 Today is an incredibly special veteran covering an exceptionally important topic on National Disability Employment Awareness Month. Army veteran Zubi Anwuda is a Harvard and MIT trained innovator. He is the patented inventor of brain control of blind assistive tech and founder and CEO of Think and Zoom. Zubi is a four-time TEDx speaker, a DAV member, Patriot Boot Camp alumnus and a legally blind disability advocate. He's here to talk about disability inclusion in tech. But before we do that, I wanna mention that Zubi is famed, at least DAV famous, for participating in a parabolic flight that DAV helps support through astro access and zero gravity. Let me show you a picture of this, it's incredible. There he is, there's Zubi in space. Zubi, along with longtime DAV ambassador, CC Centra Mzik, were two of 12 people with disabilities who were able to experience limited gravity with the hopes of making space travel accessible to all. Zubi, thanks for being here. I know you had a lot you wanted to talk about today, but you have a fascinating life. And I'd really like to get into the background of some of your personal experiences. Can you tell me about your life before you joined the United States Army? Sure. Good afternoon, everybody. Thank you for having me, Dan. Thanks so much to the DAV family and the DAV PVC team. It's really a great pleasure and an honor to be here, speaking to everyone, especially in this month of October, which is known as National Disability Employment and Reigners Month. For me, growing up, I was born and raised in Nigeria, and at a very early age, I gravitated towards STEM, science, technology, engineering, and math. And I can still remember my very first experiment where I was in primary school. I was a battery with copper wires on both ends and the excess copper wire rocked around the piece of nail and while I hadn't lived like for pregnant, I still remember it like it was yesterday. So growing up, I really, really loved everything that had to do with science and technology. I watched Space 1999, all of the Back to the Future, the Terminator, the Robots, the AI. So that was really my life. I was raised to be disciplined and always studied everything at Britson. So as a result, I was fortunate to always be one of the top students in the class. So growing up, I would say was factorized by just being a lover of anything, science and technology and a lover of continuous improvement and problem solving. And how'd you end up in the United States Army? Right after high school, I was very fortunate to have received the Green Party to come to America to study medicine. And it's a way to thank the country for giving me the opportunity, I also enrolled in the military. And the plan was to become a military doctor. So I started college, I enrolled in the Guard and I was 18, 19, 20, and I thought I had it all figured out, life was just coasting and you couldn't tell me otherwise. But I then went over to basically, you know, joined the full-time army at Fort Leno in Missouri. And that's when I became legally blind from a disorder of the retina called Starbucks, Michaelum Districting, which means that this is now at the genetic level. And so the flushing mechanism that takes away excess vitamin A from the eyes is back and it leaves the excess sitting on the retina and starts decaying the photoreceptor cells, those wide cells and point cells that sit on the macular. So all of this activity is happening at the back of the eye. And the retina plays a very significant role because it's the pathway to the brain. It literally launches to the brain through the optic nerve. And so while the majority of the war, things that an eye problem equals, you know, get a pair of glasses or surgery and you should be fine. There are those eye problems that we still can't really do much about it. Those are a lot of genetic disorders. And so that ended my medical studies and military career. And I had to switch out of that and I wanted to become an engineer. So it cost shut my military service. And how did the condition go after you went into engineering? Dan, I can honestly tell you that if I knew now what I knew then, I definitely would have chosen the engineering. It's simply because of the barriers. Again, I already painted a picture of growing up how I love STEM. And so I thought I could carry on by, you know, living medicine and going into a different STEM field. But now I'm legally blind. You know, I wasn't born legally blind. I became legally blind, you know, right after exiting my teenage years. So I didn't understand, you know, the barriers and challenges to accessibility. And it really affected me that halfway through my computer engineering degree, I flunked out and I was homeless for a little while. It was really very challenging going through a university where there were I think maybe 40 to 50,000 undergrad, 16 schools of engineering, but yet to my recollection, I was the only disabled engineering student. And so you feel a level of isolation, right? That's kind of what we describe. And remember, this is college. Everybody remembers the college atmosphere, but you're going through things that people around you can't even really relate to. So it was really very challenging. I loved the curriculum. I loved, you know, problem solving, but the barriers and challenges made it really a tough climb for me. What is it about tech that, why do you think inclusion is important in tech? Well, if you look at today's world through a couple of lenses, if you look at the lens of everything around our personal life today and your wearables, smart devices, smart