AGABI, NIGERIAN NEUROSCIENTIST INVENTS KONIKU KORE DEVICE THAT SNIFFS EXPLOSIVES, CANCER CELLS

ARUSHA, Tanzania – A Nigerian nueroscientist, Oshirenoya Agabi has launched Koniku Kore device, a neurotechnology device which has the capacity to merge lab-grown neurons with electronic circuits.

Thirty- eight years old Agabi launched the device at the TEDGlobal event holding in Arusha, Tanzania.

Agabi and his team of team of geneticists, physicists, bio-engineers, molecular biologists are not interested in creating machines that can mimic the brain.

The Koniku Kur device will now focus on solving problems where silicon devices have failed due to limited capacity of simulated neurons.

The Koniku Kur device he said has capacity to sniff out explosives within airports, volatile chemicals or even illnesses such as cancer by “breathing in and smelling the air”.

According to Agabi, “major brands”, including those in the travel industry, had signed up for the device and the start-up’s current revenues of $8 million are expected to leap to $30 million by 2018.

“We want to build a brain of biological neurons – an autonomous system that has intelligence. We do not want to build a human brain”, he told the Associated French Press. The company was built on the “premise that the human brain is the most powerful computer ever devised. [We] show that capturing that computational power is an engineering problem. Koniku proceeds to meet that challenge with clear solutions.”