Archive for the ‘Seen on Campus’ Category

Wellness Fair draws 2,550

April 26th, 2013
Photo credit: Linda A. Cicero/Stanford News

David Iott, commissary executive chef in Arrillaga Family Dining Commons, and Devinder Kumar, sous chef in Florence Moore Hall, beckon Anna Cobb, graphic designer for University Communications, with an amuse bouche featuring smoked turkey at the Wellness Fair. Photo credit: Linda A. Cicero/Stanford News

The theme of last week’s Wellness Fair was “Summer Fun,” so the BeWell@Stanford and Health Improvement Program staff decorated the Arrillaga Center for Sports and Recreation with brightly colored balloons, including a palm tree made of orange and green balloons, and themselves with bright red T-shirts and leis.

The April 18 event, which opened at 10:30 a.m. and closed at 3 p.m., attracted 2,550 faculty and staff.

Inside, massage therapists kneaded backs and shoulders. Staff from Residential and Dining Enterprises prepared delicious, nutritious food for the event. Campus chefs in tall white toques handed out more than 4,000 tasty samples of green salads and blueberry smoothies – along with recipes to make them at home.

Faculty and staff could get their bone density measured, their blood pressure checked and their skin examined for sun damage.

They also had the chance to play games. There were beanbags to toss, golf balls to putt and bowling pins to juggle. Some people danced to a Wii Fit video routine. Others got their picture taken – putting their smiling faces inside the face cutout of a surfer in a wetsuit holding a boogie board. Some made their own taco spice mix and left with a recipe for the mix and for a lentil-mushroom filling for a meatless taco.

There were other give-aways, including foam rollers, miniature compost or recycling bins, lip balms with sunscreen, beach balls and reusable shopping bags. The BeWell staff also handed out raffle prizes: a cruiser bike, an outdoor grill and Stanford folding chairs.

—KATHLEEN J. SULLIVAN

Al Gore dedicates bench in memory of Stephen Schneider

April 25th, 2013

Former Vice President AL GORE was on campus Tuesday to remember a friend. Gore spoke at a private ceremony dedicating a stone bench in the Papua New Guinea Sculpture Garden in memory of renowned climate scientist STEPHEN SCHNEIDER, a former Stanford biology professor and senior fellow at the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment, who died in 2010. Gore also spoke later that day, giving the inaugural Stephen H. Schneider Memorial Lecture.

Schneider and Gore worked together on several projects and shared, along with Schneider’s colleagues on the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize for “informing the world of the dangers posed by climate change.”

Before Gore spoke, Schneider’s widow, TERRY ROOT, a senior fellow at the Stanford Woods Institute and frequent scientific collaborator with Schneider, thanked Schneider’s friends.

A bench dedicated to Stephen H. Schneider sits in the Papua New Guinea Sculpture Garden. An engraving reads, ''Teach your children well.'' At right, Terry Root, Schneider's widow and a senior fellow at the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment, leaves a stone at the bench.

“I promised I wasn’t going to cry,” she said through the onset of tears, throwing up her arms. Then, the Rev. Canon SALLY G. BINGHAM, president of climate change advocacy group Interfaith Power and Light, compared Schneider to Old Testament prophets. “He raged on about drought, fires, floods, rising seas with the spread of disease unless we changed our ways.” Although Schneider was “not a believer,” Bingham said, he was among a small number of scientists willing to include religion in the climate change dialogue and to emphasize the moral issues involved.

“He was a force of nature,” Gore said of Schneider. “He was sui generis.” Schneider inspired others, Gore noted, with “his passion, his commitment, his stamina, his relentless desire to keep working for the truth and to get the message out.”

Gore recalled first seeing Schneider on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson in the mid-1970s, when climate change had barely made it into the American consciousness. Schneider’s work to raise awareness of the issue was “awe inspiring,” Gore said. “There are very few people in history as successful as Steve was in helping to protect that only home we have ever known.”

