Research
H&S faculty are cited for their outstanding scholarly work through a variety of local, national, and international honors and awards for research that is expanding the boundaries of knowledge, while often improving the very way we live. Although it is not practical to feature research for each of the hundreds of faculty in the school, the following highlights provide a glimpse into some current activities.
Photo: Steve Castillo
Stanford applies tools of demography to help solve global challenges. More
Photo: Peer Landa
Physics Professor Savas Dimopoulos helped extend the Standard Model
of particle physics. More
New study shows how mindset affects learning
Psychology professor Carol Dweck's research about intelligence and motivation, and how they are variously influenced by fixed and growth mindsets, is attracting attention from many, including teachers trying to help underperforming students and human-resources managers intent on helping clients reach higher levels of achievement. More
Stanford applies tools of demography to help solve global challenges
Assistant Professor of Anthropological Sciences James Holland Jones and Professor of Biology Shripad Tuljapurkar organized a workshop at Stanford to encourage the use of demographic tools to solve some of today's complex challenges, such as the impact of the AIDS epidemic, population aging and the possible extinction of some species. More
Dimopoulos wins top prize in particle physics
Physics Professor Savas Dimopoulos helped extend the Standard Model of
particle physics by adding a new fundamental principle called supersymmetry
that posits every particle has a corresponding superparticle. More
Research led by Or Gozani could aid in the treatment of cancer and other diseases
More
Discovery could aid in the treatment of cancer and other diseases
Research led by Or Gozani, assistant professor of biology at
Stanford, determined how the tumor suppressor ING2 is able to
promote protective cellular responses against injured DNA. This finding
may lead to more effective cancer treatments with
fewer side effects. More
Doctoral student Emily Ryo and sociology Professor David Grusky
co-authored a paper titled –Did Katrina Recalibrate Attitudes
Toward Poverty and Inequality? A Test of the 'Dirty Little Secret' Hypothesis.More
Katrina Did Not Raise Awareness of Poverty, Study Finds
A new research paper, co-authored by sociology Professor David Grusky and doctoral student Emily Ryo, concludes that Americans are roughly as aware of inequality as they were before the 2005 disaster on the Gulf Coast. "Did Katrina Recalibrate Attitudes Toward Poverty and Inequality? A Test of the 'Dirty Little Secret' Hypothesis," will be published in the Spring edition of the Du Bois Review.
Judith Frydman, associate professor of biological sciences at Stanford,
will serve as co-director of the NIH-funded Center for Protein Folding Machinery.
More
Seeking to cure disease: biological nanomachines
Judith Frydman, associate professor of biology at Stanford,
will serve as co-director of the NIH-funded Center for Protein Folding Machinery.
"Misfolded proteins seem to be at the heart of neurodegenerative diseases,"
including Alzheimer's and cancer, Frydman says.
More
Photo: L.A. Cicero
Lights, camera, degree: Film, media studies major approved by Faculty Senate.
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Lights, camera, degree
"Film is a new technology—well, it's not that new anymore," mused film scholar Scott Bukatman, associate professor of art and art history, during in an interview in his office in Cummings Art Building last Wednesday afternoon.
More
Photo: Gil Slevin, Central Arava Regional Council
Unique desert research center takes shape on the Israeli-Jordanian border
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Bridging the Rift
Jordanian, Israeli and American scientists collect water and soil samples on the Jordanian side of the Dead Sea in January 2005 as part of a two-day field survey sponsored by the Bridging the Rift Foundation.
More
Photo: Manuel Jordán Pérez
Manuel Jordán Pérez, left, speaks with a diviner. More
Manuel Jordán Pérez: Voices of African Art
Manuel Jordán Pérez, the Phyllis Wattis Curator at the Iris & B. Gerald Cantor Center for Visual Arts, embarked on a trip to Africa in conjunction with an exhibition of Central African art he is organizing at the Cantor Arts Center.
As part of the exhibition, he plans to publish a book
that will document the perspectives and stories of the
people in Central Africa in their own voices.
More
Image: Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary
Scientists deliver plan for rescuing America's coral reefs
More
Scientists deliver plan for rescuing America's coral reefs
An international team of marine ecologists is urging the United States to take immediate action to save its fragile coral reefs. Their message is contained in a strongly worded essay titled “Are U.S. Coral Reefs on the Slippery Slope to Slime?” that appears in the March 18 edition of the journal Science.
“We’re frustrated with how slowly things are moving with coral reef
conservation in the United States,” said Fiorenza Micheli, an assistant
professor of biology at Stanford University's Hopkins Marine Station.
“Tiny steps are being taken, but they really don't address the overall problem.”
More
Husband-wife biologists consider population, sustainability
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Husband-wife biologists consider population, sustainability
Professor Paul Ehrlich and Anne Ehrlich, a senior research scientist in biology, have collaborated on numerous books and research projects, including the recently released One with Nineveh. Times have changed since Paul Ehrlich, the Bing Professor of Population Studies, burst into the national spotlight with The Population Bomb 37 years ago, but the pair's fundamental message has not. How can we as a society consume less–less energy, less water and fewer material goods? The Ehrlichs have spent their careers trying to answer that question.
More
Photo: Linda Cicero
PROOF POSITIVE: Math chair Eliashberg says students are attracted to rigorous thinking.
