Manu Prakash is an Indian scientist who is a professor of bioengineering at

Stanford University Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is conside ...

. Manu was born in Meerut, India. He is best known for his contributions to the Foldscope and Paperfuge. Prakash received the

MacArthur Fellowship The MacArthur Fellows Program, also known as the MacArthur Fellowship and commonly but unofficially known as the "Genius Grant", is a prize awarded annually by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation typically to between 20 and 30 indi ...

in September 2016. He and his team are also working on a water droplet based computer in Stanford University. His work focuses on frugal innovation that makes medicine, computing and microscopy accessible to more people across the world.

Early life and education

Manu Prakash was born in

Meerut Meerut (, IAST: ''Meraṭh'') is a city in Meerut district of the western part of the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh. The city lies northeast of the national capital New Delhi, within the National Capital Region and west of the state capital ...

India India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, seventh-largest country by area, the List of countries and dependencies by population, second-most populous ...

. He earned a

BTech A Bachelor of Technology (Latin ''Baccalaureus Technologiae'', commonly abbreviated as B.Tech. or BTech; with honours as B.Tech. (Hons.)) is an undergraduate academic degree conferred after the completion of a three to five-year program of studi ...

in computer science and engineering from the

Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur The Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur (IIT Kanpur) Hindi: भारतीय प्रौद्योगिकी संस्थान कानपुर) is a public institute of technology located in Kanpur, Uttar Pradesh, India. It was ...

, and an M.S. and PhD in Applied Physics from

Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of th ...

Notable work

Foldscope

A Foldscope is an

optical microscope The optical microscope, also referred to as a light microscope, is a type of microscope that commonly uses visible light and a system of lenses to generate magnified images of small objects. Optical microscopes are the oldest design of micro ...

that can be assembled from simple components, including a sheet of paper and a

lens A lens is a transmissive optical device which focuses or disperses a light beam by means of refraction. A simple lens consists of a single piece of transparent material, while a compound lens consists of several simple lenses (''elements ...

. 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 at Prakash Lab. Inspired from 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 Malaria is a mosquito-borne infectious disease that affects humans and other animals. Malaria causes symptoms that typically include fever, tiredness, vomiting, and headaches. In severe cases, it can cause jaundice, seizures, coma, or death. ...

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

References

External links

* https://web.stanford.edu/group/prakash-lab/ * https://www.foldscope.com/ Living people IIT Kanpur alumni Stanford University faculty American inventors American academics of Indian descent MacArthur Fellows Scientists from the San Francisco Bay Area Year of birth missing (living people) {{US-inventor-stub