Some 120 incoming and current Stanford graduate students last week enjoyed five days of presentations, discussions and networking activities relating to the wide range of energy research and teaching offered at Stanford and SLAC.
Tour guide Mandeep Gill, left, describes the operation of SLAC’s linac to electrical engineering graduate students Yu-han Chou and John Belanger during a site tour for participants in the Energy@Stanford & SLAC conference last week. Photo by Janet Rae-Dupree
The first Energy@Stanford & SLAC conference featured more than 30 presentations on topics ranging from energy-conversion science and technologies to energy policies and commercial challenges. Many of the talks had two parts: one given by a professor, the other by a current graduate student. Attendees hailed from 19 departments across campus.
On Tuesday afternoon, Sept. 13, the students came to SLAC to learn about research conducted by the Stanford Institute for Materials and Energy Sciences (SIMES) and to tour the SLAC site.
“Our goals are to show both incoming and current grad students the breadth of research going on at Stanford and SLAC and to help these students develop an interdisciplinary network of colleagues who are also interested in energy,” said ZHI-XUN SHEN, SLAC chief scientist.
Key elements of the event were the nightly dinners, each located at a different site on Stanford’s property: Jasper Ridge Biological Preserve, SLAC, Graduate School of Business, Jen-Hsun Huang Engineering Center and the private home of LYNN ORR, professor of energy resources engineering.
“Most of the participants this year are incoming graduate students,” said Orr, director of Stanford’s Precourt Institute for Energy (PIE). “Our goal is to give these new students an opportunity to experience the full spectrum of the Stanford energy universe – everything from cutting-edge solar cell technology to climate modeling to the psychology of energy efficiency and much more.
BY MICHAEL ROSS
