Stanford Facts: Research and Innovation

The synthesis of teaching and research is fundamental to Stanford. All faculty do scholarly research, most often in association with graduate students or advanced undergraduates. Stanford is noted for multidisciplinary research within its schools and departments, as well as its independent laboratories, centers and institutes. Several national research centers are located at Stanford, including the Department of Plant Biology in the Carnegie Institution of Washington and the National Bureau of Economic Research.

There are more than 4,500 externally sponsored projects throughout the university, with the total budget for sponsored projects at $1.060 billion during 2008-09, including the SLAC National Linear Laboratory (SLAC). Of these projects, the federal government sponsors approximately 85.7 percent, including SLAC. In addition, nearly $150.2 million in support comes from non-federal funding sources. More than 4,000 graduate students and many undergraduates are involved in sponsored research at the university.

Stanford’s Office of Technology Licensing (OTL) brings technology created at Stanford to market. In 2007–08, Stanford received more than $62.5 million in gross royalty revenue from 344 technologies. Thirty-six of the 344 inventions generated $100,000 or more in royalties. Three inventions generated $1 million or more. In 2007–08, OTL concluded 107 new licenses and evaluated about 400 new invention disclosures in 2008.

Among the Inventions Licensed by OTL:

Digital sound synthesis: John Chowning developed FM sound synthesis for digitally generating sounds in the late 1960s, leading to the music synthesizer.

Disease management: The Stanford Patient Education Research Center develops programs for people with chronic health problems, including arthritis and HIV/AIDS. The program has been licensed to more than 500 organizations in 17 countries and 40 states.

DSL: In the 1980s, John Cioffi and his students realized that traditional phone lines could be used for high-speed data transmission, resulting in patents used in asymmetric digital subscriber lines.

E-mail security: Identity-based encryption, developed by Dan Boneh and Matt Franklin, offers an efficient way to encrypt and protect e-mail.

Functional antibodies to treat disease: In the 1980s, Leonard Herzenberg, Vernon Oi and Sherie Morrison discovered how to mass produce antibodies— molecules that detect foreign substances—and target them for destruction by the body’s immune system.

Genome sequencing: Two tools assist in the sequencing of DNA: CHEF electrophoresis, invented in 1987 by Ron Davis, Gilbert Chu and Douglas Vollrath; and Genscan software, developed by Christopher Burge.

Google: The world’s most popular search engine got its start at Stanford when Sergey Brin and Larry Page developed the page-rank algorithm while they were computer science graduate students.

Personalized medicine: The gene chip, based on spotted microarray technology developed in the 1990s by Pat Brown and Dari Shalon, allows doctors to create genetic profiles of patients and their diseases.

Recombinant drug production: Recombinant DNA technology, developed in 1973 by Stanley Cohen and Herbert Boyer, laid the groundwork for modern genetic engineering by allowing scientists to combine pieces of DNA from different organisms.

Research Centers and Institutes

Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace

The Hoover Institution, a public policy research center devoted to the study of domestic and international affairs, was founded in 1919 by Herbert Hoover, a member of Stanford’s Pioneer Class of 1895 and the 31st president of the United States. The Hoover Institution began as a specialized collection of documents on the causes and consequences of World War I and grew to encompass one of the largest archives and libraries in the world on political, economic and social change. One of the first “think tanks” in the United States, the institution has more than 100 resident scholars/specialists.

Stanford Linear Accelerator Center

The SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory is operated by Stanford for the U.S. Department of Energy. Its research programs explore the structure and dynamics of matter and the properties of energy, space and time—at the smallest and largest scales, in the fastest processes and at the highest energies. SLAC programs span particle physics, photon science, astrophysics, materials and nanoscience, molecular environmental science, structural biology and ultra-fast science. Six scientists have won the Nobel Prize for research carried out at the laboratory.

Other Special Stanford Research Facilities

Independent Laboratories, Centers and Institutes

Independent laboratories, centers and institutes account for about 20 percent of Stanford research, involving about 300 faculty members and 800 students. [Complete list of research centers]

Wellspring of Innovation

Stanford’s entrepreneurial spirit, the result of its California location and the legacy of Leland and Jane Stanford, has helped spawn more than 3,000 companies in high technology and other fields.

Frederick Terman, provost from 1955 to 1965, is called the “academic architect” of the high-technology region known as Silicon Valley. He is credited with creating the university-industry partnerships that led to the establishment of companies key to the high-technology revolution.

Terman encouraged entrepreneurship among his students, created opportunities in California for Stanford-educated engineers, established continuing education programs for engineers in local companies and helped found the university industrial park where companies such as Hewlett-Packard could take root. Terman created an entrepreneurial culture that, today, extends to every academic discipline.

Among the companies Stanford faculty and alumni have helped create: