Speaker Bios
Catherine Albiston
Catherine (KT) Albiston is Professor of Law and Sociology at the University of California, Berkeley. She received her B.A. and M.A. from Stanford University and her J.D. and Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley. Her research focuses on the relationship between law and social change, especially how social institutions interact with law to affect broader systems of power and inequality. Her current empirical research addresses rights mobilization and family and medical leave, workplace bias against mothers and caretakers, and the role of public interest law organizations in social change. Her book, Institutional Inequality and the Mobilization of the Family and Medical Leave Act: Rights on Leave, was published by Cambridge University Press in 2010. Her past work has been published in peer review journals such as American Journal of Sociology, Law & Society Review and Annual Review of Law & Social Science, as well as in law reviews. She is active in the Law and Society Association, the American Sociological Association, and the newly formed Work and Family Researchers Network. Before joining the Berkeley faculty, she was Professor of Law at the University of Wisconsin, where she also held affiliate appointments in Sociology and Women’s Studies.
Andrew Altschul
Andrew Altschul is the author of two novels: Deus Ex Machina (2011), which NPR described as "brilliantŠ one of the best novels about American culture in years," and Lady Lazarus (2008), a finalist for the Northern California Book Award. His short fiction and essays have appeared in Esquire, Ploughshares, McSweeney's, Fence, One Story, and anthologies such as Best New American Voices and O. Henry Prize Stories. In 2008, he co-founded the arts-and-culture website The Rumpus with Stephen Elliott, and served as Books Editor until 2011. A former Wallace Stegner Fellow (2002-2004) and Jones Lecturer (2005-2008) at Stanford University, Altschul is currently the director of the Center for Literary Arts at San Jose State University and a contributing editor to the literary journal ZYZZYVA.
Kimberly Gordon-Biddle
Dr. Kimberly A. Gordon Biddle has a double BA in Psychology and Music from the University of Redlands. She has an EdS in Program Evaluation from the School of Education at Stanford University and a PhD. in Child and Adolescent Development from the School of Education at Stanford University. Before graduating with her PhD, she spent two years as a Research Analyst in an educational research firm. Dr. Biddle has been a professor for over 20 years, and has worked in regional universities and at a tier-one, research university. Currently, she is a Full Professor of Child Development programs at Sacramento State University. She is also currently co-PI on a $750,000, three-year grant from the National Science Foundation. Additionally, she has a co-authored early childhood education textbook in production with SAGE publications that will be published in January of 2013. She has also won a number of awards in her professional career including, Outstanding Teacher of the Year for the College of Education while at Sacramento State.
John Boothroyd
John Boothroyd has been on the Stanford faculty in the School of Medicine since 1982. He served as senior associate dean for research and training at the School of Medicine (2002 - 2005), chair of the school's Microbiology and Immunology Department ( 1999 - 2002) and also was a member of the Commission on Graduate Education. John's research is devoted to learning all aspects of Toxoplasma biology and pathogenesis with the ultimate hope of alleviating suffering from this and other serious parasitic diseases. John works part time in VPGE, while maintaining his teaching, advising and research responsibilities. In addition to teaching graduate students, medical students and postdoctoral fellows, John teaches an undergraduate course on modern plagues. In the summer of 2008, he offered his popular Stanford Graduate Summer Institute course, Using Different Approaches to Solving Complex Problems: Responding to Pandemics, for the second time. His Ph.D. is in Molecular Biology from Edinburgh University.
Adam Boxer
Dr. Boxer received his MD and PhD degrees as part of the NIH-funded Medical Scientist Training Program at New York University Medical Center. He completed an internship in Internal Medicine at California Pacific Medical Center and a residency in Neurology at Stanford University Medical Center. He completed a fellowship in behavioral neurology at UCSF. Dr. Boxer is an Associate Professor of Neurology and the Vera and John Graziadio Scholar in Alzheimer’s Disease Research. He directs the Alzheimer’s Disease and Frontotemporal Dementia Clinical Trials Program at the Memory and Aging Center. He participates in the evaluation and management of patients in the Memory and Aging Clinic and attends on the Moffitt Inpatient Neurology Service. Dr. Boxer’s research uses quantitative eye movement and neuroimaging measurements to study the pathophysiology of cognitive and motor impairments in normal aging, mild cognitive impairment, Alzheimer’s disease, frontotemporal lobar degeneration, progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP) and corticobasal degeneration. He is the lead principal investigator of the first US multicenter, randomized, placebo-controlled, clinical trial of a therapeutic agent for frontotemporal dementia (memantine/Namenda®) and an international, phase 2/3, randomized, placebo-controlled trial of the microtubule stabilizing agent, davunetide (NAP, Al-108), for PSP. He also leads the FTD Treatment Study Group (FTSG), a group aiming to speed the development of new therapies for FTD. Dr. Boxer is the recipient of the 2002 Edwin Boldrey Award from the San Francisco Neurological Society, the 2005 John Douglas French Foundation Alzheimer’s Award and a 2009 Hellman Foundation Scientist Award.
