology on its own is not the point, he argues; what matters is the effect it has on people's lives.