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Formula for Success
Drawn by new courses and intriguing problems, students are diving into mathematics.
As Elizabeth Meckes, a third-year graduate student, explains, “It’s a sort of macho
thing because you’re doing this very cool stuff which is so hard to understand.”
More
Faculty couple studies America, each through distinct lens
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Faculty couple studies America, each through distinct lens
Scholars Jim Fishkin and Shelley Fisher Fishkin may belong to different academic
fields, but both are deeply interested in the social forces that have shaped
America's past, present and future. Fishkin, the Janet M. Peck Chair in International
Communication, is the inventor of Deliberative Polling, commonly described
as "polling with a human face." Fisher Fishkin, a leading expert on Mark
Twain and currently director of the American Studies Program, has published
widely on issues of race, identity and gender in American culture.
More
Photo: Barbara Voss
Dig Yields New Treasures
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Dig Yields New Treasures
Rita Lomio, who graduated in 2004 with a degree in classics, excavates at the Presidio, where Assistant Professor Barbara Voss of the Department of Cultural and Social Anthropolgy is leading an archaeological dig.
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Photo: Hari Manoharan
New Stanford center probes nanoscale material
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Nanoscale Materials
New Stanford center probes nanoscale material: The National Science Foundation
(NSF) has awarded $7.5 million over five years to establish the Center for
Probing the Nanoscale (CPN) at Stanford.
More
Photo: Steve Castillo
Exploring the Universe
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Particle Physics
Exploring the Universe: Roger Blandford (left), the
Pehong and Adele Chen Director at Stanford's Kavli Institute for Particle
Astrophysics and Cosmology (KIPAC), and Steve
Kahn, deputy director
of KIPAC, are excited about
research at the new Fred Kavli Building.
More
Photo: L.A. Cicero
Genetic hunt:. More
Biology
Genetic hunt: Sharon Long, the
William C. Steere Jr. – Pfizer Inc. Professor of Biology, and Postdoctoral Fellow Raka Mitra have discovered a technique
that could dramatically streamline the search for plant genes. The discovery could lead to advances in plant productivity and sustainable agriculture. More
At Hopkins Marine Station, a research center in the School of Humanities
and Sciences, scientists and students probe the secrets of the sea.
More
Ocean Ecosystems
A project called the Bahamas Biocomplexity Project (BBP) aims to provide a multidisciplinary view of the Bahamas ecosystem for use in designing marine policies for the region. More
Diversity
Recognizing that California's population might be the world's most perfect lab for studying multiracial identity, Stanford's Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity is undertaking a project to publish about a dozen reports about California and the Bay Area based on the Census 2000 data. More
Credit: Mustafa Abadan and T.J. Gottesdiener, Skidmore, Owings & Merrill
LLP More
Environmental research center planned for Israel-Jordan border
The governments of Jordan and Israel are setting aside 150 acres along their border for the construction of a major environmental research center. H&S Professor Marcus W. Feldman has chaired the academic planning committee of the foundation and made several trips to the Middle East to meet with officials and observe the proposed site. More
Photo: NASA/WMAP Science Team
An all-sky image of the infant Universe, 380,000 years after the Big Bang.
More
Revealing the Origins of the Universe
Stanford Physics Professor Andrei Linde was among a handful of scientists who came up with the idea of inflationary cosmology. He discusses the latest findings, including NASA’s detailed map of the universe that confirms many aspects of inflationary theory while ruling out others. More
The Environment
The latest findings from Jasper Ridge Global Climate Change Project indicate that doubling the amount of carbon dioxide in the air significantly reduces the number of plant species that grow in the wild. More
Research expedition to Chavin de Huantar,Peru, to participate
in archaeological fieldwork. More
The Archaeology Center
Faculty and graduate students from Anthropological Sciences, Art and Art History, Biology, Classics, Cultural and Social Anthropology, the School of Earth Sciences, and the Cantor Center for Visual Arts are coming together to develop a new understanding of the human past. More
Research Could Improve Herbicides and Pharmaceuticals
Plant biologists from Stanford University report new findings about the birth and growth of individual "microtubules" -- nanosize tubes of protein that form inside living plant cells. More
Confocal image of microtubules in an Arabidopsis cell expressing a
tubulin:GFP fusion protein. More
Helping Dyslexic Children
For the first time, researchers have shown that the brains of dyslexic children can be rewired -- after undergoing intensive remediation training -- to function more like those found in normal readers. More
Gravity Probe B
Gravity Probe B is a unique space experiment to test Einstein's General Theory of Relativity and also is a unique Stanford University program. After a long period of development, GP-B will be ready for launch soon. More
Photo: L.A. Cicero.
Stanford Libraries employees Sarah Sussman, left, curator
of French and Italian Collections, and Annette Keogh, assistant curator
of British and American literature, peruse displays at the annual
book celebration. More
Humanities Research
The annual Humanities Center Book Celebration, which honors the scholarly and artistic output of Stanford's humanists, got under way for the 11th year running. More
Photograph courtesy of the National Science & Technology
Medals Foundation.
John Brauman receives National Medal of Science from President Bush
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National Medal of Science
In 2003, John Brauman, the J.G. Jackson and C.J. Wood Professor of Chemistry, was one of eight pioneering researchers to receive the 2002 National Medal of Science, presented by President George Bush. More