Marilyn Boxer
Marilyn J. Boxer is professor emerita of history at San Francisco State University. She is author of When Women Ask the Questions: Creating Women’s Studies in America (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998, 2001), co-author with Jean H. Quataert of Connecting Spheres: European Women in a Globalizing World, 1500 to the Present, 2nd ed (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), and contributing co-editor with Quataert of Socialist Women: European Socialist Feminism in the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries (New York: Elsevier 1978). Her recent publications include “Rethinking the Socialist Construction and International Career of the Concept “Bourgeois Feminism’,” American Historical Review 112, no. 1 (2007): 131-158, and “Linking Socialism, Feminism, and Social Darwinism in Belle Epoque France: The Maternalist Politics and Journalism of Aline Valette,” Women’s History Review (Feb. 2012): 1-19. Her latest work is “Clara Zetkin and France: Eight Year Exile, Eighty Year Influence,” in Marilyn J. Boxer and John S. Partington, eds., The Socialist Women’s Secretary: Clara Zetkin in National and International Contexts,” Socialist History Society Occasional Papers (in press). Boxer also served in administrative positions, including Chair of the (nation’s first) Department of Women’s Studies and Dean of the College of Arts and Letters at San Diego State University and Vice-President for Academic Affairs/Provost at San Francisco State University. She is a former Affiliated Scholar of the Clayman Institute for Gender Research at Stanford University, where in 2002 she co-directed an NEH-sponsored seminar for college teachers on “Motherhood and the Nation-State.” She studied at Wellesley College, the University of Redlands, and the University of California, Riverside, where she received her Ph.D. in 1975.
Claire Castro
Claire Castro received her BA in Botany from U.C. Berkeley in 1983. After a post-baccalaureate program at San Francisco State University, she continued her studies in synthetic organic chemistry at UCLA in 1988. Her dissertation work focused on the synthesis of nucleoside analogs as potential anti-viral agents and was awarded the Saul Winstein Dissertation Award for outstanding contribution to organic chemistry. After receiving her PhD in 1993, Claire continued at UCLA as a lecturer and post-doctoral scholar. In 1994 she obtained her academic appointment at the University of San Francisco where she is currently Full Professor. Her service at USF has included being Chemistry Department Chair, serving six years on the Tenure and Promotion committee, serving on seven search committees, as well as being union representative for the USF Faculty Association. She received both the USF Distinguished Teaching Award and the USF Distinguished Research award. Her research with undergraduate students focuses on hydrocarbon rearrangements and has been supported continuously by the National Science Foundation since 2006. Of her numerous publications, 12 feature the contributions of USF undergraduate students.
Elba Maldonado-Colon
Professor Elba Maldonado-Colon is Chair of the Elementary Education Department, and was previously Chair of the Special Education Department at San Jose State University. She is part of the recruitment and faculty evaluation committees, and at university level is a member of the Professional Standards Committee. For more than 16 years she has participated in shared governance as an elected member of the Academic Senate and many of its committees. During the Spring semester her unit held 2 faculty searches, and will be requesting 2 for AY 2014-15, or sooner.
Amy Collier
Amy Collier is the Director for Technology and Teaching in the Office of the Vice Provost for Online Learning. In this role, she oversees a team of instructional designers and research assistants who work with faculty to develop and assess online learning experiences. Amy works with faculty individually and in groups to plan their effective use of technology to enrich student learning. Amy has been working with online learning initiatives since 2004 and, prior to arriving at Stanford, she directed the Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning at Texas Wesleyan University.
Marcia Corcoran
Dr. Marcia Corcoran has a BA in English from the University of California, Santa Barbara. She has an MA in Education: English and Social Sciences from Stanford University and a PhD. in Education: Language and Literacy from the University of California, Berkelely. Dr. Corcoran is currently the Dean of Language Arts at Chabot College. Her areas of expertise include literacy development as well as basic skills and developmental education.
Shelley Correll
Shelley Correll is professor of sociology at Stanford University and the Barbara D. Finberg Director of the Clayman Institute for Gender Research. Her research is in the area of gender inequality, examining how cultural beliefs about gender influence the educational and career paths of men and women. A recent set of papers explores how gender beliefs associated with mathematics differentially impact the extent to which men and women see themselves as mathematically competent, which affects their persistence on paths leading to careers in science, math, and engineering. Her most recent project on the “motherhood penalty,” considers how stereotypic beliefs associated with motherhood influence the workplace evaluations and pay and hiring decisions of women when they give evidence of being a mother. This research has been featured in several media outlets including The New York Times, CNN, ABC World News Tonight, The Nation, Ms. Magazine, and The Boston Globe. Professor Correll is also actively involved in developing applications of her research to real world problems. She consults on reducing stereotypic biases in academic hiring, speaks to professional groups in computer science and engineering, and works with attorneys as they incorporate social science evidence into cases involving workplace discrimination against those with family responsibilities.