After Gore’s comments, Stanford Woods Institute Co-Director JEFF KOSEFF wrapped up the proceedings. He called Schneider a “mensch,” a Yiddish term that Koseff translated as “a person you want to be around because he or she makes you feel genuine and whole. A mensch makes you feel good about yourself and what you do, lifts up those around him or her. A mensch inspires [people] to do good, to heal the world.”

Koseff paused to imagine Schneider asking him if he could come up with a slogan for the day’s event. “I said, ‘Yes, I can, Steve. We’re dedicating a bench for a mensch.’”

Watch a video montage of Schneider discussing climate change.

—ROB JORDAN, Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment

Stanford ingenuity on display at 2013 Cool Product Expo

April 22nd, 2013

Earlier this month, hundreds of people attended the Cool Product Expo, hosted annually by the Graduate School of Business (GSB). The event, held at the Frances C. Arrillaga Alumni Center, showcased more than 40 companies and products at the cutting edge of technology and design.

“We selected these based on outstanding innovation in either technology, manufacturing or design,” said first-year MBA student DANIEL CHEN, one of six GSB students who organized the event. Chen and his classmates anticipate that these products, from foldable kayaks to electric skateboards to telepresence robots, are items that will top wish lists in 2013.

There were several clever gizmos from startups founded by Stanford students, graduates or faculty.

Boosted Boardsoffers the world’s lightest electric vehicle, a battery-powered skateboard that was born on campus by co-founders

JOHN ULMEN, SANJAY DASTOOR and MATTHEW TRAN. The battery-powered motor takes the board up to 20 mph and runs about 6 miles on a single charge. Regenerative brakes top off the battery as you go, or the plug-in battery recharges in about an hour. Supported in part by a strong KickStarter campaign, the company will ship out the first production boards in the coming months.

Another electric vehicle startup, Faraday Bicycles, was founded by Stanford grad ADAM VOLLMER. While working at IDEO, Vollmer began designing the vintage European courier-style electric bike as a way to attract people to commuting by bicycle. Vollmer refined the design with the help of ANDREW TAYLOR, a graduate of Stanford’s product design program and the company’s lead mechanical engineer. The plug-in bicycle provides 20 miles of pedal-assisted power, making climbing even San Francisco’s hills a breeze.

The booth for Instacube, a photo-sharing device from a company co-founded by BILL BURNETT, the executive director of the Stanford Design Program and a consulting assistant professor, and Stanford grad ANDY BUTLER, also drew a large crowd. The digital picture frame-like device displays a customizable photostream of content uploaded to various social networks by you or your friends. The touchscreen frame has potential outside of the home, too: Chef JAMIE OLIVER will soon be deploying the device on tabletops in his restaurants to serve as a sort of “digital sommelier” to help diners pair foods and wines.

Here’s a quick snapshot of other companies with strong ties to Stanford that were on hand at this year’s Cool Product Expo.

Freebord, another skateboard company, offers boards with wheels attached to swiveling axles, allowing for smooth free-ride steering.

Revolights has developed futuristic lighting solutions for bicycle wheels to make riders more visible at night, and to make bikes look incredibly cool.

Motrr offers a rotating platform designed to make video-conferencing with iPhones a smoother experience.

Clean Bottle, the company that launched a sports water bottle that opens on both ends for easier scrubbing, showed off the latest addition to its lineup, an aluminum bottle called The Square.

Artiphany shared a new augmented reality greeting card that can be programmed with personalized messages.

Radian, by Alpine Labs, is an iPhone- and Android-enabled tripod attachment that makes time-lapse photography a cinch.

Stealth HD presented a system that stitches together video from multiple cameras into a seamless high-resolution panoramic video.

Sifteo demonstrated its tiny intelligent videogame cubes, which have been a hit among the gaming community.

Tegu showcased the company’s children’s wooden building blocks, which are made from sustainable materials and snap together with magnets.

