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 all over the world to raised perceive the issues he’s engaged on, in addition to the communities that will likely be utilizing his innovations.
Prakash develops imaging devices and diagnostic instruments, typically to be used in world well being and environmental sciences. His gadgets usually value radically lower than standard gear—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 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, once we try to ask and clear up issues and puzzles, it turns into essential: 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 limitations in folks’s minds, the place they suppose they’ll or can not strategy a sort of downside. 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 acquired my Ph.D. at MIT. I used to be occupied with this stark distinction in worlds that I had seen and lived in, so after I began my lab, it was nearly a dedication to [asking]: What does it imply once we make entry one of many important dimensions of exploration? So, I feel 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 establish an issue that may profit from frugal science?
Prakash: Frankly, it’s exhausting 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 quite a lot of work in diagnostics. Quite a bit [of our solutions] beat the standard strategies which are neither value efficient nor any good. It’s not about chopping corners; it’s about deeply understanding the issue—higher options at a fraction of the price. 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 understand it as model 3. We created Foldscope a very long time in the past; then I spotted that no person 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 fearful of this, they need to by no means invent something [laughs], as a result of when you invent one thing, it’s a lifelong venture. You don’t put it apart; the venture doesn’t put you apart. You’ll be able to attempt to, however that’s not likely attainable 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 exhausting. I don’t wish to decrease this course of in any means or type.
