frugal science is cool

Frugal Science Will Curb Disease

Manu Prakash

Founder | Foldscope Instruments

While visiting rabies clinics in India and Thailand, Manu Prakash made a damning realization: In remote villages, traditional microscopes are useless. Cumbersome to carry and expensive to maintain, the finely tuned machines are often relegated to a dusty lab corner while medical providers diagnose and treat patients in the field. So the Stanford bio­engineer set out to build what he calls “the pencil of micro­scopy”—a high-­performing tool that’s lightweight, ­durable, and cheap. In 2014 his lab unveiled the Foldscope, an origami-like paper microscope that magnifies objects up to 2,000 times but costs less than $1 to produce. “We quickly realized that writing scientific papers about it wasn’t good enough,” Prakash says. He turned his lab into a mini Foldscope factory, giving away microscopes to anyone who asked. Within a year, the lab had shipped 50,000 of them to users in 135 countries, from Mongolia to rural Montana; this year it aims to donate 1 million. An eager army of DIY scientists has used the tool to identify fake drugs, detect diseased crops, spot counter­feit currency, and more. Earlier this year, Prakash’s lab introduced the Paperfuge, a 20-cent centri­fuge inspired by an ancient spinning toy, which can be used to diagnose diseases like malaria. Prakash’s cheap, cleverly designed devices prove that when it comes to public health problems, the high tech (high-cost) solution isn’t always the best fix. Consider his lab’s latest achievement, a method of identifying mosquito species by recording their wing beats. The apparatus required? A flip phone. —Lauren Murrow