Robyn W. Dunbar
Robyn Wright Dunbar received a B.A. in geology from Trinity University followed by an M.A. in Antarctic marine geology and Ph.D. in geology from Rice University. During the course of her graduate work, Robyn participated in five Antarctic research cruises and holds the distinction of being one of the first two women to conduct Antarctic marine research aboard a U.S. Coast Guard icebreaker. By the time she received her Ph.D., Robyn’s research, her career, and her soul had shifted to the ancient rock record and the spectacular geology of the Four Corners area. Robyn was a faculty member at the University of New Mexico and at Rice University before her 1998 arrival at Stanford as Consulting Associate Professor of Geological and Environmental Sciences.
Rene Dahl
Rene F. Dahl is Professor and Department Chair of Child and Adolescent Development at San Francisco State University (SFSU) and has been at the university since 1989. Prior to SFSU, she was Research Scientist at The Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, MD, at the Center for Social Organization of Schools. Her work there involved partnering with Baltimore and Philadelphia elementary school teachers and principals to implement an innovative reading program and to research its effects on school children. Rene’s research interests are in the organizational structures of schools, how schools function as institutions, and evaluation of programs for children and youth, particularly schools-based programs. Rene received her PhD in Sociology of Education at Stanford, as well as an MA in Policy Analysis and an MA in Sociology. She currently is involved with a state-wide grant to map early childhood teacher competencies to university and college curriculum and to professional development agency trainings. She serves on the SF After School Workforce Advisory Council and was previously on the Board of Directors for the CA School Age Consortium and the Community Network for Youth Development, as well as the Coastside Children’s Programs.
Marianne Delaporte
Marianne Delaporte received her PhD in Medieval Church History from Princeton Theological Seminary with a dissertation entitled The Headless Holy Man: A Study of the Lives of Denis by Hilduin of Saint-Denis. While ABD she worked as a barista, transcriptionist and secretary. She has been teaching in the philosophy and religious studies department at Notre Dame de Namur University for ten years and has been chair of the department for the last five years. In addition to teaching and chairing, Marianne serves as secretary of faculty senate and co-chair of the faculty development committee. Recently she has been working on a book on the subject of maternal mysticism from the 14th through the 20th century.
Thomas Ehrlich
Thomas Ehrlich is a Visiting Professor at the Stanford University School of Education. He has previously served as president of Indiana University, provost of the University of Pennsylvania, and dean of Stanford Law School. He was also the first president of the Legal Services Corporation in Washington, DC, and the first director of the International Development Cooperation Agency, reporting to President Carter. After his tenure at Indiana University, he was a Distinguished University Scholar at California State University and taught regularly at San Francisco State University. From 2000 to 2010 he was a Senior Scholar at the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. He is author, co-author, or editor of 13 books including Preparing Undergraduates for Business: Liberal Learning for Professional Education (2011); Reconnecting Education and Foundations: Turning Good Intentions into Educational Capital (2007); and Educating for Democracy: Preparing Undergraduates for Lives of Responsible Political Engagement (2007). He is a trustee of Mills College, and has been a trustee of the University of Pennsylvania and Bennett College. He is a graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Law School and holds five honorary degrees.
Kristina Faul
Kristina Faul is currently an Associate Professor of Environmental Science at Mills College in Oakland, CA. She completed a BS degree in Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences from MIT, a Ph.D. in Earth Sciences from UCSC, and a post-doc in Geological and Environmental Sciences at Stanford. Her primary research interest is in global oceanic phosphorus cycling during past warm climates. Recently she has also begun to study the role of urban reservoirs in sequestering trace metals. She teaches 5 courses per year in the areas of chemistry, environmental science, geology, and oceanography.
Estelle Freedman
Estelle B. Freedman is the Edgar E. Robinson Professor in U.S. History and a specialist in the history of women, feminism, and sexuality. She graduated from Barnard College and did her graduate work at Columbia University. She has taught at Stanford since 1976 and co-founded and has directed the undergraduate Program in Feminist Studies. Professor Freedman is the recipient of five awards for undergraduate teaching and graduate mentoring and she has won numerous national research fellowships. She is the author or editor of ten books, including No Turning Back: The History of Feminism and the Future of Women and Intimate Matters: A History of Sexuality in America.
