Archive for 2013

Innovation from many corners: 2013-14 U.S. and international Knight Fellows selected

May 7th, 2013

Twelve U.S. journalists and innovators have been awarded John S. Knight Journalism Fellowships for the 2013-14 academic year. They were chosen from among 100 applicants.

Next year's domestic Knight Journalism Fellows

“This group of U.S. Knight Fellows is easily the most diversified ever, with fellows coming from daily newspapers, online publications, tech companies and even an academic institution,” said JAMES BETTINGER, director of the Knight Fellowships Program. “This wide range of backgrounds and specialties reflects the variety and depth of expertise and commitment that journalism needs right now.”

The domestic fellows will join eight international fellowswho were selected last month. The program champions innovation, entrepreneurship and leadership in journalism by helping the fellows pursue their ideas to improve the quality of news and information reaching the public. Fellows also participate fully in the intellectual life of the university, through academic classes, lectures, symposiums and individual research.

The 2013-14 international Knight Fellows

The 2013-14 fellows will explore proposals that touch on many aspects of journalism: improving accuracy in reporting on Islam, raising the profile of indigenous perspectives on the news, engaging citizens in local food coverage, helping the public better understand data visualization and getting news quickly to communities hit by disaster. They also will be developing tools to help journalists create high-quality animated editorial cartoons, blog live on mobile platforms, gain relevant coding and data skills and better connect with “millennials” and the changing U.S. demographic.

The international fellows were selected from among 216 applicants. They will be researching a range of ideas to improve journalism, from bringing news to Pakistan’s tribal areas and fostering innovation in China and East Africa to training female reporters in Afghanistan and strengthening press freedoms in Myanmar.

To find out more about the 2013-14 fellows and their projects, visit the Knight Fellowships website.

 

Martin Reinhard wins Humboldt Research Award

May 6th, 2013

MARTIN REINHARD, professor emeritus of civil and environmental engineering, has been selected for a Humboldt Research Award, conferred annually in recognition of lifetime achievements in research. The award is presented by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation of Bonn, Germany, to promote academic collaboration between top international scientists and scholars and colleagues in Germany.

Martin Reinhard

Reinhard studies the fate of organic substances in the subsurface environment. His lab develops technologies for the remediation of contaminated groundwater through chemical and biological transformation reactions in soils, natural waters and treatment systems.

Humboldt awardees are invited to carry out research projects of personal interest in cooperation with German counterparts.

—ANDREW MYERS, School of Engineering

Senior Maya Kornberg awarded Shultz Fellowship

May 3rd, 2013

Thomas L. Friedman, Maya Kornberg and George Shultz

While thousands of Stanford students earn scholarships and have the opportunity to study abroad, for senior MAYA KORNBERG, the awarding of her fellowship to study in Israel this summer was anything but ordinary. “This is an only-at-Stanford kind of morning,” said RABBI SERENA EISENBERG, executive director of Hillel at Stanford. Or as New York Times columnist and author THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN said, “Not many people get a fellowship handed to them by two former secretaries of state.” Not to mention a best-selling author.

Condoleezza Rice and Maya Kornberg

At a breakfast gathering at Hillel Thursday morning, Kornberg was awarded the George and Charlotte Shultz Fellowship for Modern Israel Studies from former U.S. Secretary of State CONDOLEEZZA RICE. Rice, also a professor of political science and business at Stanford, happened to teach Kornberg in her undergraduate foreign policy seminar winter quarter. Kornberg also received accolades from the namesake of the fellowship, GEORGE SHULTZ, also a former U.S. secretary of state. And Friedman, who established the fellowship in honor of Shultz on the occasion of Shultz’s 90th birthday two years ago, also joined in bestowing the honor.

“This fellowship is an example of what Stanford does best,” Rice said. “Great research universities bring together people from the entire academic spectrum, from 18-year-old freshmen to Nobel laureates, and put them together to instill in all of us a desire to search for the truth.” Despite her many commitments, Rice said she did not hesitate when asked to serve on the Shultz Fellowship review committee: “Anything with George’s name, I pay attention. George is emblematic of a great public servant, and he is also a university person, deeply involved with students. And Tom Friedman, he has helped us see inside this complicated region more clearly than any author or scholar I know.”

