Srinagar: Aiming to break price barrier between people & curiosity SKUAST’s Faculty of Fisheries organized two days workshop on Foldscope with about 95 participants given hands on training on the assembly and its usage.
15 Participants from State Fisheries Deptt. along with scientists and Post Graduate Students of faculty of Fisheries participated in the workshop.
The participants were thrilled by the amazing power and portability of this paper microscope.
Dean Faculty of Fisheries, Prof. M.H. Balkhi was the chief guest at the valedictory function wherein he highlighted various issues related to gap in demand and supply of fish vis-a-vis protein need of an individual as per international standards.
Programme Coordinator , Dr.Irfan Ahmad conducted the technical sessions and gave a presentation about foldscope. He highlighted various aspects of foldscope, history and evolution of this origami device and how Prof. Manu Prakash (Founder of Foldscope) partnered with DBT,GoI to popularize this device worldwide.
Vote of thanks was given by Dr.Tasaduq Hussain and due acknowledgement was given to DBT as sponsors of programme.
Foldscope is an ultra-affordable, paper microscope that can be assembled by yourself. Designed to be extremely portable, durable, and to give optical quality similar to conventional research microscopes (magnification of 140X and 2 micron resolution), Foldscope brings hands-on microscopy to new places. The mission is to produce low-cost scientific tools that globally expand access to science.
The aim is to break down the price barrier between people & the curiosity and excitement of scientific exploration.
The workshop will focus on microscopy popularization and its advantage in field diagnosis. The advantage of this microscope is its comparability with smart phones and pictures can be saved in phones. The microcosmos community is a dynamic community providing a platform to all the foldscope users to upload photos and share information to the world. In this community different opportunities for educators and researchers are provided to contribute and volunteer.
The workshop created an awareness among the masses in general, fish scientific community and development department in the utilization of this tool for field research. The basic problems faced at farm level wherein microscopy can be employed- Foldscope will deliver excellent results. The foldcsope community is a worldwide community linked together through microcosmos and results are shared and experiences are gained at this platform.