Gregory Feist
Gregory J. Feist currently is Associate Professor of Psychology in Personality and Adult Development at San Jose State University. He has also taught at the College of William & Mary and the University of California at Davis. He received his PhD in 1991 from the University of California at Berkeley and his undergraduate degree in 1985 from the University of Massachusetts-Amherst. He is widely published in the psychology of creativity, the psychology of science, and the development of scientific talent. One major focus of his is establishing the psychology of science as a healthy and independent study of science, along the lines of the history, philosophy, and sociology of science. His major efforts toward this end are: publishing a book entitled Psychology of Science and the Origins of the Scientific Mind (2006, Yale University Press), which was awarded the 2007 William James Book Prize by the Division of General Psychology, American Psychological Association (APA); being founding president of the newly formed “International Society for the Psychology of Science and Technology”; and being the founding Editor-in-Chief of a new peer-reviewed journal, Journal of Psychology of Science & Technology published by Springer Publications. A second major focus is the identification and development of scientific talent, as seen in finalists of the Westinghouse and Intel Science Talent Search. His paper (co-authored with Frank Barron) “Predicting creativity from early to late adulthood: Intellect, potential, and personality” won Article of Year for 2003 in Journal of Research in Personality. His research in creativity has been recognized by an Early Career Award from the Division for Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity and the Arts (Division 10) of American Psychological Association (APA). Feist is currently Past-President of APA’s Division 10, and is on the Editorial Boards of Review of General Psychology, Journal of Research in Personality, and Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity and the Arts. His teaching efforts have been recognized by outstanding teaching awards at both UC Berkeley and UC Davis. Feist is also co-author of the Theories of Personality (McGraw- Hill), Psychology: Perspectives and Connections (McGraw-Hill, 2nd edition), and co-editor of the forthcoming Handbook of the Psychology of Science (Springer Publications).
Daniel Fernandez
Dr. Daniel M. Fernandez received his BS in Electrical Engineering from Purdue University in 1987 and his MS and Ph.D degrees in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University in 1988 and 1993, respectively. He is currently Professor and Chair of the Division of Science and Environmental Policy at CSU Monterey Bay, where he has been a faculty member since 1996. While at CSUMB, he has served as Chair of the Academic Senate from 2004-2007. He has also served as Chair of the Budget and ResourceManagement Committee from 2005-2010 and he is currently the Chair of theSenate Curriculum Committee Council (SCCC), which is the university-level curricular approval body at CSUMB. He serves as co-Chair of the Campus Sustainability Committee, which is presently developing a Climate Action Plan as a part of the university’s intention to become carbon neutral by 2030.Additionally, he runs a yearly symposium on climate change (called Focus the Region), originally begun in 2008 as a part of the national “Focus the Nation” teach in on climate change.
Gigi Gokcek
Gigi Gokcek is a political scientist at Dominican University of California. She has an MA from the Monterey Institute of International Studies, an MA and a PhD from the University of California, Santa Barbara. She teaches undergraduate courses in international relations and comparative politics. Her research interests include internationalization of ethnic conflicts, irredentist and secessionist movements, pedagogy in political science, and international education.
Chris M. Golde
Chris Golde joined the VPGE staff in February 2007. Prior to that she was a Senior Scholar at the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, where she was research director for the Carnegie Initiative on the Doctorate. She is a nationally recognized expert on graduate education—actively conducting research, speaking and publishing on the graduate student experience, student attrition, doctoral pedagogies, and graduate education reform. She is the lead author of At Cross Purposes: What the Experiences of Today’s Doctoral Students Reveal about Doctoral Education (2001), co-editor of Envisioning the Future of Doctoral Education: Preparing Stewards of the Discipline (2006) a compilation of essays on the doctorate, and co-author of The Formation of Scholars: Rethinking Doctoral Education for the 21st Century (2008). Prior to joining Carnegie, she was a faculty member at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She holds a Ph.D. in education and an M.A. in sociology, both from Stanford University.
Shoba Krishnan
Dr. Shoba Krishnan is an Associate Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering at Santa Clara University. She joined the Electrical Engineering faculty in 1998 from the IC design industry. She received her B. Tech. degree from Jawaharlal Nehru Technological University, India, in 1987 and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from Michigan State University, East Lansing in 1990 and 1993 respectively. From 1995 to 1999 she was with Mixed-Signal Design Group at LSI Logic Corporation, Milpitas, CA, where she worked on high-speed data communication IC design testing. Professor Krishnan's expertise and research interests include analog and mixed-signal integrated circuit design and testing with projects in high-speed data communication systems with special emphasis on clock and data I/O circuits. Her main focus of research and development is in the design and integration of high-speed data communication transceivers with collaborations with industry on products working up to the gigabit range of frequencies. Her research group focuses on challenges in both mixed-signal IC design and test and integration of these analog blocks into standard digital IC environments. She is currently branching into curriculum and research development in electronic instrumentation for bio-engineering and power electronics for renewable energy systems. Dr. Krishnan is an active member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), and is a review committee member for the IEEE Circuit and Systems Society as well as a Technical Committee Member for IEEE Circuit and Systems Society, Communication Subcommittee. She is the faculty advisor for the IEEE and the Engineers Without Borders (EWB) student chapters at the University. Dr. Krishnan has a strong interest in engineering education and is involved in the IDEAS (Interdisciplinary Design Engineering And Service) program in the School of Engineering. She teaches the course entitled Engineering Projects for the Community every quarter where she provides engineering students with opportunities to work on projects with community partners. She has strong interest in working with non-profits that are in need for technical expertise. Dr. Krishnan is actively involved in educational programs for K-8 schools with undergraduate student involvement.
Mae Lee
"Mae Lee is a faculty member in the Intercultural Studies department at De Anza College—a two-year public community college in Cupertino, CA that serves 23,000 students. For the last eleven years, she has taught classes on comparative studies of race and ethnicity, as well as Asian American Studies, and civic leadership. As a classroom instructor, Mae draws upon her professional experiences as a cultural anthropologist; as former staff with Americorps programs in Boston, San Francisco, and San Jose; as a former administrator of a U.S. Dept of Education multi-year grant; and as the Associate Director of the Asian Pacific American Leadership Institute (APALI). Mae received a B.A. in International Relations and an M.A. in Food Research from Stanford University. Her M.A. and Ph.D. in Cultural Anthropology are from the University of California, Santa Cruz. She also continues to work as an independent researcher, focusing on post-civil rights racial politics in the U.S."
Benjamin Lev
Benjamin Lev received his Bachelors degree Magna Cum Laude from Princeton in 1999 and his Ph.D. from Caltech in 2005, both in Physics. He was an NRC postdoc at JILA (2006-2007), and an Assistant Professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (2008-2011) before joining the Stanford faculty as an Assistant Professor in Applied Physics and Physics in 2011. Benjamin has received a Packard Fellowship and a Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE) as well as NSF CAREER, Air Force Office of Scientific Research, DARPA, and Office of Navy Research Young Investigator Program awards. His research focuses on exploring strongly correlated, topological, and quantum soft matter using cavity quantum electrodynamics, cryogenic atom chip microscopes, and quantum degenerate gases of exotic dipolar atoms.
Lawrence Magernum
Professor Larry Margerum joined USF in 1995 after eight years in industry (Clorox and Nycomed Imaging). He has a BA in chemistry from Dartmouth College, the PhD in Inorganic Photochemistry/Electrochemistry from UNC-Chapel Hill (1985) under the direction of Drs. Thomas Meyer and Royce Murray, and completed post-doctoral studies in Bio-Inorganic Chemistry at UCLA with Joan Valentine. He has taught courses and labs in general, analytical and inorganic chemistry using a student-centered classroom approach including POGIL (Process Oriented Group Inquiry Learning) materials in place of lecture, iClickers for classroom assessment, on-line web based learning (OWL) and portfolios. He created a solar energy special topics course in spring 2011 and is currently running a Peer-Led Team Learning Program with the USF Learning Center. Current research efforts with masters and undergraduates focus on understanding the chemistry of surface bound indicator displacement assays (IDAs). His group explores the effects of dye binding to dendrimer monolayers containing tethered inorganic sites, with subsequent displacement by small molecule substrates. Previous grants from NSF-CCLI and NSF-MRI resulted in new on-line peer-review writing projects and new experiments in lab courses. Recent publications from the Margerum group have appeared in JCS Chemical Communications, Macromolecules, JCS Dalton and Journal of Chemical Education. Dr. Margerum rotated into the department chair as of July 2011 and continues to be the coordinator of BS/MS assessment programs for the department. He is deeply involved in the CSI (Center for Science & Innovation) that is under construction. He conducts faculty workshops nationwide for Cengage/OWL and helps support his teammate, former Stanford Football coach Buddy Teevens, who is now head coach at Dartmouth. Current research efforts with masters and undergraduates focus on understanding the chemistry of surface bound indicator displacement assays (IDAs). His group explores the effects of dye binding to dendrimer monolayers containing tethered inorganic sites, with subsequent displacement by small molecule substrates. Previous grants from NSF-CCLI and NSF-MRI resulted in new on-line peer-review writing projects and new experiments in lab courses. Recent publications from the Margerum group have appeared in JCS Chemical Communications, Macromolecules, JCS Dalton and Journal of Chemical Education. Dr. Margerum rotated into the department chair as of July 2011 and continues to be the coordinator of BS/MS assessment programs for the department. He is deeply involved in the CSI (Center for Science & Innovation) that is under construction. He conducts faculty workshops nationwide for Cengage/OWL and helps support his teammate, former Stanford Football coach Buddy Teevens, who is now head coach at Dartmouth.
Richard Martin
Professor Richard P. Martin teaches Greek and Latin literature at Stanford. Martin's research focuses primarily on Homeric poetry and how it functioned as a performance art in ancient Greece. His research has involved fieldwork in modern Crete where he interviewed people who still perform traditional oral epics. His analysis of audio recordings of people singing these poems led him to consider a number of similarities with ancient Greek epic poetry. In addition,he has studied resemblances between ancient oral poetry and modern rap. Prof. Martin is currently working on a book on Homeric religion, placing the poetic representation of divinity and cult in the context of the larger archaeological and epigraphical record. Martin is also currently working on the performance of Greek lyric as represented in myth and art, as well as editing a collection of essays on the analysis of Greek myth. He has worked on presenting Homer digitally, in a full-scale multimedia version of the Odyssey on CD, in connection with distance learning experiments. Born and raised in Boston, he studied Classics as well as Medieval and Modern Irish language and literature at Harvard University where he received his B.A. in Classics and Celtic Literature and M.A. and Ph.D. in Classical Philology. Before coming to Stanford in 2000, Professor Martin taught Classics for eighteen years at Princeton University. He was the Chair of the Classics department at Stanford from 2002 through 2008 and again in 2010-11.