Rice, Shultz and Friedman all noted that a visit to Israel is essential for any scholar working to understand the Middle East. Friedman said he established the fellowship in recognition of Shultz’s “tireless efforts to broker Middle East peace,” and that the honor is available to any Stanford student interested in studying Israel or the Arab-Israeli peace process. The Shultzes then added to the fellowship, as did philanthropists LAURA LAUDER and JIM KOSHLAND. (Because of university restrictions on funding research opportunities in Israel while the State Department maintains a travel advisory there, the fellowship fund was established at Hillel at Stanford, which administers the award.)

Last year, the first fellowship was awarded to EMILY WARREN, a joint JD-economics PhD candidate, who used the time to study how Israel’s defense investments in the late 1980s resulted in a tech boom in the early 1990s.

Kornberg, a graduating senior majoring in international relations, intends to use her fellowship to examine Israeli political parties’ campaigns in elections between 1967 and 2013, investigating the platforms and rhetoric on issues relating to the peace process, such as territorial division, the status of Jerusalem and rights of return.

“What I have appreciated most about my Stanford experience is that they just keep throwing these amazing opportunities at you all the time,” said Kornberg, who is the daughter and granddaughter of two Nobel laureates, ROGER KORNBERG and the late ARTHUR KORNBERG. Her proud mother, who was toting a camera Thursday morning, is YAHLI LORCH, associate professor of structural biology.

Maya Kornberg plans to pursue a graduate degree in public policy at Columbia University. But when she returns from Israel, she has a date to meet with Rice, Shultz and Friedman to share what she learned.

 

—LISA LAPIN

Graduate School of Education professors recognized for their research

May 2nd, 2013

David Labaree

AERA, the American Educational Research Association, recently honored three faculty members of the Graduate School of Education — DAVID LABAREE, RAY MCDERMOTT and SEAN REARDON — at its annual meeting in San Francisco.

Labaree, professor of education, was selected to be a 2013 AERA Fellow for his exceptional scholarly contributions to education research. Labaree explores the development of the American education system and the role this system plays in American society. He is the author of a number of award-winning books, including Someone Has to Fail: The Zero-Sum Game of Public Schooling, The Trouble with Ed Schools and How to Succeed in School Without Really Learning: The Credentials Race in American Education.

At the AERA conference, Labaree also gave the 55th annual John Dewey Lecture. His talk, “College — What Is It Good For?” traced how the modern American university came into being, looking in particular at how this institution developed its basic form in the “improbable context of the United States in the 19th century.”

Ray McDermott

Education Professor McDermott was chosen to receive a lifetime achievement award for distinguished contributions to social contexts in education research. He also gave the keynote address to AERA’s Division G, the organization’s section devoted to the social contexts of education. His talk, “Changing Borders: Relocating Race, Ethnicity and Class,” addressed how the dynamics of power along racial and ethnic borders affect access to educational opportunity.

McDermott, an anthropologist whose 45-year career in education began as a classroom teacher in New York City, joined the GSE faculty in 1989. Much of his recent research has been centered on the intersection of education, social structure and political economy. He takes a broad interest in the analysis of human communication, the organization of school success and failure, and the history and use of various literacies around the world. His work includes studies of inner-city public schools, after-school classrooms and the function of information technologies in different cultures.

Sean Reardon

Reardon, also a professor of education, and ANDREW HO, who received his PhD from the GSE and is now assistant professor of education at Harvard, were chosen to receive AERA’s Palmer O. Johnson Memorial Award for their paper, “Estimating Achievement Gaps from Test Scores Reported in Ordinal Proficiency Categories” in the August 2012 issue of the Journal of Educational and Behavioral Statistics (JEBS). The award is given annually to recognize the highest quality of scholarship published in JEBS and three other AERA publications.

In the paper, Reardon and Ho present novel statistical methods that enable researchers to better use readily available test score data to estimate achievement gaps among student groups. In particular, they describe ways to more accurately estimate achievement gaps when only incomplete data are available.

