You Define your own goals and success. There is more than one way to achieve them! Kenji Yoshino ‘11 graduated from Grinnell with a chemistry degree. In the summer after his senior year, he designed Try This at Home!, a series of informal science education presentations funded through the Sarah Boyer ‘08 Community Service Fellowship. That experience as well as his Fifth-Year Technical Internship with the Department of Theatre and Dance helped make a doctorate-free future a recognizable possibility.
While completing a post-baccalaureate fellowship tutoring at Grinnell’s Science Learning Center, Yoshino created the device that would become the seed of his current entrepreneurial venture. Billed as the $10 Smartphone Microscope, Yoshino’s invention transformed any smartphone into a digital microscope using only $10 of materials from a hardware store (Ace Hardware in Grinnell, in the case of the very first model).
In 2015, he returned to Hamilton, NY to use his smartphone microscope as the centerpiece of a small business focused on educational outreach in area schools. This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at https://www.ted.com/tedx