The origami microscope: science for all the children of the world.

Written by Christine Kurihara and edited by William Dwyer

I’ve been working with Foldscope Instruments since 2015. The company was born at Stanford University–where I had been working as a research administrator for 25 years–out of the laboratory of professor Manu Prakash, a man well known in science accessibility circles.?

I have long tried to live my life doing things that are good?—?and by that I mean, good for the planet, good for people, good for my children and my children’s children. This ranges from the everyday recycling to the very personal decision of raising only 2 children (see ZPG), and from avoiding unnecessary air travel to lifelong vegetarianism. You get the idea.

As I was nearing the end of my career at Stanford, I met Dr Prakash and fell in love with his mission to make science accessible. I knew right away that I wanted to support his work in any way that I could.? One day I approached him in the halls of the building we shared and asked if he needed any administrative help. He was surprised as he had just recently lost his admin and was wondering how to find her replacement. Right time, right place and a few months later I was working for Manu.

Born in rural India to a family that highly valued education (6 of his 7 uncles and aunts were teachers), Manu has been curious about the world from his earliest days. He was always looking for creative ways to explore that world (see his feature in Stanford Magazine), even attempting to build a microscope out of his brother’s glasses.?As the story continues, early in his career as a fledgling bioengineer, he was traveling to remote locations in East Asia when he came across a fairly sophisticated microscope that was clearly going unused. He queried his host and came to learn that people were afraid to use it–the lens alone cost more than a year’s wages–and wouldn’t touch it.

This encounter set him on the path to create a device with similar functionality, minus the fear-factor.?

Manu’s idea was simple: design a paper microscope that can be manufactured cheaply and sold at very low prices. I embraced the rationale behind this ambitious project the very moment I heard it: every child on the planet should have access to scientific tools so that they, too, could discover and research, study and predict, invent and wonder! Curiosity shouldn’t be reserved to those of us with ready access to expensive tools.

Foldscope spun out of the lab in 2016 as a company run by Dr Prakash’s recently-graduated PhD student, James Cybulski. Later that year I started supporting Dr. Cybulski with the newly founded company and in 2018, I retired from Stanford and begun working at Foldscope as full time Director of Administration.

The story of Foldscope seems deceptively simple?, but its success is nothing short of miraculous. The very idea of a paper microscope was revolutionary, let alone the design, testing, manufacturing, and distribution that a full-scale operation would entail. All this, within the scope of a non-profit structure funded by a handful of companies (the Moore and Simons foundations, Millipore-Sigma) along with early support from the state of India.

In 2017, a small online store was up and running. By 2019, 1 million people in more than 140 countries owned a paper microscope.?

Testimonies of Folscope’s success continue to pour in from across the globe. But where the tool has been the most successful is in classrooms, in the hands of students. A simple yet powerful paper microscope can help kindle the ‘potential for curiosity, research and learning inherent to every child,’ remarks Carmen Chavez, director of the Peru programs at the Amazon Center for Environmental Education and Research (ACEER).?

Manu and Jim Cybulski didn’t stop with the paper microscope. The company also produced accessories to support the foldscope, developing a two-tier product strategy to sustain production. The first tier contains the original Foldscope–for $1.75 a piece–but is sold in packs of 20. These Classroom Kits, as they were dubbed, would allow for shipping and handling to be kept within the cost of the product. The second tier contains a more comprehensive kit with several accessories (pipettes, tweezers, scissors, filters, and a light source), turning the foldscope into a sort of mini lab-in-a-box and in turn helping to keep the price of the Classroom Kit to a minimum.?

Keeping accessibility at the core of its mission, Foldscope had to be creative with its financing to ensure the company stayed afloat.??

The second generation product was launched in early 2023. The original foldscope’s design was improved and the lab kit grew even more powerful, with the addition of 3 interchangeable lenses (50x, 140x and 340x). Last but not least, the company introduced its latest addition: the MREC, or MicroRealms Explorer Card.

A fancy name for a revolutionary, albeit simple idea. MRECs are akin to microscope slides containing real samples, but are the size of playing cards and tey provide detailed information about the sample to-be-observed under the microscope. The first set was launched just last year with a box of 5 samples, and more are on the way.?

Before MRECs, the microscope slide has not changed since the earliest days of microscopy. Jim and Manu accepted the challenge, creating a new design that would appeal to younger microscopists. See the result at the Foldscope website.

This type of company, which you might call a Public Benefit, stands out among the list of Stanford startups which includes Google, Yahoo, Cisco, and HP.? But it’s not an easy road. Most funding sources look for a return on their investment, which typically means money, and lots of it. That has never been Foldscope.

What if we invented a new type of return instead??A return on investment that looks like greater curiosity, greater access to science, and greater awe for the natural world and its microscopic wonders. Then the ROI for Foldscope would be quite high indeed. And investors would come running.

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