about
Bio
Akash Kulgod is a cognitive scientist and the co-founder of Dognosis. He leads efforts to unleash the superpowers of dogs and democratize the early detection of cancer.
Akash grew up in a family of 11 doctors and a rotating cast of dogs in the tier-2 city of Belagavi, India, before studying Cognitive Science with Highest Honors at UC Berkeley. He has conducted research with 8 groups across 5 countries, is the first author of multiple publications, posters, talks, and a PCT patent, and is a 3x Emergent Ventures India grantee and a 2025 Foresight Institute Neurotechnology Fellow.
Akash Kulgod is a cognitive scientist and the co-founder of Dognosis. He leads efforts to unleash the superpowers of dogs and democratize the early detection of cancer.
He grew up in a family of 11 doctors and a rotating cast of dogs in the tier-2 city of 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), Okinawa 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 3x 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 whenever he can.
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 professional bios are instrumental tools to achieve the pragmatic goals necessary for a techno-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 spent 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).
Research
Dognosis turns what trained dogs can smell into data for medicine, starting with a breath test that screens for many cancers at once. In 2026, a phase II study in the Journal of Clinical Oncology of 3,275 people found that dogs plus a Bayesian model detected seven major cancer groups with 91.5% sensitivity and 90.8% specificity.
Namma Indies is an open, community-built atlas of India’s street dogs, built with Aswin R. Its app, the IndieDex, re-identifies individual dogs from everyday photos, with a person confirming every match.
Before and alongside these, 8 research groups across 5 countries. At Berkeley, in cognitive science, linguistics, psychology and genomics (see building), and beyond it:
- Embodied Cognitive Science Unit Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology, Japan
- Tech4Animals University of Haifa, Israel
- Family Dog Project ELTE, Budapest, Hungary
- Medical Detection Dogs United Kingdom
Every paper, with a free version to read, is on the papers page; the citable list is on Google Scholar.
Recognition
- Robert J. Glushko Prize for Distinguished Undergraduate Research UC Berkeley, for the 4E thesis
- Commencement speaker Cognitive Science Class of 2022, Greek Theatre
- Emergent Ventures India grantee, three times
- Neurotechnology Fellow Foresight Institute, 2025
Elsewhere
- Dognosis the company
- Runs and Tumbles Substack
- Google Scholar publications
- @akadogluk X
- kulgod at pm dot me email