Updates on Nigerian born Inventors: Celebrating the Invention of Koniku Kore

Updates on Nigerian born Inventors: Celebrating the Invention of Koniku Kore

In the last quarter of 2016 up to Friday, February 17, 2017, I published 5-series article titled “Nigerian Born Investors, their Inventions, Challenges and Opportunities. In the article, I stated that the list of Nigerian inventors and their inventions couldn’t be exhaustive. A huge country like Nigeria with a deep-rooted diversity and exponential increase in population, invention to survive daily challenges of life is the order of the day. Necessity makes people to think deeply on how to address their problems, constraints and threats against their living condition. Necessity is the major factor making Nigeria to churn out inventors in multitude. Ordinarily, Nigerians are naturally gifted with above average level of ingenuity, hard work and perseverance, when added to the prevailing difficult situation of their environment; the result is multitude of inventors. Invention is about coming up with a great idea, about turning the idea into a product, about making the product workable and making people to be aware about the workable product. The product should not only be acceptable by the people but should be sellable to recoup the cost of putting it on the market with a huge profit margin. Nigerian inventors have shown many workable products without moving to the next level of making people to be aware of their products. They are yet to make their products sellable, needless of making profit.  Invention is a difficult process, a time consuming event and often challenging and exhaustive to the inventors. Many inventors are disappointed after struggling for years with ideas they couldn't make to work. Today, some inventors have abandoned their great ideas out of frustration.

My previous on this subject article brought out the potential of Nigeria to lead the African continent in technological breakthroughs with her uncountable born inventors at home and abroad. In these inventors, lie the unquantifiable opportunities to make Nigeria excel in several human endeavors. These opportunities have potential to make Nigeria great among the comity of nations. However, potential is like a large fertile farm with good soil and abandoned water, without cultivation, weeds and dangerous reptiles will cover the farm, which must be avoided.

The article can be accessed: https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?tab=mj&blogID=4040876004067686701#editor/target=post;postID=8465991191574425538;onPublishedMenu=allposts;onClosedMenu=allposts;postNum=81;src=postname. In the last two years, what are the updates on Nigerian born inventors, their inventions, opportunities and challenges?

There are several inventions made by Nigerians at home and abroad. Some of the inventions have been in existence longtime ago but are recently coming to lime light while few others were newly made. In the last two years, one invention that came to limelight, capable of making the seemingly ‘impossible’ possible in the global technological revolution is KONIKU KORE.

Koniku Kore is a giant invention of the 21^st century, it is a device, which can fuse live neurons from mice stem cells into a silicon chip invented by a USA based Nigerian, Oshi Agabi. The device is a next generation neuro computing platform that can provide uses in security, military and agriculture. An example would be that a single neuro-chip device could sniff out explosives without even seeing it. The creation of this seemingly synthetic brain is a breakthrough combination of robotics, neuro-biology, computing and bioengineering. The technology is also opened to a community of developers, with the potential to create add-ons. This means that the device, in addition its primary functions will serve as a platform for other application developers to use. Koninku Kore is an application for real-world issues such as detecting illness and terrorism threats and it offers a glimpse into how biology can be integrated into technology, and ultimately how the human brain can help technological advancements.

The Koniku Kore technology attracted media blitz with BBC and CNN leading in “breaking the news” during TEDGlobal Conference in August 2017 in Tanzania. The world is amazingly seeing a technology, which has created computer with artificial intelligence modeled on the exactness of the human brain. Whereas computer is better than human brain at complex mathematical equations, there are many cognitive functions where the brain is much better. Thus, making a computer to recognize smells would require colossal amounts of computational power, energy and high intellectual thinking. 

Koniku Kore is an amalgam of living neurons and silicon, with olfactory capabilities — basically sensors that can detect and recognize smells. The Nigerian born inventor, Oshi Agabi proclaimed before the international journalists at the conference, "You can give the neurons instructions about what to do - in our case we tell it to provide a receptor that can detect explosives." He envisages a future where such devices can be discreetly used at various points in airports, eliminating the need for queues to get through airport security. Instead of joining line for endless search at the airports, people will just be allowed to pass while the neurons-silicon computer clear or unclear them through smell. The same computer can be used for bomb detection.

Oshi Agabi said: "We merged synthetic neurobiology with traditional silicon technology with the goal of fixing urgent real world problems." Adding that the “technology could one day revolutionize airport security, enabling travelers to walk from their car directly to the aircraft." This will certainly address "One of the problems that plagues us right now is security,"

In an exclusive interview with CNN, Agabi said “Explosives have particles and smells coming off the individual and with our device you can tell, without requiring line of sight or contact, you can scan them at the time at a place of your own choosing and you can get into an aircraft and go about your business."

Additionally, Koniku Kore could be used to detect illness by sensing markers of a disease in the air molecules that a patient gives off. The invention could also be used to sniff out illnesses in the same way dogs can detect cancerous cells via smells. "In the same way that a dog is able to detect if someone has prostate cancer, the real question we ask is 'how does a dog do it?' We can clone that process on our chip, so yes in the same way that a dog can detect diseases or explosives at an airport, it's a sensory system, that is essentially what we recreate in our chip," Agabi says.

 Koniku Kore is a major indicator expressing advances in neuroscience; bioengineering and computer science, bringing out in-depth knowledge on how the human brain works allowing the scientists mimic brain system.  This advancement fuels the development of neuro-technology - devices that aim to mold the brain into computers. Before this invention, much of the current work was aimed at improving brain function, particularly for those with brain-related injuries or diseases.

Koniku means 'immortal' in the Yoruba language, one of the three most populous languages in Nigeria. The Koniku project started in 2015 and has already raised $8 million in revenue in 2017 as reported during the unveil of the project by its founder Agabi who stated that “we believe quite strongly that it's going to be run with biological brains that are made with synthetic biological neurons. That is the declared intention of our company: to build a brain."

Addressing ethical concerns and implications of creating humanoid devices, Agabi says: "I think it's unethical not to deploy any resources we have to fight terrorism. It is the urgent problem that we face as a species", adding, "That's not to say that we shouldn't be careful of bio-integrity".

Oshi Agabi was born and grew up in the suburb of Surulere in Lagos, Nigeria and obtained a Bachelors degree in Physics from University of Lagos. He went on to do further studies in physics and neuroscience in Sweden and Switzerland.

"One of the things growing up in Lagos imparts in you is grit," he says. "Lagos is a place that demands grit. Growing up there gave me an unconventional way of always looking at problems."

The world has to celebrate Koniku technology that aims to address two critical human challenges: security and cancer, a terminal disease by creating a device capable of detecting explosives and cancer cells. The inventions, like several other inventions made by Nigerians abroad, the Jelanis, Mohammed Bah Abbas and others are image booster for the country and the authority should provide unflinching support to these inventions.