Since the late 1980s, the San Francisco-based Sustainable Sciences Institute has made it its mission to train scientists in resource-poor countries and help them cobble together low-cost devices—to “give people the tools they need and let them run with them,” as its ebullient leader Eva Harris says. Among the institute's most famous inventions, for example, are a centrifuge made from a blender and a no-frills PCR method that uses homemade thermal cycling equipment and ceramic dust instead of silica for purifying the DNA. A 1997 MacArthur fellowship allowed Harris to expand the institute from an informal setup to a more official organization. Since then, with an annual budget of about $1 million that is coaxed from foundations and from individual donors, the institute has held more than 30 workshops, training mainly Latin American scientists in topics ranging from diagnostics to epidemiology to grant writing. The institute also gives out mini-grants to the most promising projects. Here Harris talks about the philosophy behind the institute's unique approach, its successes, its many ongoing projects and the eternal struggle for funding.
