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 around the globe to higher perceive the issues he’s engaged on, in addition to the communities thatmight be utilizing his innovations.
Prakash develops imaging devices and diagnostic instruments, typically to be used in international well being and environmental sciences. His units usually value radically lower than typical tools—he goals for reductions of two or extra orders of magnitude. Whether or not he’s engaged on pocketable microscopes, mosquito or plankton displays, or an autonomous malaria diagnostic platform, Prakash at all times contains value 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, once we try to ask and resolve issues and puzzles, it turns into essential: In whose arms are we placing these options? A frugal strategy to fixing the issue is the distinction between 1 p.c of the inhabitants or billions of individuals accessing that answer.
Lack of entry creates these sorts of boundaries in individuals’s minds, the place they suppose they’ll or can’t strategy a type of drawback. It’s essential that we as scientists or simply residents of this world create an surroundings that feels that anyone has an opportunity to make essential 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 thought of “frugal science”?
Prakash: I grew up in India and lived with little or no entry to issues. And I obtained my Ph.D. at MIT. I used to be excited about 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 once we make entry one of many vital dimensions of exploration? So, I feel plenty 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 that may profit from frugal science?
Prakash: Frankly, it’s laborious to seek out an issue that may not profit from entry. The query to ask is “The place are the uncared for issues that we as a society have did not sort out?” We do plenty of work in diagnostics. Quite a bit [of our solutions] beat the standard strategies which can be neither value efficient nor any good. It’s not about reducing 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 start out 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 realize it as model 3. We created Foldscope a very long time in the past; then I spotted that no person 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 hundreds of thousands of Foldscopes being deployed.
So it’s steady. If individuals are frightened of this, they need to by no means invent something [laughs], as a result of when you invent one thing, it’s a lifelong undertaking. You don’t put it apart; the undertaking doesn’t put you apart. You’ll be able to attempt to, however that’s not likely doable in case your coronary heart is in it. You at all times see issues. Nothing is ever excellent. That may be ever consuming. It’s laborious. I don’t wish to decrease this course of in any means or kind.
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