Melissa R. Michelson
Melissa R. Michelson (Ph.D. Yale 1994) is Professor of Political Science at Menlo College. Her major strands of research include Latino political incorporation, field experiments in voter mobilization of ethnic and racial minorities, and political persuasion field experiments on the issue of same-sex marriage. From 2006-2009, she was principal investigator for the evaluation of the James Irvine Foundation’s California Votes Initiative, a multi-year effort to increase voting rates among voters in low-income and ethnic communities in California’s San Joaquin Valley and targeted areas in Southern California. She is co-author of Mobilizing Inclusion: Transforming the Electorate through Get-out-the-vote Campaigns (Yale University Press, 2012). In 2009-2010, she was a Visiting Faculty Fellow at Stanford's Research Institute for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity. She has published dozens of peer-reviewed articles and a dozen chapters in edited volumes, including forthcoming work in Election Law Journal and Political Communication. Dr. Michelson lives in Palo Alto with her husband and their four children. In her spare time, she knits and runs marathons.
Brad Olsen
Brad Olsen is an Associate Professor of Education at the University of California, Santa Cruz. His research and teaching focus on teachers, teaching, and teacher education (with emphases on professional knowledge and identity); sociolinguistics; philosophical perspectives on education; and qualitative research methods. Dr. Olsen is series editor for The Teacher’s Toolkit (2010, Paradigm Publishers). He is a recipient of the 2007 UCSC Excellence in Teaching award. His current work examines the role of teachers in contemporary education reform. Before arriving at UCSC, Dr. Olsen was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of California, Los Angeles. He received his Ph.D. in education from the University of California, Berkeley in 2002. Prior to this, Dr. Olsen worked as a high school English teacher in Maine, Massachusetts, and South America, and a school administrator and teacher educator in California. He earned his B.A. in philosophy and English from Bowdoin College in 1989, and his M.Ed. from the Harvard Graduate School of Education in 1993.
Nicholas Palomares
Nicholas A. Palomares (PhD, University of California, Santa Barbara) is an associate professor in the Department of Communication at UC Davis and has been a member of the faculty since 2004. Dr. Palomares' research emphasizes message production and processing in two primary areas of communication in social interaction: language use and conversational behavior. His conversational-behavior research examines the goals individuals pursue in their interactions with others and the factors associated with goal pursuit. Specifically, he seeks to understand how individuals detect others' goals and what consequences individuals' inferences of others' goals have on both goal detectors and goal pursuers. His research on goal detection highlights the cognitive mechanisms that influence the accuracy of goal inferences. His language-use research focuses on the cognitive structures and processes responsible for producing gender-based language differences and similarities (e.g., emotional language, tentative language, etc.) between men and women in face-to-face and mediated social interactions, as well as the consequences that emerge from such language. Professor Palomares teaches undergraduate courses in 'Gender Differences in Communication,' 'Semantic and Pragmatic Functions of Language,' and 'Empirical Research Methods' and graduate courses in 'Social Interaction and Interpersonal Communication Theory and Research' and 'Experimental Design and Statistical Analysis.' Dr. Palomares is also the Graduate Advisor for the MA and PhD programs in Communication. More information, including publications, can be accessed at: http://communication.ucdavis.edu/people/nap/.
Wayne H Pitcher III
Originally from San Mateo, Dr. Wayne Pitcher received his SB in Chemistry from MIT in 1995 and his PhD in Chemistry from Stanford in 2001. After a postdoctoral research position at an NIH lab he was an assistant professor at the University of Massachusetts Boston for three years before becoming a Chemistry Instructor at Chabot College in Hayward, CA.
Marcos Pizarro
In 2005, he published a book on his research with Chicana/o youth in East Los Angeles and the Yakima Valley of Washington State. The book, "Chicanas and Chicanos in School," explores the relationship between the identities of Chicana/o students and their academic performance with a focus on lessons that will aid those interested in enhancing the educational performance of these youth (see below for a link to the book). Currently, he coordinates MAESTR@S, a Movement for Raza Liberation through Educación, a social justice organization developing and implementing a transformative education model with raza communities. His latest research focuses on the processes by which historical forces and racial microaggressions create both racial inequality and internalized racism in raza youth, and how those forces can be countered in working for social justice in disenfranchised communities.
Stephen Pronchik
Dr. Pronchick received a B.S. in aerospace engineering from the University of Notre Dame and M.S. in aerospace engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology. After several years as a test engineer he returned to graduate study and received a Ph.D. in mechanical engineering from Stanford University in 1983. After several years in industry, he joined the faculty of CSU Maritime in 1994 as an assistant professor. He has served as president of the academic senate at Cal Maritime, and became chair of the mechanical engineering department in 2005. He served as interim Academic Dean in 2012-13, and has now returned as professor and chair of the ME department.
