Here is what he needs to do.
If he is a good mobile developer and knows English to pass an interview, first thing he should find a good-paying remote job. Couple of good places to start with are workatastartup.com and linkedin. Once he lands a remote position, he should spend couple of months to learn the company and workstyle and make himself comfortable with his job duties.
After that he could easily find several hours a week for his research. Considering the fact he has no dependants, he should be able to do the work, do his research and generally live pretty decent life.
Main goal for him should be securing his life first (food, place to live) and only after that he can think about reaching his goals.
I'd recommend going through "Early history of Smalltalk" and "The Dream machine". First covers Kay's work and Smalltalk - how it started, what was the reasoning behind it.
I'm still in progress with the second one, but it gives pretty deep dive in history of computing, covering a lot about personalities behind the field and their work.
There is one thing I'm always thinking about: a mesh network of autonomous devices that scattered across a field or a forest and a base nearby. These devices can have temperature sensors and someone can rather quickly see that something is going wrong either by temperature or if some amount of devices went down (say burnt in fire).
I think those things called sensor networks or something like this.
Main goal for him should be securing his life first (food, place to live) and only after that he can think about reaching his goals.