First Night, Twelfth Night

April 19th, 2013

Earlier this week the Stanford community commemorated the 75th anniversary of Memorial Auditorium with a performance in Pigott Theater of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, which was the first-night production on August 20, 1937, in what was then called Memorial Hall.

We can thank the plumbers for bringing Twelfth Night back to MemAud. To quote from the evening’s program, “it was ‘a very midsummer madness’ that led to the discovery of a cache of materials relating to the initial staging of the play right here on these boards.”

Plumbers working in the auditorium discovered two boxes tucked away in an unused tunnel in the building. The boxes contained set and lighting designs, crew schedules, memos regarding the management of the building, purchase orders and watercolor renderings as well as a program for the inaugural production of Twelfth Night.

The accidental time capsule inspired production manager ROSS WILLIAMS and former chair ALICE RAYNER and other staff and faculty at the Department of Theater and Performance Studies (TAPS) to bring the Bard’s comedy back for an anniversary performance.

A.C.T.’s Master of Fine Arts Class of 2014, under the director of DOMENIQUE LOZANO, presented the “Will on Wheels” production of the play to a sold-out crowd. It was the students’ last performance of the play, and they were delighted with the Pigott stage, which they called warm and acoustically enveloping, and the crowd, which they said got more of the humor than the middle and high school students they’ve been performing for as part of A.C.T.’s education outreach program. “We got laughs where we’ve never had them before,” said NEMUNA CEESAY, who played Maria.

Guests attending the after-party gala in the prop shop were treated to sumptuous nibbles and beverages while surrounded by sets and mementos from previous productions.

There was an airplane overhead from Threepenny Opera, a dramatic black-and-white drop from Skin of Our Teeth and a portrait designed to look like TAPS lecturer JEFFREY BIHR from Restoration Comedy presiding over the festivities.

Vintage film footage from 1937 (digitized by University Archivist DANIEL HARTWIG) of players rehearsing Twelfth Night on the Frost Amphitheater slope, sepia-toned images of Memorial Auditorium when it appeared to stand alone in a field and photographs from other productions over the years projected on a large screen reminded the revelers of the rich history of MemAud.

TAPS department chair JENNIFER DEVERE BRODY, who organized the event, said of the celebration, “This is just the beginning of more to come in the years ahead.”

—ROBIN WANDER

From the TEDxStanford archives: Professor Sherry Wren on global health

April 4th, 2013

At last year’s TEDxStanford conference, SHERRY WREN, professor of surgery, gave a talk explaining the importance of surgery in global health care. In a video of that talk, recently posted on the Medical School’s news website, Wren stresses the need to reject the current dogma that surgery is not cost effective or part of basic health.

TEDx is a program of local, self-organized events that bring people together to share ideas that spark deep discussion and connection.

TEDxStanford 2013 is scheduled for Saturday, May 11, and tickets go on sale at 9 a.m. Monday, April 8. In the meantime, watch Wren’s 2012 talk, in which she offers some staggering statistics about surgery and global health.

Stanford synchronized swimming team captures seventh collegiate national title

March 27th, 2013

 

The Stanford synchronized swimming team won its seventh Collegiate National title, and first since 2008, on Saturday.

“I could not be more proud of the Stanford synchro team today,” said head coach SARA LOWE. “The girls have worked so hard all year, and it was so exciting to see all of their hard work pay off and culminate in a national championship.”

Lowe was a member of the Cardinal squads that won four consecutive U.S. Collegiate National championships from 2005 to 2008. Stanford also won the title in 1998 and 1999.

The Cardinal, which finished fourth last year, swept the team, trio and duet finals March 23 to claim the title in its home pool at the Avery Aquatics Center.

Stanford dominated the team final as MADISON CROCKER, MORGAN FULLER, LEIGH HALDEMAN, MARIYA KOROLEVA, MICHELLE MOORE, OLIVIA MORGAN and EVELYNA WANG scored a 91.075. Ohio State took second with an 89.362.

Read the full story on the Athletics website.