TVs, smart phones, smart tablets, self-driving cars, robots that can make you pizza, coffee, a smoothie, it's all technology. And then if you look at it through the lens of business, the top companies, the most valuable companies, the high-revenue companies, your Microsoft, your Google, your Facebook, your Apple, their core business is technology. So we're now in the fourth industrial revolution where you cannot, you cannot escape technology. So it becomes ultra important. It's no longer a choice of this or that. You're thrusting it unless you don't live in the planet. As long as you're in the planet today, you are surrounded by technology and the businesses you do commerce with are all leveraging technology. And so you're all surrounded by technology. And so if you're a human in today's world, you need to be aware of technology, using it, doing commerce with it, doing education with it, all aspects of life with it. So why do you think that from a tech perspective though, what is the value of hiring someone who's blind? I think there's a lady, she's about 21 from London and she's captured this world. She says, being blind, I see the world differently from others and the way other people view the world. And so hiring somebody who is blind just brings that different perspective. Another example I can give is I think during my second TEDx talk, I talked about certain individuals who are disabled and I talked about what disabled people actually built society. What if a blind person builds a car that runs on the road? Well, because they can't see, there will be no need for a windshield or a back mirror, anything to see through. However, they're gonna make sure that car is going to safe to take you from point A to point B. That's all they're gonna concentrate on. And so perhaps we should get blind people into self-driving, automated vehicles. And so simply because somebody who's blind doesn't mean that they are not able to contribute. It is true that they don't have sight, S-I-G-H-T, but sight, you shouldn't look at that one aspect of life and disregard everything else that the person can contribute to. One of the IBM fellows today, a fellow means someone that has achieved the highest technology rank in IBM and they're only about 60 to 70 fellows. She's blind. Her name is Chico Asakawa. If you look up all of her patents and technological achievements, it's mind-blowing. But again, that's a scenario here. The company looked at her for what she can contribute and they didn't look at her as someone who doesn't have sight. That's awesome. And you've been able to overcome a lot of obstacles in your life. Can you tell me about your invention? That invention was born purely, purely out of necessity. Before I went into the military, I went to the DMV and I got my driver's license. I went through the routine, the ice creaming test and in a few seconds, I read the A513, whatever it was, they put it in front of me. And then when I became legally blind and left the military and now had to renew my driver's license, I went back to the same DMV. And this time around, it was night and day experience. I spent five minutes there, tears were flowing through my eyes. But this time around, it felt as if, it was as if someone injected some kind of cloud between my naked eye and what I was trying to read. It was there, but yet I couldn't make it out. And it really twisted my brain. I can never forget that was back in the late 90s. I can still vividly remember that feeling because wait a minute, I just did this just a couple of years earlier, what is happening? And so that state of confusion and that bewildered mindset, something just came to me that all I needed right now was if there was some kind of invisible glass that could just appear before my eyes and then that invisible glass, you know that I'm struggling and it will magnify whatever was in front of me, you know the invisible glass would be an invisible magnifying glass and will make things bigger. And then as soon as I saw what I needed to see, we'll understand that, okay, I'm done. And then it will shrink itself back up and disappear. Now fast forward from the late 90s, of course, I think about the late 90s and we're still in a dialogue AOL, right? And we didn't have a lot, but fast forward to 2015, when I actually prototyped it, that's actually what I prototyped. So between then and 2015, I discovered the power of neuroscience and the power of neuro technology meaning that in every human, we have this circuitry running through our body, electrical impulses, neurons that start from the brain and the brain sends all these electrical impulses to our body. And so I was able to leverage brain computer interface technology, BCI sensors to tap those signals from the front of the forehead, the cranial. And in essence, I was able to create a solution where all I could do to see better was to look at something, think, send a signal to a magnifier and zoom. And that's where the main thing comes in. So what happens when you do that? What happens when you think and you send that signal? When you think and you send that signal, you're now able to magnify things without using your hands. So in today's world, a blind person relies on magnifiers and screen readers. With a magnifier, it's manual. It's hand-holding and manual operation. But in the natural way of things, when your eyes are created, I would say way, way back, it's automatic operation, if you will, right? Scene is similar. The eyes work like a camera. Look at something, you see it and that's done. It's fast, it's automatic. But when it comes to the blind community