Dubai, UAE, August 10 — This past June, 160 students graduated from the TKS Dubai innovation program at a ceremony held at the Museum of the Future. Among industry partners who worked with the cohort during the program was UAE-based XPANCEO, the GCC’s first deep tech unicorn. Founded in 2021 by Roman Axelrod and Valentyn Volkov, PhD, the company is building smart contact lenses as the ultimate interface for the AI era.
TKS Dubai is a 10-month program for high-potential students aged 13 to 17, delivered in partnership with the Dubai Future Foundation as part of Dubai’s ambition to become a global center for young innovators. XPANCEO joined the program as one of its industry partners, contributing to the students’ learning across several stages of the cohort’s journey.
Over the course of the program, XPANCEO offered the cohort a series of activities, each one taking them further into the world of deep tech. Founder and CTO Dr. Valentyn Volkov opened with a lecture on novel materials, the invisible foundation of a computer worn on the eye. The students were then handed a real question of their own: asked where a smart contact lens should find its first application, teams returned with concepts ranging from protecting astronauts’ vision in space to supporting athlete recovery, which they presented to the XPANCEO team. Later, they were welcomed into the company’s R&D laboratory in Dubai Internet City for a tour and an extended Q&A with the researchers and the company’s founder. The engagement culminated at TKS Dubai Showcase, where Volkov returned as an invited expert in a fireside chat.
For XPANCEO, the collaboration reflected a long-held conviction that breakthrough technology and the people who will one day carry it forward must be developed together. It also widens an education ecosystem that already includes the University of Dubai, Middlesex University Dubai, Khalifa University, American University of Sharjah, and contributes to the Dubai Future Foundation’s broader work in nurturing future-ready talent in the emirate.
“This kind of partnership matters to XPANCEO because the people who will shape optics, nanomaterials, and bio-integration a decade from now are still in school today, and it is worth meeting them early. What struck me most was how genuine their curiosity was, quick to move from how something works to what it could become. This generation gives me real confidence in the future, and I would be glad to see our dialogue with TKS continue in the years ahead.” – Dr. Valentyn Volkov, Founder and CTO at XPANCEO
“Working directly with a company like XPANCEO is exactly the kind of experience TKS Dubai is built around. Our students were not handed a textbook problem — they were trusted with a real strategic question that a deep tech team was actively wrestling with, and asked to defend their thinking in front of the people building the technology. That is how young people develop the judgment, confidence, and ambition to lead in fields that do not yet have a rulebook.” – Sahil Arora, TKS Dubai Program Director
