OUR COMPANY
OUR MISSION
Our mission to produce low-cost scientific tools that globally expand access to science. We aim to break down the price barrier between people & the curiosity and excitement of scientific explorations. Bring different experience in STEM learning and getting science into the hearts and minds of children around the world.
ORIGINS
Foldscope was invented by Manu Prakash and Jim Cybulski while Jim was a PhD student in Manu’s laboratory at Stanford University.
Their inspiration for the Foldscope originated from field visits around the world, where they continually encountered bulky, broken microscopes, or a lack of microscopes entirely. As traditional microscopes are often expensive or cumbersome, they realized the universal scale of this problem and the need for a low-cost, revolutionary solution.
What is the best microscope you can build for under $1 in parts? This question motivated their work. In the early days of the project, ideas for the low-cost microscope were sketched down on paper. These sketches struck a chord. Although the sketching on paper was initially simply practical– it also alluded to a critical revelation in the search for a low cost medium: paper. Paper is a brilliant and versatile material, as it is both very inexpensive, but also gives rise to precision when it is folded into specific configurations.
“ What is the best microscope you can build for under $1 in parts? “
The project blossomed into the invention of the Foldscope, the foldable microscope made mostly of paper, that to this day still achieves the goal of being less than one U.S. dollar in parts.
While further deployment for health-care applications of the Foldscope continue in academic labs around the world, the revolutionary affordability of microscopy provided by the Foldscope inspired the pair to get their tool into as many hands as possible.
THE PILOT PROGRAM
The Foldscope pilot program began in 2014 with support from the Moore Foundation.
The pilot progam alone distributed over 60,000 Foldscopes to 135+ countries. Much of this work was carried out by volunteers and at no cost to the recipient. In exchange for the Foldscopes, we only asked that recipients contribute their findings to our budding online community, the Microcosmos.
Once the global distribution of Foldscopes began to swell, an astonishing diversity of applications were (and continue to be) revealed.
For example, Foldscopes were used to identify the microscopic eggs of agricultural pests in India, to catalog the biodiversity of soil arthropods in the Amazon, detect fake currency and medicine, follow toxic blooms, detect bacteria in water samples, map pollen diversity in a city landscape, among thousands of other things.
“THE PILOT PROGRAM ALONE DISTRIBUTED OVER 60,000 FOLDSCOPES TO 135+ COUNTRIES
FOLDSCOPE INSTRUMENTS, INC.
In December 2015, Foldscope Instruments, Inc. was founded.
Jim and Manu progressed the Foldscope from its institutional roots at Stanford into the creation of an independent company, with the goals of scaling up production and eventually releasing other low-cost scientific tools. The Foldscope tool itself has also developed over time, incorporating new features to make it even more powerful.
To date, nearly half a million Foldscopes have been distributed. Supported now by the company’s sales and our many incredible partners, we aim to distribute one million Foldscopes by the end of 2019.
In regard to our user base, we believe that the most important part of Foldscope is not the tools themselves, but the communities that use them. Especially now as we approach one million users, our community span many countries, ages, and levels of scientific background. Within the Microcosmos, Foldscope users connect, share their data & observations, ideas, and problems. It is a place to collaborate, find inspiration, and learn from fellow explorers. Through grassroots mentoring, we aim to create a network of curious members dedicated to exploration, open sharing, and equality of access of scientific tools around the world.
Looking to the future, we believe that access to science, and science education, is a human right.
We dream of a world where every child carries a microscope in their pocket.
