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 thatshall be utilizing his innovations.
Prakash develops imaging devices and diagnostic instruments, usually to be used in international well being and environmental sciences. His gadgets sometimes 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 screens, or an autonomous malaria diagnostic platform, Prakash all the time consists of value and entry as key elements 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 fingers are we placing these options? A frugal method to fixing the issue is the distinction between 1 p.c of the inhabitants or billions of individuals getting access to that resolution.
Lack of entry creates these sorts of limitations in individuals’s minds, the place they assume they will or can’t method a type of drawback. It’s vital that we as scientists or simply residents of this world create an surroundings 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 obtained my Ph.D. at MIT. I used to be serious 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 after we make entry one of many crucial dimensions of exploration? So, I believe plenty of the work I do is primarily pushed by curiosity, however entry brings one other layer of mental curiosity.
How do you establish an issue which may profit from frugal science?
Prakash: Frankly, it’s arduous to seek out an issue that might 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 plenty of work in diagnostics. Lots [of our solutions] beat the standard strategies which can be neither value efficient nor any good. It’s not about slicing corners; it’s about deeply understanding the issue—higher options at a fraction of the fee. It does require invention. For that order of magnitude change, you actually have to begin contemporary.
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 one was going to supply 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 persons 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 may attempt to, however that’s probably not potential 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 arduous. I don’t need to reduce this course of in any method or type.
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