EMERGENT VENTURES APPLICATION Eniola Ayodele Olutogun Independent researcher, Lagos, Nigeria / ZYCO ORCID 0009-0001-9272-6735 | github.com/AmunRaPtah | zyco.org PROJECT SUMMARY Addiction begins as a memory. The Conjunctive Consolidation Threshold model, which I built and formalised over 2025 and 2026, treats the encoding of reward-drug associations as a threshold event that can be pharmacologically pushed below the point at which a durable memory forms. The core result: simulated encoding probability drops from 0.855 to 0.122, an 85.8 percent reduction, with a super-additive interaction of plus 12.8 percentage points across the three intervention arms, and all five pre-registered hypotheses H1 to H5 confirmed under ODE/RK45 integration and Bayesian MCMC. I produced this as an independent researcher in Lagos with no PhD programme, no lab, and no institutional compute budget. Three sole-authored preprints are public on OSF and Zenodo; a review article is under review at Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews. Emergent Ventures funds the specific next step from model to clinic. ABOUT ME Trained as a pharmacist at the University of Ibadan and PCN-licensed, I moved into computational neuroscience without asking permission from a credentialing system. The output over eighteen months: the CCT model plus three working software platforms. IMPRINT screens compounds for addiction liability. TOPOLOGIX applies topological data analysis, persistent homology over bipartite simplicial complexes, to drug-protein interaction, with a hERG cardiotoxicity MVP already running. GATE, released under Apache 2.0, evaluates neural-stimulation safety for brain-computer interfaces. Kent Berridge at Michigan, Samuel Gershman at Harvard, Nathaniel Daw at Princeton, and Marcelo Mattar at NYU have engaged with the work; Gershman provided my arXiv endorsement. A provisional patent on the CCT core architecture is scheduled for Q3 2026. My day job is National Product Manager at Synthcare; the research runs on nights, weekends, and a personal HPC allocation stretched past its limits. WHY THIS FITS EMERGENT VENTURES Tyler Cowen backs people who do frontier work outside institutions and who move fast on concrete, high-variance ideas. This is what a self-directed builder from Nigeria produces when the credential path is bypassed: a validated tripartite model, pre-registered receipts, and shipped code. The scaling story is a pipeline, IMPRINT screening feeding a CCT dosing protocol guarded by the TOPOLOGIX safety layer. The stakes are the LMIC addiction burden, where pharmacological treatment infrastructure sits near zero and where a compound-plus-protocol approach can leapfrog the clinic capacity the West took decades to build. Nigeria is the right place to prove a treatment that has to work without a specialist on every corner. THE ASK Six months of cloud compute to run the Bayesian MCMC population dynamics at full scale rather than the truncated chains my current allocation forces. One research trip to the Berridge and Gershman labs to convert email correspondence into a wet-lab validation collaboration. Provisional patent filing costs for the CCT core architecture ahead of the Q3 2026 deadline. A precise dollar figure per line item follows in the budget note below; the total is sized to move CCT from simulation to a pre-clinical validation plan within twelve months. RESEARCH STATEMENT The problem addiction research keeps circling is that reward-drug learning, once consolidated, is durable and relapse-prone; most pharmacotherapy targets the consolidated state rather than the moment of encoding. The Conjunctive Consolidation Threshold model reframes the target. Encoding of a reward-drug association is modelled as a threshold-gated event driven by the conjunction of dopaminergic salience, glutamatergic plasticity, and a consolidation window; push any one term below threshold at the right time and the memory does not durably form. The tripartite structure means the three pharmacological levers are not independent but interact, which is why the observed effect is super-additive at plus 12.8 percentage points rather than a simple sum. The formal work is done in three layers. The foundational paper (OSF 10.17605/OSF.IO/KG7B5) sets out the biological argument. The mathematical specification (OSF 10.17605/OSF.IO/EMY4U) gives the ODE system, integrated with RK45. The Bayesian population-dynamics paper (Zenodo 10.5281/zenodo.20492472) adds MCMC parameter estimation across a simulated population