Official-y Long Bio

Akash Kulgod is a cognitive scientist and the co-founder of Dognosis. He leads efforts to unleash canine superpowers to their full potential, and uplift the Human-Dog to the Second Millienium. His waking time is spent primarily (70%) on scaling canine olfaction to democratize the early detection of cancer.

He grew up in a family of 11 doctors and a rotating cast of dogs in tier-2 city Belagavi, India, before studying Cognitive Science with Highest Honors at UC Berkeley. His thesis on a novel cognitive model of canine olfaction called “4E” won the Robert J. Glushko Prize for Distinguished Undergraduate Research, and he was the commencement speaker in the Greek Theatre for Berkeley’s Cognitive Science Batch of 2022.

Kulgod has conducted research with 8 research groups across 5 countries, 4 at UC Berkeley Letters of Science, as well as the groups in Japan, Israel, Hungary, and the UK - the Embodied Cognitive Science Unit (ECSU), Okinawaka Institute of Science and Technology (OIST); Tech4Animals, University of Haifa, Israel; Family Dog Project, ELTE, Budapest; and Medical Detection Dogs, UK. He is the first author of multiple publications, posters, talks, and a PCT patent in topics in canine cognitive neuroscience, early cancer detection, and bio-inspired olfaction. He is a 2x Emergent Ventures India grantee and a 2025 Foresight Institute Neurotechnology Fellow.

Akash lives in Bengaluru/BLR, with the requisite weeks in the Bay, hanging out with the Dognosis Pack at Malleshwaram and Nelamangala. He enjoys precious time with the dogs whenenver he can.

Fun-y Bio

Akash was the kind of person who would try his hardest to come up with a quirky bio to make it clear he was not a normie, before he realized profesionnal bios are instrumental tools to achieve the pragmatic goals necessary for a tecnno-optimist sci-fi-uplift future. He is technically Irish (the accent does not give it away) despite not being born in Ireland or having any Irish heritage, though his fondness for U2 arguably makes up for it. He will probably try to bring up how the 4 different cities across 3 continents he has spend considerable time in start with “Be” (the tism will be apparent when he does). It is possible he may bring up his experience being the Co-President of the Psychedelic Science at Berkeley club - PsySci, where he co-facilitated the for-credit course Introduction to Psychedelic Science. It is not outside the realm of possibility that his fondness for the outdoors, although having taken a backseat of late, will shine through in conversation, where he may try to slip-in his solo camping escapade in the Ventura Wilderness, or his epic adventures around the Annapurna mountains. It may also be revealed that he has a terrible sense of smell which adds ironic fuel to the mission, and that he really really likes dogs (and he hopes they like him back).