Manu Prakash is an Indian-American scientist who is a professor of bioengineering at Stanford University. Manu was born in Meerut, India. He is best known for his contributions to the Foldscope
/ref> His work focuses on frugal innovation that makes medicine, computing and microscopy accessible to more people across the world.[John Markoff, "Science Tools anyone can afford", New York Times April 21, 2014 [1] Accessed 21 July 2019.]
Early life and education
Manu Prakash was born in
Meerut,
India. He earned a BTech in computer science and engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur and an M.S. and PhD in Applied Physics from Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Notable work
Foldscope
A
Foldscope is an optical microscope that can be assembled from simple components, including a sheet of paper and a
lens. It was developed by Jim Cybulski and Manu Prakash and designed to cost less than US$1 to build. It is part of the "frugal science" movement, which aims to make cheap and easy tools available for scientific use in the developing world.
Paperfuge
Paperfuge is a hand-powered ultralow-cost paper centrifuge designed by Manu Prakash and members of the Prakash Lab. Inspired by the
whirlygig toy configuration, Dr. Manu designed a centrifuge using the toy's design and Supercoiling-mediated ultrafast spinning dynamics. The Paperfuge can be used to separate Plasma and RBC for rapid
Malaria diagnosis in remote areas.
Awards
TED Fellow 2009, TED Fellow 2010, TED Senior Fellow 2011
Gates Foundation Global Health "Explorations" Grant 2012
NIH Director's New Innovator Award 2015
MacArthur Fellow 2016
Unilever Colworth Prize 2020
External links
