Welcome, John Hennessy, Stanford University President

IRiSS enables Innovation and Collaboration in the Social Sciences at Stanford

Welcome from Stanford University President, John Hennessy, from his address to attendees at the Institute’s inaugural conference on November 9, 2004.

IRiSS represents a critical, strategic initiative from our School of Humanities and Sciences. In brief, IRiSS was established to ‘initiate and strengthen multi-disciplinary research in the social sciences, enabling Stanford scholars and their collaborators to address significant challenges confronting us as a society.’

Stanford University is widely recognized for its contributions to society through scientific discoveries and technology transfer in the natural sciences, engineering and medical research. Yet, many of the problems that confront us as a society are not of a purely technical or medical nature. Advancing the desire to transplant democracy to other nations or addressing problems of poverty and discrimination, for example, are questions of social science. How we respond to global epidemics, or how we think about national health care and national defense, also demand answers from the social sciences, in conjunction with engineering, medicine, and law. Drawing together research teams from near and afar, the Institute aims to advance socially relevant and consequential research and to become an international laboratory for ‘discoveries’ in the social sciences.

Isaac Stein, former chair of our board of trustees, was quoted recently on how Stanford inspires donors to partner with the university. He said, ‘When you have faculty joining together to do innovative, collaborative work in fields like the biosciences, the environment and international affairs, then people can see Stanford making a difference in the world.’

IRiSS represents another exciting example of how our faculty are joining together to do innovative, collaborative work which will make a difference in the world.