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About Manu
Manu Prakash is an Associate Professor of Bioengineering at Stanford University, Senior Fellow at the Woods Institute for the Environment, and Associate Professor by courtesy of Oceans, with research contributions spanning Biology. He received a B.Tech. in Computer Science and Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur in 2002, an M.S. in Applied Physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2004, and a Ph.D. in Applied Physics from MIT in 2008. Following his doctorate, he held a Junior Fellowship in Biophysics at the Harvard Society of Fellows from 2008 to 2011. Prakash joined Stanford in 2011 as Assistant Professor of Bioengineering, advancing to Associate Professor in 2018. He serves on the Core Leadership Team of the Stanford Center for Innovation in Global Health since 2017 and as a board member of Jasper Ridge Reserve since 2017. He is a member of Bio-X, Wu Tsai Human Performance Alliance, Maternal & Child Health Research Institute, Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute, and affiliate of Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment.
In the field of physical biology, Manu Prakash's laboratory employs interdisciplinary methods, including theory and experiments, to explore computation embodied in biological matter. This encompasses cognition in single-cell protists, morphological computing in animals without neurons, and origins of complex behavior in multicellular systems. The group invents tools for non-model organisms, with emphasis on ocean life, addressing how cells sense pressure or gravity. Notable frugal science innovations include Foldscope, an origami-based paper microscope (PLoS One, 2014), and Paperfuge, a hand-powered ultralow-cost centrifuge (Nature Biomedical Engineering, 2017), enabling global access to malaria diagnostics and citizen science via Abuzz for mosquito and plankton surveillance. Key publications feature "Hidden comet tails of marine snow impede ocean-based carbon sequestration" (Science, 2024), "Cellular Olympics: Ultrafast Cellular Motility Across the Tree of Life" (Annual Review of Microbiology, 2025), "Coupled active systems encode emergent behavioral dynamics of the unicellular predator Lacrymaria olor" (Current Biology, 2018), "Collective intercellular communication through ultra-fast hydrodynamic trigger waves" (Nature, 2019), and "Using mobile phones as acoustic sensors for high-throughput mosquito surveillance" (eLife, 2017). Prakash has garnered major awards such as the MacArthur Fellowship (2016), Pew Scholar (2013-2017), HHMI-Gates Faculty Scholar (2016-2021), National Geographic Emerging Explorer (2015), Unilever Colworth Prize (2020), TR35 from MIT Technology Review (2014), and NSF Career Award (2014), highlighting his profound impact on bioengineering, global health, and environmental research.
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