kanpur an alumnus of indian institute of technology kanpur iitk manu prakash has recieved the coveted macarthur genius fellowship an honour conferred for exceptional creativity and potential in respective fields prakash who has bagged the award is a physical biologist currently working in department of bioengineering at stanford university he is among the 23 scientists selected by the macarthur foundation for the fellows programme for the year 2016 the fellowship grant includes a stipend of usd 625000 given for over five years to allow the recipients to pursue hisher work independentlya biophysicist of repute prakash has been working to invent simple solutions to problems in global health ecological surveillance and science education he has varied research interests and is probably the best known for his workinventing hightech tools from inexpensive materials such as a pocketsized paper microscope which is powerful enough to detect a malaria parasite in a drop of blood and yet costs only 50 centscongratulating him on his win prof sumit ganguly head department of computer science engineering at iitkanpur said the cse department congratulates its alumnus manu on receiving the macarthur foundations genius grant fellowship he had worked with prof amitabha mukherjee on robotics for his btech project during which he exhibited a natural flair towards interdisciplinary work prakash completed his btech from department of computer science engineering at iit kanpur in 2002 and then went on to pursue his phd at massachusetts institute of technology usa from 200811 he was a junior fellow of the harvard society of fellows and currently he is also an affiliate member of the woods institute for environment he has numerous patents in his name and his work has been published in prestigious journals including journal of experimental biology and nature