63 | Manu Prakash and how the discovery changes you

Manu Prakash is a professor of bioengineering at Stanford University, asking biological questions with insights from physics. His most widely known contribution is the FoldScope, a $1-microscope made from paper and a lens – 2 million copies of this have been distributed to would-be scientists around the world. In this episode, Manu emphasizes how science is a sense of wonder and a personal journey with no set roads. To get to new and deep questions, Manu feels he needs to “embed” himself in the world he's studying, e.g., by spending weeks on research vessels on the open sea when he’s interested in deep-sea biology. In his view, the most important consequence of a discovery is not how it impacts the world, but how it changes the scientist making the discovery.

This episode was supported by Research Theory (researchtheory.org). For more information about Night Science, visit https://www.biomedcentral.com/collections/night-science .

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction
• 2:05 Embedding into a problem and finding footholds
• 11:36 Self-awareness plays a critical role
• 19:17 Carving time for thinking
• 25:15 Deeper insight into “Embedding”
• 29:37 Thanking our sponsors
• 30:09 The power of intuition
• 33:46 Research: A million pieced dynamic puzzle
• 40:42 Advice to young students and final thoughts