Philipp Kozin, PhD, EMBA

Philipp Kozin, PhD, EMBASep 28, 2026

Your best operations person knows exactly how the work gets done. What if they could teach an AI simply by recording their screen? That’s the idea behind Akai—the AI agent platform Deel built for its own back office and is now opening to other companies. Deel says its teams have already saved 90,000 hours of back-office work using it. Here’s the process shown in the video: → Record your screen and explain what you’re doing. → Akai maps the workflow and builds the automation. → Review, approve, and let it run. No technical skills required. It connects across systems, including legacy tools without prebuilt APIs, and learns from corrections and edge cases. You also get the controls companies need: permissions, approvals, and audit trails. Think about the work this could absorb. Reconciling payments. Copying invoice data. Collecting documents across portals. Rebuilding the same report every month. The interesting shift: the person who understands the task can also build its automation. For me, that raises a bigger question about the future of work: How much expertise is currently trapped in repetitive execution—and what could people do with that time back? For companies with more than 100 employees, Deel guarantees 1,000 hours saved in the first 30 days or a full refund. Book a demo: [akai.run](https://www.akai.run/)

Philipp Kozin, PhD, EMBASep 29, 2026

A firefly carries a tiny chemical light source inside its body. 🪲💡Here’s how it works! Inside its abdomen, specialised cells contain a molecule called luciferin. An enzyme called luciferase helps it react with oxygen, using ATP the energy currency of living cells.. The reaction produces a molecule in an excited state. As it returns to a lower-energy state, it releases energy as light! But producing light is only part of the engineering challenge. That light also needs to escape. Researchers studying fireflies found that the uneven, overlapping scales on their lanterns help more light get out. Inspired by this structure, they created a patterned coating that increased an LED’s light extraction by up to 55% in the 2013 experiment! That distinction matters: the improvement concerned how much light escaped the LED not a blanket 55% increase in electrical efficiency. For me, this is what makes biomimicry so interesting for technology foresight.One small insect offers lessons in both the chemistry of producing light and the geometry of delivering it! #Biomimicry #Bioluminescence #LightBugs #Fireflies #chemistry #Luciferin #EmergingTechnologies #Foresight

Philipp Kozin, PhD, EMBASep 28, 2026

What if the road beneath your car could help clean the air!? ☀️🛣️ In Hengelo the Netherlands, researchers tested pavement containing titanium dioxide, a material that uses UV light to drive chemical reactions, converting nitrogen oxides from traffic pollution into nitrates. Their 2013 study reported NOx concentrations averaging 19% lower above the treated section than above the control section. Measurements covered 26 days spread over more than a year Promising but performance depended on conditions. The researchers also observed declining effectiveness after the first coating had been exposed to traffic and weather (durability matters as much as chemistry!) As a foresighter, I see a broader opportunity: giving everyday construction materials additional environmental functions. Imagine streets and buildings designed to manage rainwater, reduce heat and help remove pollutants. Every resurfacing project could become an opportunity to improve how a city functions. Though I also thought that simple trees in the streets would probably manage better than all this smart chemistry! #Foresight #SmartMaterials #FutureCities #Innovation #Infrastructure #SmartRoads #Roads #RoadPavement #CarPollution #Exhaust