and lays out a clinical trial architecture. Encoding probability falls from 0.855 to 0.122, an 85.8 percent reduction, and hypotheses H1 through H5 were pre-registered before the runs and all confirmed. This is not a fitted narrative; the predictions were committed in advance. The engineering exists so the model does not stay a paper. IMPRINT scores candidate compounds for addiction liability, which selects what enters the CCT protocol. TOPOLOGIX uses Ripser and Gudhi to compute persistent homology over bipartite drug-protein simplicial complexes, giving an interaction-safety layer with a working hERG cardiotoxicity MVP; cardiotoxicity is the failure mode most likely to kill a CNS candidate, so it is the first thing I built. GATE handles neural-stimulation safety for any BCI-adjacent delivery route. The stack is Python across scipy, numpy, PyMC, and pandas, with NEURON and Brian2 for biophysical detail, AlphaFold and RDKit and AutoDock and GROMACS for structure, and Nextflow on SLURM for the HPC runs. What Emergent Ventures funds is the transition from in-silico to pre-clinical. Full-scale MCMC removes the chain-length compromise my current compute imposes and lets me quantify population heterogeneity in the threshold, which is the parameter a trial protocol depends on. A visit to Michigan and Harvard turns four endorsing correspondents into one wet-lab partner willing to test a CCT prediction in a rodent conditioned-place-preference paradigm, the cheapest experiment that can falsify the model. The provisional patent protects the architecture so a later licensing or nonprofit-delivery route to LMIC clinics stays open. Twelve months from funding, the deliverable is a pre-registered pre-clinical validation plan with a named collaborator and a filed patent, plus a co-authored paper; a second co-authored paper is already under review at Alcohol. BUDGET NOTE - Cloud compute, six months of scaled Bayesian MCMC: insert quoted figure from provider (AWS/GCP spot HPC). - One research trip, Lagos to Michigan and Harvard: insert airfare, lodging, and per-diem estimate. - Provisional patent filing, CCT core architecture: insert attorney and USPTO filing quote. - Total requested: insert sum, sized within the 10,000 to 100,000 dollar range EV typically awards. CHECKLIST - [ ] Emergent Ventures online application form completed (name, contact, country, project description) - [ ] Project summary pasted into the "what is your idea" field, trimmed to the form's length limit - [ ] Short bio with Lagos / independent-researcher framing - [ ] Specific dollar ask with the three line items and total filled in - [ ] Links to all three preprints (OSF KG7B5, OSF EMY4U, Zenodo 20492472) - [ ] Links to IMPRINT, TOPOLOGIX, and GATE repositories or landing pages - [ ] ORCID, GitHub, and zyco.org links included - [ ] One-sentence description of the endorsement from Gershman and correspondence with Berridge, Daw, Mattar - [ ] Note on Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews and Alcohol submissions with current status - [ ] Confirm no CV is required (EV asks for the form only); attach one only if a field allows it - [ ] Proofread for the no-em-dash, no-markdown constraint before submitting EDITOR NOTES - Eligibility: Emergent Ventures has an active Africa/LMIC track and explicitly backs independent, non-institutional applicants, so the profile fits; confirm the current intake is open (it runs in rolling cohorts, occasionally paused) before submitting. - Verify before sending: the exact encoding-probability figures (0.855 to 0.122, plus 12.8 pp), the Gershman arXiv endorsement wording, and that all four named academics have consented to be referenced; "engaged with the work" and "endorsement" are not the same and Cowen may check. - Insert personal detail: the real dollar figures for every budget line, and one or two sentences on your personal stake in the addiction problem (a Lagos-specific observation or motivation) that the profile does not contain and that Cowen's application specifically rewards. - Framing risk: the strategy note flags that EV leans toward economically scalable ventures; keep the "platform-to-clinic pipeline" and LMIC-infrastructure angle prominent and do not let the pitch read as pure academic pharmacology. - Length: EV's form is short and Cowen prizes brevity; the PROJECT SUMMARY and ABOUT ME plus THE ASK may be all you paste in. Hold the RESEARCH STATEMENT and BUDGET NOTE in reserve for a follow-up or a linked one-pager rather than overloading the form.