with these magnifiers, it slows down the individual. You're not able to compete in a fast-paced world. And so that manual operation makes it cumbersome. And so with think and zoom, what I, all I tried to do was to mimic the natural way of seeing. Hot out the cords, hot out the hand-holding. So now your natural or current and electrical circuitry is now the thing that sends your signal for you. So it will help you detect whenever you're struggling to see, it will send the signal, magnify for you or stop reading for you, text to audio. And then whenever you're done, okay, I don't need you anymore, full back up and go back, go away. That's amazing. I wanna remind the audience that if anyone has any questions, whether you're on the Zoom or on social networks, please feel free to ask. Zuby, tell me about, what was it like going from being a Nigerian to joining the army? Like, what was it, what was your experience in the army like? What was camaraderie like in the army? I can still remember landing at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri at 4 a.m. in the morning and the drill sergeant is yelling at me with his nose one inch away from my nose. These are things you can never, ever forget. If you watch any of these army movies with boot camp training, but the military is always a place where you're taught to discipline. We're working up at five a.m. in the morning. We're giving out routines. If you don't follow your routine, well, there are consequences for that. And so I'd say that I really, really enjoyed my time. It was unfortunate that I became disabled. But of course, from where I was coming from, I'd never been in military service before. So everything was all brand new. But I had a disciplined mindset. And so I think that I fit in very well with following all the routines that were laid out in front of us. And I never got into any trouble at all. So that, you know, I took it back to my background. I really had a great time. I enjoyed my time. I was really fortunate that I was put short. Now, a lot of people watching, especially in the disabled community, it's hard to imagine going through losing your vision or having a decrease in your vision. But it's easy to imagine facing a large challenge. Can you speak to, I mean, how do you emotionally respond? How do you deal with someone telling you your entire life's path is changed? It's what you thought was going to happen is no longer going to happen. Can you talk about that? Then asking that question, I can still picture Sergeant Johnson in Missouri telling the private hall, you going blind. I mean, it just hits you like a ton of bricks, you know, by age of 21, I was looking for plan C. Naturally, you know, you're crushed, you know, depression sets in because there's no example to follow. There's no pathway to follow. The words coming into your ears spell the end. The end, the spells doom and spells disaster, the spells you can no longer continue in the current path. And so I'm really very grateful to the people around me, the family that really provided me with a lot of support and encouraged me and mentored me and kept telling me to keep pushing, to be able to now overcome, you know, those human emotions that you just can't escape, to be able to now think through to find another path to keep the government. But I can tell you that honestly, when that happens, you're not prepared for it. You know, there are no side grills for that. It's something that really gets into a bewildered state of mind and it takes some time to think through it and get yourself back inside. That's fantastic. Now talking about inclusion in tech, so do you think that you're the example you show where you've been able to, you know, break through in spite of the bears? Is that something that you would bring as an employee to a team? Well, then not just myself, but other blind and other disabled people, you know, around the world. There's a platform called our future of disability that I want, future of disability and global. And these are some of the people that I feature, for example, Joshua Mealy. Joshua, I think at the age of four, fortunately some sort of acid attack, there's something left in blind. But if you look at Joshua's achievements today, Joshua is a leading researcher at the Amazon Research Lab and has come up with so many different inventions. I think one of his creations is about making YouTube videos accessible. But as a result of all of his remarkable work, he was awarded the MacArthur Genius Award. Let me repeat that. Joshua Mealy, an individual who is blind, was awarded the MacArthur Genius Award. Now Dan, wouldn't you want to hire somebody like that into your company? I think we'd find a place for him. We actually have a question from the Zoom audience. Jeff Kirkpatrick, if you'd like to come on and ask yourself. Thanks, Jeff. Hey, everybody. How are you doing? I'm Jeff Kirkpatrick. Thank you guys for inviting me to this Zoom call. I appreciate that. Zuby, you know, you display the warrior spirit, man. You went out there and took charge and you're making things happen. And that's really awesome. I appreciate that. But you know, some of the stuff you're talking about is pretty cool. And we kind of do a little bit of, we just started out with do robotics kind of projects and data science, that kind of thing. But in the field of robotics, vision is huge. And some of the things that you're talking about could be very beneficial. I feel like in the field of robotics, how do you feel about that? Good afternoon, Jeff. And thanks so much for joining us today. Thanks for your words. In the field of robotics, there's a computer vision, which is the eye of the camera. And I think when it comes to at least blindness, personal disability, I think that this can be leveraged or in order to provide, in order to provide accessibility. To help those who are visually impaired. For instance, at Microsoft, there is an app, an application, a mobile application called Seeing AI. One of the leading engineers on that project is Sakeep Sheikh, and he's still at Microsoft. And with that application, it leverages computer vision. So you turn it on, it's as if you're looking through the camera of your phone, and you can read a business card, you can read an entire page, you can distinguish different colors, you can look at currency, it tells you different modes. And that's just a snippet, that's just a snippet of the power of computer vision. Computer vision is used in self-driving cars to be able to tell that there's someone crossing the street, there's a stop sign, there's a traffic light, et cetera. So Jeff, you bring up a very important point that we can leverage this emergent technologies in serving the disabled community. Thank you so much for your question. That's great, and I believe we have a question from Heather. Heather, would you like to come on? Is Heather there? There she is. Hi, Heather. Hi, sorry, I'm a little slow there. Thank you so much again, like everybody said, for taking the time to talk to us today. I just had two questions about your personal experiences. What was your greatest challenge during the development process of your invention? And were one or two serendipities, what were some of the best things that happened because of your invention? Hi, Heather. Good afternoon. Thank you very much for joining us. And thanks for your questions. For the challenges between when I was diagnosed and when I developed the thinking Zoom prototype, I think I'd been seen by about 300 different IKEA professionals. That's a different look, certainly. And one of the challenges I faced was that for three years, I started writing some of these doctors that I could be, that could put together this solution that could help the blind and doctors from Johns Hopkins to other institutions couldn't understand what I was talking about. So that, I guess, deleted the prototype by three years, till I actually went and did it myself in 2015. And since doing it, to answer your second question, it's taken me around the world. I think I've spoken in six or seven different countries now, including being featured at the UN in Geneva, Switzerland, the UN Summit in Nairobi, Kenya. The TEDx talks all feature various aspects of the solution. I've spoken at the Academy of Automologies I think three times now. So the rewards have been immense, because it's brought me into spaces that otherwise, perhaps, I may never have been able to get into. And it's allowed me to share the message of disability and innovation in multiple spaces and the multiple platforms around the world. Thank you so much, Zuby. I think we might have a question from Derek Brown. I'm recognizing some of these people from our last cohort of DAV Patriot Bootcamp. Derek, did you want to come on? Yes, thanks, Dan, and thanks, Zuby. I appreciate that. So for me, I'm a therapist by trade. And so I'm just interested in your technology. I was just wondering the applications to therapy. I mean, specifically with veterans who may be suffering from like TBI or PTSD, can this technology be leveraged to tap into that unconscious part of the mind and be able to see some of those maybe thoughts that are not always so evident in our conscious mind in the frontal cortex. So just curious if there's been any other application. Thanks so much, Derek, for joining us. And thanks so much for your question. When it comes to the think and zoom, I guess focused specifically on disability. Of course, I am not a therapist and I'm not a trained therapist. However, your question reminds me about a different application that I saw on a head talk. I think that Zuby, I think we've lost Zuby for just a second here. Hopefully we can get him back real quick. Zuby's doing a great job for us. I know that we've had a few different questions. Really appreciate it. I do wanna talk while we try and get Zuby back. I do wanna mention thank you to the folks. Heather was one of them who attended our first DAV new to DAV Patriot Bootcamp cohort. Patriot Bootcamp of course has been going for 10 years now. But it was the first one that was done as a DAV program. We had 46 participants out here and they did just a fantastic job. If you're interested in DAV Patriot Bootcamp, please sign up for our newsletters at patriotbootcamp.org. You can go to that site, DAV, or actually patriotbootcamp.org and log in and we'll keep you notified. We have programs coming up this coming spring, May and going into October next year. So we're gonna have more on that. From Patriot Bootcamp, one of the things we had, which we have at most events is a pitch contest. And the pitch contest was fantastic. We had 10 or 15 of the participants engaged in that out of 46 members. And I wanna tell everyone to stay tuned for a Shark Tank event that DAV Shark Tank that we're gonna have in a few weeks. I'm not sure if we're gonna get Zuby back. Do you know, Michael can help me with that. And if we're not, I just wanna thank him for all he did, all he stepped forward with. And if we get a chance, we'll have Zuby come on back. But for now, I think it's better we just sign off. Thank you everyone for tuning in and welcome to DAV Caffeine Connect. We'll stay in touch. Thanks guys. Bye-bye.