John Louis Ptacek
Dr. Ptácek’s laboratory focuses on genetic diseases of muscle, heart and brain and hereditary variation of human sleep behavior. His group has cloned genes causing many disease and behavioral phenotypes in humans. In addition, he and his collaborators probe the biology underlying normal function of the encoded proteins in the nervous system and pathophysiology of the mutant proteins in human neurological diseases. To this end, they use cellular electrophysiology, biochemistry, cell biology and animal modeling. He and Chris Jones identified and characterized the first human families with a Mendelian circadian rhythm variant. These individuals have an extreme "morning lark" phenotype and they called this variant familial advanced sleep phase syndrome (FASPS). His group and the group of Ying-Hui Fu have gone from the clinical and physiologic characterization of this phenotype to the mapping and cloning of the causative genes, biochemical study of the encoded proteins, and generation of animal models. In addition, they have collected a large group of families with FASPS and other circadian phenotypes, and these are being studied to identify additional human circadian rhythm genes. They have also identified families with genetic variants of sleep and begun to clone genes regulating the sleep hemostat. This work represents a move from purely ‘disease genetics’ to the genetics of human behavior. Insights into the proteins causing these disorders and traits will ultimately lead to new insights into the normal function of the human nervous system and mechanisms of disease. Ultimately, such insights will lead to new therapies for treating patients with various neurological and other disorders. He has won numerous awards including the Derek Denny-Brown Award from the American Neurological Association and is an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Institute of Medicine at the National Academy of Sciences. This year, he was elected to the National Academy of Sciences.
Richard Reis
Richard Reis is the Executive Director of the Alliance for Innovative Manufacturing (AIM) at Stanford and Associate Director of Global Learning Partnerships of the Stanford Learning Lab. He has been with the former since 1989. From 1987 to 1989 he also served as the Associate Dean for Professional Development in the Stanford School of Engineering. Dr. Reis is also a Consulting Professor in the Stanford Electrical Engineering and Mechanical Engineering departments. He teaches an introductory seminar for all incoming Electrical Engineering graduate students in the fall quarter (EE201A) and a graduate seminar (EE201B) on ""Life after Stanford"" in the winter quarter. Throughout the academic year, he teaches the Proseminar in Manufacturing Education for students in the Stanford Future Professors of Manufacturing program. He is a part-time instructor in astronomy at the College of San Mateo and a curriculum consultant to the Menlo School and College. Prior to coming to Stanford he was the Executive Officer and editor of the astronomy magazine, Mercury, for the Astronomical Society of the Pacific, a Professor of science education at Memorial University of Newfoundland in Newfoundland, Canada, and a high school physics teacher in Los Angeles. Reis holds bachelor's degrees in physical geography (honors), physics (honors) and a master's degree in science education from California State University at Los Angeles, and a master's degree in physical science (geophysics) and a PhD in science education (physics) from Stanford University.
Terry Root
Terry L. Root is a Senior Fellow/University Faculty at the Woods Institute for the Environment at Stanford University, and a fellow at the California Academy of Sciences. Her research addresses questions, such as: What changes have occurred in wild animals and plants in the past century with ~0.8oC of warming around the globe? What might be the future ecological consequences for wild species as the globe continues to warm rapidly? Root was awarded the prestigious Presidential Young Investigator Award from the National Science Foundation in 1990, and in 1992 she was selected as a Pew Scholar in Conservation and the Environment. She was selected as an Aldo Leopold Leadership Fellow in 1999, and, among other honors, was awarded the Spirit of Defenders Award for Science by the Defenders of Wildlife in 2010. Root was a lead author of the Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change in 2001 and in 2007 when it was co-awarded the Nobel Peace Prize with Vice President Al Gore. Root earned her undergraduate degree in Mathematics and Statistics from the University of New Mexico, her master’s degree in Biology from the University of Colorado and her doctorate in Biology from Princeton University.
Judith Scott
Judith Scott (Ph.D. University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana) is an Associate Professor in Education at the University of California, Santa Cruz. She is currently the Director of Undergraduate Programs in Education, and the chair of the Language, Literacy and Culture specialization within the doctoral program. She held the position of Graduate Director for the Ph.D. program in the Education department for two years and is in charge of the Vocabulary Innovations in Education (VINE) Consortium at UCSC. Her research has been supported by grants from the United States Department of Education, the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada, and the California Department of Education. Since 2006 she has been the Principal Investigator of four large scale grants totaling over $5 million. She is the principal author of The Word Conscious Classroom: Building the Vocabulary Readers and Writers Need. Professor Scott has published extensively in the field of literacy with articles and chapters in sources such as Reading Research Quarterly, Cognition and Instruction, Elementary School Journal, Theoretical Models and Processes of Reading (5th Edition) and The Handbook of Reading Research Volume III. Professor Scott is an experienced classroom, university educator and staff developer. In 2006, she won the John C. Manning Award from the International Reading Association for exemplary work with teachers and districts in the service of public education. She is a frequent speaker at local, national, and international conferences.
