- [Manu] In science, we
have a kind of a crisis.
Out of two billion kids in this planet,
roughly a billion kids live in poverty.
That's half the world's talent
that has absolutely no access.
And so, for me, the idea has been
to make science accessible to everybody.
My name is Manu Prakash.
I'm a faculty of bio-engineering
at Stanford University,
and I'm an inventor.
I happened to grow up in India,
and I know what it means to
not have access to science.
I remember, in exams, we were asked
to draw a microscope, although
we had never touched or seen one.
And, at that time, I decided to make one.
Of course, I didn't know how it worked.
So the very first microscope I built
was out of cardboard tubes
and my brother's eyeglasses.
That sort of instilled this idea that
if you don't have what you
need, you should build it.
If you talk about
environmental challenges,
climate change, you talk
about bio-diversity loss.
Much of the challenges that
we face in our society depend
on understanding the microscopic world.
So we developed an origami
microscope that you fold together
by folding a piece of paper.
It cost us less than a dollar to build.
It's portable; it weighs
less than 10 grams.
Anybody can carry it in their pocket.
At this point, there are half
a million units out there,
so there are half a million eyes looking
at this invisible world
that we have often ignored.
- Oh, my God.
- [Manu] There are lots
of people who've followed
that work and built upon
our work to actually take it
in new directions that we never imagined.
- Wow.
- [Manu] Much of the
biggest scientific problems
in the world can't just be solved
by sitting in a lab.
This is the "aha" moment.
They require a global community
of people passionate about
actually tackling these problems.
There is a sense of activism
in what we try to do.
And there is a call to action which is,
let's engage.
Tools will come and go,
but it's these communities
that we're trying to enable
that will really stand the test of time.