— JONATHAN RABINOVITZ, Stanford Graduate School of Education

Three Cardinal football players drafted by the NFL

May 1st, 2013

 

Photo Credit: David Gonzales/Stanford Athletics

Zach Ertz

Photo Credit: Dani Vernon/Stanford Athletics

Stepfan Taylor

Photo Credit: Don Feria/Stanford Athletics

Levine Toilolo

Three Stanford football players were selected in the 2013 NFL Draft last weekend with tight ends ZACH ERTZ and LEVINE TOILOLO being called alongside running back STEPFAN TAYLOR.

Ertz was chosen by the Philadelphia Eagles with the 35th overall pick (third pick of the second round); Toilolo was selected by the Atlanta Falcons with the 36th pick of the fourth round (133rd overall); and Taylor was called upon by Arizona with the 7th pick of the fifth round (140th overall).

It marked the fourth straight year that Stanford had at least three players drafted.

Ertz said he is excited about playing for Philadelphia. “My mom and dad were both born in Pennsylvania, so it feels like this very cool circle of life. I can’t stop thinking about how the Pac-12 gave me my start, and now I will be able to keep playing for a coach that I respected since I started at Stanford. Thank you all for your support,” Ertz said.

“I’m beyond excited right now. I’m looking forward to being a part of the Falcons organization,” said Toilolo. “I can’t wait to get out there to Atlanta, get to work and be a part of this team.”

For his part, Taylor called it a blessing to be a part of the Arizona Cardinals’ organization. “This is the perfect situation for me. I want to thank the Stanford family for the last four years, all of their support and best wishes.”

In addition, six players will get their chance to play professionally after being signed to free agent or rookie minicamp contracts with NFL teams.

Read more on gostanford.com.

Harold Hwang wins top Korean Award

April 30th, 2013

 

Harold Hwang

HAROLD Y. HWANG, professor of applied physics and photon science at Stanford and SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, has won the 2013 Ho-Am Award in Science, one of five annual awards often referred to as the Korean equivalent of the Nobel prizes.

The award – which consists of a 6-ounce gold medal, a laureate diploma and a cash prize of 300 million Korean won (about $265,000) – will be presented May 31 in Seoul. Recipients also are scheduled to give commemorative lectures at major universities, academies and high schools across Korea.

Hwang is an expert in creating complex oxide materials with extraordinary electronic and magnetic properties, including superconductivity. Made of alternating atomic layers of metals and oxygen, these materials are the focus of intense worldwide research seeking to design new combinations for electronics, sensing and energy applications.

“Complex oxides are today where semiconductors were early in the 20th century, when crystal radios were state of the art,” Hwang said. “If you put various semiconductors together, you can make fantastic devices just because the semiconductor interface can range from an insulator to a good conductor. With complex oxides, however, you can add superconductivity, magnetism, ferroelectricity and many other properties. Imagine the possibilities.”

The key, he said, is determining the principles that give each atomic arrangement its special behavior. Hwang and colleagues use SLAC’s light sources to probe the electronic behavior of these materials. His team is creating a chamber that will enable researchers to create complex materials layer by layer and measure their properties at the same time.

The Ho-Am Prize was established by Samsung in 1990 to honor its founding chairman, the late Byung-Chull Lee. “Ho-Am” was Lee’s pen name. Awards are given each year in the categories of science, engineering, medicine, arts and community service. In addition, a Ho-Am Prize in Mass Communication was awarded from 1991 to 1994 and in 1996.

A total of 177 people have received Ho-Am prizes, including two Stanford professors: THOMAS LEE (2011, engineering) and STUART K. KIM (2004, medicine).

Ho-Am Prizes are awarded to people of Korean origin. (The prize for community service, however, can also be awarded to non-Koreans who made outstanding contributions to Korea and Koreans at home and abroad.) Hwang’s parents are from Korea, and came to Southern California for graduate school. He said he’s descended from a Chinese merchant who moved to the Korean peninsula about a thousand years ago.

—MIKE ROSS, SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory

Stanford’s Asian Staff Forum hosts Adam Johnson

April 29th, 2013

Newly minted Pulitzer Prize winner and English Professor Adam Johnson signs books at an Asian Staff Forum talk.

When the Asian Staff Forum (ASF) invited ADAM JOHNSON, associate professor of English, to speak to their group about his novel The Orphan Master’s Son, they had no idea that just a few days before the event their guest would win a Pulitzer Prize for fiction.