 

Hoover exhibit on China wins exhibition award

March 26th, 2013

A Stanford exhibition marking the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Chinese republic is being honored by the Association of College Research Libraries (ACRL).

“A Century of Change: China 1911-2011,” which closed last year, included photographs, posters, letters, memorabilia and audiovisual materials from the Hoover Institution Library and Archives, where the exhibition was held.

The exhibition is one of four recipients of the 2013 Katharine Kyes Leab and Daniel J. Leab American Book Prices Current Exhibitions Award. The awards are given out by the ACRL Rare Books and Manuscripts Section.

The award recognizes outstanding printed exhibition catalogs and guides and electronic exhibitions produced by North America and Caribbean institutions.

Certificates will be presented to the winners and the recipient of an honorable mention in June.

The exhibition closed in February 2012, but its catalog, images and text are still available to view online.

—BROOKE DONALD

 

Rachel Maddow at Stanford, now on video

March 22nd, 2013

We know you have busy lives, so it’s rare that we post a long-form video in the Dish. But we will make an exception for RACHEL MADDOW, Stanford alum, author and MSNBC talk show host. On March 16, Maddow returned to her alma mater to give a talk at Memorial Auditorium. In the video, she’s introduced by ROB REICH, associate professor of political science and faculty director of the Undergraduate Program in Ethics in Society. For years, Reich has required ethics students to read Maddow’s honors thesis on the dehumanization of HIV/AIDS victims, but this is the first time they had met.

Here’s Maddow in her own words.

Software is forever

March 20th, 2013

Library archives are not just about books, of course, especially in Silicon Valley.

“In our world, software has become a vital medium of communication, entertainment and education,” said University Librarian MICHAEL KELLER.

In that spirit, Stanford University Libraries is partnering with several federal agencies to preserve one of the world’s largest pristine collections of software, the 15,000 software titles in the Stephen M. Cabrinety Collection in the History of Microcomputing held by the Libraries.

The Libraries will work with the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) to preserve the collection. Funded by the National Software Reference Laboratory (NSRL), Stanford and NIST will spend two years digitally preserving the 15,000 software titles.

The Cabrinety Collection includes titles from virtually all of the major microcomputer platforms, including home computer and video game consoles. The collection was assembled by STEPHEN M. CABRINETY, who began collecting software as a teenager and maintained an intensive interest in computer history throughout his life. Cabrinety was director of development of Superior Software Inc. and founder of the Computer History Institute for the Preservation of Software. He died in 1995, and Stanford acquired the entire collection as a gift from the Cabrinety family in 1998.

The work of capturing disk images ­– exact copies of the data on the original software media – will proceed as a cross-country collaboration between the Stanford University Libraries and NIST. At Stanford, Special Collections staff will catalog and prepare the materials for shipment to the NSRL forensics lab in Gaithersburg, Md. The software disk images, associated digital photography of box covers, manuals and inserts will then be sent to Stanford for long-term preservation in the Stanford Digital Repository.

Stanford bioengineer Covert receives $1.5 million Distinguished Investigator grant

March 19th, 2013

MARKUS COVERT, an assistant professor of bioengineering at Stanford, has been awarded a $1.5 million Distinguished Investigator exploratory grant from the Paul G. Allen Family Foundation. Covert was one of five recipients of this year’s award, which, according to the foundation, “aims to unlock fundamental questions in biology.”

Covert’s research involves building complex computer models of living organisms. Last year, he announced completion of the world’s first whole-cell computer model of a simple bacterium. The three-year Allen grant will support Covert’s ongoing work to develop models of cells of increasing complexity, including human cells.

“Recently, our lab built a computer model that takes every single gene into account for a single cell, but we still have a long way to go before this technology is ready to apply to complex organisms,” said Covert, who works in the Department of Bioengineering, a joint effort of the School of Engineering and the School of Medicine. “The Allen Foundation’s generous award will enable us to solve some of the most critical challenges posed by more complicated cells.”

Read the full announcement on the Stanford Engineering website or watch this video, in which Covert talks about his work.