In 2015, ImpactLabs Global organized a summer workshop with Technology Innovation Labs (TIL) of Bells University of Technology, Ota, Nigeria.

The Speakers

Our speakers add diversity and additional excitement to the ImpactLabs program.

They volunteer their time to talk to ImpactLabs students about what has helped them grow professionally and otherwise, and discuss their projects/business concept/social change program to get the students thinking about how they can also make at least as much impact in the future. Our speakers are accomplished engineers, entrepreneurs or inspiring mentors in the Nigerian technology space.

Similoluwa Adejumo

Similoluwa desires to make a remarkable difference in Africa by effecting positive change in his environment. He has consistently contributed to his community’s healthcare through his affiliation with AIESEC and Nigerian Red Cross. These experiences raised his awareness on the challenges citizens face in accessing healthcare, thus informing his decision to found Aajoh, a healthcare enterprise in Nigeria that aims to simplify and standardize the healthcare process in Nigeria. He was elected the student president of the Nigerian Society of Chemical Engineers, Obafemi Awolowo University (OAU) student’s chapter, and selected as one of the 28 most promising student entrepreneurs in Nigeria for Lifting Youth and Fostering Entrepreneurship bootcamp (LYFECAMP) 2014. He was also selected for FastLaunch’s Social Impact Entrepreneur program Lagos, Nigeria, is an ambassador of Yunus&Youth and was recently selected for MIT’s Global Entrepreneurship Bootcamp. He completed his bachelor’s degree in Chemical Engineering at OAU in 2014.

Kesiena Owho-Ovuakporie

Kesiena has over five years software engineering experience and has worked with various global technology companies such as Deutsche Bank (UK) and Google (Switzerland). He has led the design and development of enterprise, web and mobile applications, and he possesses extensive knowledge of over a dozen programming languages and development platforms. Kesiena firmly believes that entrepreneurship, technological innovation and online collaboration platforms will be major accelerators of positive changes in Africa. Kesiena holds a first class Bachelor’s degree in Electrical and Electronic Engineering from The University of Manchester (UK). He is a research assistant at MIT REAP (Regional Entrepreneurship Acceleration Program) and a Master’s candidate in the Technology and Policy Program at MIT’s school of Engineering. Kesiena is the recipient of various honours and awards such as the Cambridge Commonwealth Trust Scholarship, MIT Legatum Fellowship and The MasterCard Foundation Fellowship. He is also the Founder of OneText – an SMS messaging platform that revolutionizes contact management and information broadcast between Nigerian organisations and their clients.

Dr Adetunji Adegbesan

Dr Adetunji Adegbesan is the Founder & CEO of Gidi Mobile Ltd; one of Nigeria’s fastest growing young firms, and the creators of gidimo, Africa’s first mobile learning and personal advancement platform. Tunji has a First Class Honours degree in Electronic Engineering, and a PhD in Strategic Management from the IESE Business School. He is one of Africa’s best-respected international scholars of competitive strategy, as well as one of her top experts on the mobile telecommunications industry. He is a member of the editorial board of Strategic Organization, as well as a peer reviewer for several of the world’s leading strategy research journals. A recipient of multiple awards, he has been invited to speak at knowledge events in more than twenty countries across four continents. Immediately prior to founding Gidi Mobile, he was Director of the Centre for Competitiveness & Strategy at the Lagos Business School (LBS), where he led sessions on Competitive Strategy, as well as on issues arising out of the intersection of Strategy, Technology, and Innovation. During his 14 years at LBS, his consulting experience spanned the software, telecommunications, banking, oil and gas, publishing, logistics, identity management and electronic payments industries; while his prior work experience covered food and beverages, software development, consulting, information systems management, and electrical engineering, in both manufacturing and service sectors. An amateur historian, philosopher, and student of culture and geo-political affairs, Tunji is fluent in English and Spanish, and basic in French, Yoruba and Catalan.

Otaru Babatunde - Team Humane

Team Humane developed a platform that allows people with visual impairment perform tasks on their smartphones.
Otaru Babatunde does a couple of programming languages including java, php and c# among others. He is currently a student of Obafemi Awolowo University studying Electronic and electrical engineering. He is very passionate about solving challenges facing Africa using technology and he has been involved in numerous projects which cut across robotics and computer science. He designed the operating system which humane runs on. He is also a very active member of IEEE region 8 section.

Oyatope Blessing - Team Humane

Oyatope Blessing is an Electronic and Electrical Engineering student of the Obafemi Awolowo University. He specializes in embedded systems, highly flexible in hardware high level programming languages such as mikroC, C++, Pascal, etc. His innovative skills have made him do so much in engineering especially in home automation. He designed Humane’s circuitry. He is also an IEEE member.

Victor Shoaga - Team Humane

Victor Shoaga is a student of Obafemi Awolowo University studying Electronics and Electrical Engineering. He is interested and involved in designing embedded systems from ground up. Though still has a lot of things to learn, he is quite experienced with handling sensors, micro-controllers, mini-computers and other hardware platforms. He writes C, Python, C# and Android. He built the hardware architecture that humane sits on.

Obasegun Ayodele - Team Humane

Obasegun Ayodele is an Electronics and Electrical Undergraduate in the prestigious Obafemi Awolowo University Ile-Ife. He is passionate about creating engineering solutions that meet local demands with global standards. He is a National Instruments Certified Associate Developer which shows competence in the LabVIEW Development Environment. He heads the iLABs-OAU Research Team, he has worked at Hooks Electric, and he also has a technical paper on Remote Experimental Labs in the 2015 ASEE Annual Conference and Exposition. He leads the team that developed Humane which is a virtual sensory software platform for the visually impaired. He is an active member of the IEEE-OAU Students branch and currently serves as the Vice-president of the branch. He has participated in the global annual 24-hours IEEEXtreme Programming competition for 4 consecutive years. Coupled with his technical prowess in effective team leadership and building skills.

Obinna Okwodu

Obinna hails from Owerri in Imo State, but has been based in Lagos since birth. He started his education at Grange Primary School in Lagos after which he went on to secondary school at Olashore International School in Osun State. While at Olashore, he developed an interest in Mathematics and Physics, and went on to Winchester College in England where he was able to develop his interest in these subjects. Upon applying to University, he was keen on studying Engineering and this led him to apply to MIT. At MIT he obtained a dual degree in Civil Engineering and Management Science, graduating in 2014. Also while at MIT, he was part of a team that founded the Exposure Robotics Academy and over three years the academy taught about 100 Nigerian secondary school kids how to program robots. He spent the last year working at Morgan Stanley in New York, and is back in Nigeria to do his NYSC. Obinna is a huge basketball (and Golden State Warriors) fan and a casual Manchester United fan. He also plays a lot of baseball in his spare time.