The Orphan Master’s Son, Johnson’s third novel, is a gripping tale about a young man’s life and struggles in North Korea during Kim Jong Il’s reign. The ASF seeks to promote the interests of Stanford employees of Asian/Pacific/Indian subcontinent descent or affinity.

Originally planned as an intimate discussion at the Asian American Activities Center, the event was moved to the Humanities Center to accommodate more people. But Johnson played down the impact the prize was having on his daily life. Asked by an audience member how it felt to win a Pulitzer, Johnson said that since the announcement his dishwasher had broken and he had gotten a parking ticket, so “everything feels the same.”

A curiosity about the “great tragedies of the world” inspired Johnson to learn more about the turbulent history of the Korean peninsula and the harsh reality of life in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK). He gleaned what he could from policy texts and frequent visits to propaganda laden DPRK websites. “Scenarios, scenes and dialogue” that filled in the missing human stories “just started coming out,” he said.

As a fiction writer, Johnson was particularly intrigued by how the strict rules of the Kim dynasty have created a “single national story” for North Koreans.

In an effort to learn more about the cryptic society, Johnson visited North Korea in 2007. He knew that in such a closed society where even family members censor each other, he wouldn’t be able to stop people on the streets to learn more about their lives, but said that he learned a lot through observation. His imagination filled in the rest.

“Legend, myth, rumor and dreams are powerful tools” when it comes to “building a psychological portrait,” Johnson told the group.

—CORRIE GOLDMAN, Humanities at Stanford

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

President Hennessy receives the inaugural Tall Tree Global Impact Award

April 24th, 2013

When it was time for the Palo Alto Chamber of Commerce and the Palo Alto Weekly to honor outstanding local individuals and organizations with the 2013 Tall Tree Awards, they decided to add another prize to this year’s roster — the Global Impact Award. Stanford President JOHN HENNESSY was selected as its first recipient.

“I am deeply honored to be the first recipient of the Tall Tree Global Impact Award,” Hennessy said at a celebration of the awardees earlier this month. He noted that El Palo Alto, “the tall tree,” is at the center of both the Stanford seal and the City of Palo Alto’s seal.

During his acceptance remarks, Hennessy recognized all of the “incredible people” he’s worked with, particularly faculty and staff, “who are so dedicated to our students.”

“My career and my interests and my family have all been nurtured by this community over the years,” Hennessy continued. “Of course, living in this area I breathed the atmosphere of entrepreneurism that is everywhere and learned about thinking big, swallowing that potion that says you really can change the world and do something remarkable that affects people.

“The symbiotic relationship between the community, the university and the valley has been absolutely crucial to make that happen. One of the reasons we’ve succeeded is not only this inventive atmosphere that exists at the university, but because this is an absolutely delightful place to live. And that’s one of the things that’s really helped us recruit the best and brightest people from around the world.”

Hennessy said that when he and his wife, Andrea, first came to the area in 1977, it was not the world’s technological hub as it is today.

“When I first came, if you wanted to go talk to the movers and shakers in the computer industry, you had to get on a plane and fly to Boston or fly to New York. Now, they all fly here to visit us,” he said.

He reminded the attendees that there remains work to be done in order to ensure that the greater Palo Alto area continues to hold on to its core values: excellence in education; maintaining a vibrant arts community; building a state-of-the-art hospital; and being role models in environmental sustainability.

“I look forward to working with all of you to make sure that our community remains a leader not only in innovation, but also in the quality of life we offer the people who live here,” Hennessy concluded.

Since 1980, the Tall Tree Awards have recognized individuals and organizations that have made “bold and significant contributions to the heart of Palo Alto, while extending influence beyond our local community.”

In addition to the Global Impact Award (which will be awarded periodically, not annually), the 2013 recipients of the annual Tall Tree Awards are:

Outstanding Business: Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati

Outstanding Nonprofit Organization: Breast Cancer Connections

Outstanding Citizen: RAY BACCHETTI, a former vice president for planning and management at Stanford

Outstanding Professional: BECKY BEACOM, health educator for Palo Alto Medical Foundation

—ELAINE RAY