Manu Prakash spoke with IEEE Spectrum shortly after returning to Stanford College from a month aboard a analysis vessel off the coast of California, the place he was testing instruments to monitor oceanic carbon sequestration. The affiliate professor conducts fieldwork world wide to higher perceive the issues he’s engaged on, in addition to the communities thatshall be utilizing his innovations.
Prakash develops imaging devices and diagnostic instruments, typically to be used in world well being and environmental sciences. His gadgets sometimes price radically lower than standard tools—he goals for reductions of two or extra orders of magnitude. Whether or not he’s engaged on pocketable microscopes, mosquito or plankton screens, or an autonomous malaria diagnostic platform, Prakash all the time contains price and entry as key features of his engineering. He calls this philosophy “frugal science.”
Why ought to we take into consideration science frugally?
Manu Prakash: To me, after we are attempting to ask and resolve issues and puzzles, it turns into vital: In whose palms are we placing these options? A frugal strategy to fixing the issue is the distinction between 1 % of the inhabitants or billions of individuals gaining access to that answer.
Lack of entry creates these sorts of boundaries in folks’s minds, the place they assume they will or can not strategy a form of downside. It’s vital that we as scientists or simply residents of this world create an atmosphere that feels that anyone has an opportunity to make vital innovations and discoveries in the event that they put their coronary heart to it. The doorway to all that’s depending on instruments, however these instruments are simply inaccessible.
How did you first encounter the concept of “frugal science”?
Prakash: I grew up in India and lived with little or no entry to issues. And I bought my Ph.D. at MIT. I used to be occupied with this stark distinction in worlds that I had seen and lived in, so once I began my lab, it was nearly a dedication to [asking]: What does it imply after we make entry one of many essential dimensions of exploration? So, I believe quite a lot of the work I do is primarily pushed by curiosity, however entry brings one other layer of mental curiosity.
How do you determine an issue which may profit from frugal science?
Prakash: Frankly, it’s onerous to search out an issue that will not profit from entry. The query to ask is “The place are the uncared for issues that we as a society have did not deal with?” We do quite a lot of work in diagnostics. Loads [of our solutions] beat the standard strategies which can be neither price efficient nor any good. It’s not about chopping corners; it’s about deeply understanding the issue—higher options at a fraction of the associated fee. It does require invention. For that order of magnitude change, you actually have to begin recent.
The place does your involvement with an invention finish?
Prakash: Innovations are a part of our soul. Your involvement by no means ends. I simply designed the 415th model of Foldscope [a low-cost “origami” microscope]. Folks solely comprehend it as model 3. We created Foldscope a very long time in the past; then I noticed that no one was going to offer entry to it. So we went again and invented the manufacturing course of for Foldscope to scale it. We made the primary 100,000 Foldscopes within the lab, which led to tens of millions of Foldscopes being deployed.
So it’s steady. If individuals are afraid of this, they need to by no means invent something [laughs], as a result of when you invent one thing, it’s a lifelong mission. You don’t put it apart; the mission doesn’t put you apart. You’ll be able to attempt to, however that’s probably not doable in case your coronary heart is in it. You all the time see issues. Nothing is ever good. That may be ever consuming. It’s onerous. I don’t need to reduce this course of in any approach or kind.
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