Alumnus of IIT-K gets MacArthur Genius fellowship

Kanpur: An alumnus of Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur (IIT-K) 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 bio-engineering 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 625,000 given for over five years to allow the recipients to pursue his/her work independently.
A 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 work--inventing hightech tools from inexpensive materials such as a pocket-sized paper microscope which is powerful enough to detect a malaria parasite in a drop of blood and yet costs only 50 cents.
Congratulating him on his win, Prof Sumit Ganguly, head, department of computer science engineering at IIT-Kanpur, said, "The CSE department congratulates its alumnus Manu on receiving the MacArthur Foundation's "genius grant" fellowship. He had worked with Prof Amitabha Mukherjee on robotics for his B.Tech project during which he exhibited a natural flair towards inter-disciplinary 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 2008-11, 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.