Lynn Tashiro
Lynn Tashiro graduated from Stanford with a Ph.D. in Applied Physics. After a short time in industry as an International Sales and Marketing Manager for a laser company, she began her career as an academic. In 1991 she joined the faculty of California State University Sacramento where she shifted her professional focus to science education. Her work as a Physics Professor has included developing Inquiry Based Instruction for teacher preparation courses and the implementation ofmobile technology in laboratory courses. She is a successful grant writer and has served as the Principle Investigator for several National Science Foundation and Hewlett Packard projects. Most recently she has served as the Director of First Year Programs and is currently in her second year serving as the Director for the University Center for Teaching and Learning where she manages professional development for faculty of all disciplines.
Marianne Marar Yacobian
Marianne Marar Yacobian (Ed.D) is an immigrant woman, educator, and scholar whose research interests include: Diaspora studies (particularly refugee human rights education), transnational citizenship, critical ethnography, social movements/revolution, sociopolitical underpinnings of education/hidden curriculum, global education, and Armenian genocide recognition. She is currently Assistant Professor of Social Sciences at Menlo College. Dr. Yacobian graduated with a doctorate from the University of San Francisco in International & Multicultural Education with an emphasis in Second Language Acquisition. Her achievements include: Outstanding Doctoral Student award for her dissertation Adopting Handala: Deconstructing Jordanian and Palestinian refugee notions of coexistence and transnational consciousness; the Charles. B. Emerick Teaching Award in 2010; and Outstanding Faculty Member of the Year award in 2011. She currently lives in San Francisco and spends most of her time enjoying her baby boy, Abraham.
Betty Young
Professor Young received a B.S. degree in Physics from the San Francisco State University in 1982. In 1990, she received a Ph.D. from Stanford University where she worked on the development of cryogenic particle detectors with superconducting sensors. After graduate school, she spent three years as a post-doctoral fellow at the Center for Particle Astrophysics at UC Berkeley. Since coming to Santa Clara in 1994, Professor Young has established a research group at Santa Clara University and continues to work with the multi-institutional Cold Dark Matter Search (CDMS) collaboration.
Naeem Zafar
Naeem teaches entrepreneurship at the University of California Berkeley and also the founding CEO of Bitzer Mobile. He is a serial entrepreneur and has started or worked at six startups. He founded Startup-advisor.com to educate entrepreneurs with all aspects of starting and running a company. Naeem has published six books on entrepreneurship (www.NaeemZafar.com) and on iTunes app store and Amazon.com. Naeem served as the president and CEO of three venture backed technology companies as a board member/advisor to 35 companies. He holds degrees from Brown University and the University of Minnesota, both in electrical engineering.
Adam de la Zerda
Adam de la Zerda is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Structural Biology at Stanford University – School of Medicine. He completed his undergraduate degree in Computer Engineering and Physics from the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology in 2005 Summa Cum Laude. He received his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University in 2011, where he developed the Photoacoustic Molecular Imaging technique with Sanjiv Sam Gambhir. He was then a postdoctoral fellow at the lab of Carolyn Bertozzi at UC Berkeley – Chemistry Department, before joining the Stanford faculty in 2012. Prof. de la Zerda’s research interests span the broad field of Molecular Imaging. His lab focuses on developing new optical imaging instrumentation and chemistry tools to study the complex spatiotemporal behavior of biomolecules in living subjects. The lab uses animal models for cancer and ophthalmic diseases such as age-related macular degeneration. His research efforts span both basic science and clinically translatable work. Prof. de la Zerda has received many awards and honors for his work, including the NIH Director’s Early Independence Award, Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship, Era of Hope Distinguished Predoctoral Poster Award, Best Poster Presentation at SPIE Photonics West, the Young Investigator Award at the World Molecular Imaging Congress, the Department of Defense Breast Cancer Research Program Award for Predoctoral researchers, the Bio-X Graduate Student Fellowship, and first place at the Bay Area Entrepreneurship Contest. He published over 13 papers in leading journals includingNature Medicine, Nature Nanotechnology and PNAS, some of which received significant press coverage from Forbes Magazine, US News and The Washington Post. He holds a number of patents and is the co-founder of a medical imaging device company, OcuBell Inc.
Carin Zimmerman
Carin Zimmerman, Ph.D. is a Biotechnology Instructor and Coordinator of the Stem Cell Technology Certificate Program at City College of San Francisco. She is also the Program Director of a stem cell training grant through the California Institute of Regenerative Medicine. After spending 15 years in molecular and cell biology research, Dr. Zimmerman moved on to teaching and has been part of the Bridge to Biotech program since 2004. The Bridge to Biotech program at City College has aided over 600 students, with little or no science background, prepare for a lucrative career in the Biotechnology industry. Currently, this successful program based on contextualized learning and building learning communities is being disseminated nationwide. Dr. Zimmerman received her B.S. degree from the University of California Berkeley and her M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of California Davis. Her post-doctoral work involved studies of the genetics of glaucoma in the Ophthalmology department at the University of California San Francisco.