Manu Prakash is an Indian-American scientist who is a professor of bioengineering at Stanford University. Manu was born in Meerut, India. He is best known for his contributions to the Foldscope[1] and Paperfuge.[2]
Prakash received the MacArthur Fellowship in September 2016. He and his team at Stanford University have developed a synchronous computer that operates using the physics of moving water droplets.[3] His work focuses on frugal innovation that makes medicine, computing and microscopy accessible to more people across the world.[4][5][6]
A Foldscope is an optical microscope that can be assembled from simple components, including a sheet of paper and a lens. 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.[8]
Paperfuge
Paperfuge is a hand-powered ultralow-cost paper centrifuge designed by Manu Prakash and members of the Prakash Lab. Inspired by 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 diagnosis in remote areas.[9][10][11]
