Natural Sciences


Showing 151-200 of 382 Results

  • Iain Johnstone

    Iain Johnstone

    Marjorie Mhoon Fair Professor of Quantitative Science and Professor of Statistics and of Biomedical Data Sciences

    Current Research and Scholarly InterestsEmpirical bias/shrinkage estimation; non-parametric, smoothing; statistical inverse problems.

  • Patricia Jones

    Patricia Jones

    The Dr. Nancy Chang Professor, Emerita

    Current Research and Scholarly InterestsDr. Jones' research focused on genetic, molecular, and cellular mechanisms that regulate immune responses. She hHer most recent work was centered on the regulation of innate immune responses that are triggered by conserved microbial components. As these responses can be harmful they are highly regulated in their occurrence, magnitude, and duration. Her lab discovered a novel mechanism that negatively regulates innate responses, mediated by the phosphatase calcineurin.

  • Martin Jonikas

    Martin Jonikas

    Assistant Professor, Biology

    Current Research and Scholarly InterestsPhotosynthesis provides energy for nearly all life on Earth. Our lab aims to dramatically accelerate our understanding of photosynthetic organisms by developing and applying novel functional genomics strategies in the green alga Chlamydomonas reinhardtii. In the long run, we dream of engineering photosynthetic organisms to address the challenges that our civilization faces in agriculture, health and energy.

  • Shamit Kachru

    Shamit Kachru

    Professor of Physics and Director, Stanford Institute for Theoretical Physics, Emeritus

    Current Research and Scholarly InterestsMy current research is focused in three directions:

    — Mathematical aspects of string theory (with a focus on BPS state counts, black holes, and moonshine)

    — Quantum field theory approaches to condensed matter physics (with a focus on physics of non-Fermi liquids)

    — Theoretical biology, with a focus on evolution and ecology

  • Renata Kallosh

    Renata Kallosh

    Stanford W. Ascherman, MD Professor, Emerita

    BioWhat is the mathematical structure of supergravity/string theory and its relation to cosmology?

    Professor Kallosh works on the general structure of supergravity and string theory and their applications to cosmology. Her main interests are related to the models early universe inflation and dark energy in string theory. She develops string theory models explaining the origin of the universe and its current acceleration. With her collaborators, she has recently constructed de Sitter supergravity, which is most suitable for studies of inflation and dark energy and spontaneously broken supersymmetry.

    She is analyzing possible consequences of the expected new data from current and future cosmological observations, including LiteBIRD satellite CMB data. These results may affect the relationship between superstring theory and supergravity, and the real world. Professor Kallosh works, in particular, on future tests of string theory by CMB data and effective supergravity models with flexible amplitude of gravitational waves produced during inflation.

  • Matthew Kanan

    Matthew Kanan

    Professor of Chemistry and Senior Fellow at the Precourt Institute for Energy

    BioMatt Kanan is a Professor of Chemistry and Senior Fellow at the Precourt Institute for Energy at Stanford. Matt’s research group works across multiple fields of chemistry and engineering with applications for sustainable plastics, critical mineral recovery, and carbon management. Their work has led to several inventions in these areas, including new performance-advantaged bioplastics, electrochemical systems to recycle acid and base, metal-free catalysts for C1 transformations, and thermal mineral conversion processes. Matt is the co-founder of ReSource Chemical Corp., an Oakland-based start-up commercializing manufacturing technology developed in his lab, and Mafix, Inc., a spin-out developing mineral fertilizers that remove CO2 from the atmosphere. Prior to joining the Stanford faculty in 2009, Matt did his Ph.D. studies in organic chemistry at Harvard and postdoctoral research at MIT in inorganic chemistry. He earned his B.A. in chemistry from Rice University in 2000.

  • Aharon Kapitulnik

    Aharon Kapitulnik

    Theodore and Sydney Rosenberg Professor of Applied Physics and Professor of Physics

    BioAharon Kapitulnik is the Theodore and Sydney Rosenberg Professor in Applied Physics at the Departments of Applied Physics and Physics at Stanford University. His research focuses on experimental condensed matter physics, while opportunistically, also apply his methods to tabletop experimental studies of fundamental phenomena in physics. His recent studies cover a broad spectrum of phenomena associated with the behavior of correlated and disordered electron systems, particularly in reduced dimensions, and the development of effective instrumentation to detect subtle signatures of physical phenomena.

    Among other recognitions, his activities earned him the Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship (1986-90), a Presidential Young Investigator Award (1987-92), a Sackler Scholar at Tel-Aviv University (2006), the Heike Kamerlingh Onnes Prize for Superconductivity Experiment (2009), a RTRA (Le Triangle de la Physique) Senior Chair (2010), and the Oliver Buckley Condensed Matter Prize of the American Physical Society (2015). Aharon Kapitulnik is a Fellow of the American Physical Society, a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and a member of the National Academy of Sciences. Kapitulnik holds a Ph.D. in Physics from Tel-Aviv University (1984).

  • Hemamala Karunadasa

    Hemamala Karunadasa

    J.G. Jackson and C.J. Wood Professor of Chemistry and Senior Fellow at the Precourt Institute for Energy and Professor, by courtesy, of Materials Science and Engineering

    BioProfessor Hema Karunadasa works with colleagues in materials science, earth science, and applied physics to drive the discovery of new materials with applications in clean energy. Using the tools of synthetic chemistry, her group designs materials that couple the structural tunability of organic molecules with the diverse electronic and optical properties of extended inorganic solids. This research targets materials such as sorbents for capturing environmental pollutants, phosphors for solid-state lighting, and absorbers for solar cells.

    Hemamala Karunadasa studied chemistry and materials science at Princeton University (A.B. with high honors 2003; Certificate in Materials Science and Engineering 2003), where her undergraduate thesis project with Professor Robert J. Cava examined geometric magnetic frustration in metal oxides. She moved from solid-state chemistry to solution-state chemistry for her doctoral studies in inorganic chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley (Ph.D. 2009) with Professor Jeffrey R. Long. Her thesis focused on heavy atom building units for magnetic molecules and molecular catalysts for generating hydrogen from water. She continued to study molecular electrocatalysts for water splitting during postdoctoral research with Berkeley Professors Christopher J. Chang and Jeffrey R. Long at the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. She further explored molecular catalysts for hydrocarbon oxidation as a postdoc at the California Institute of Technology with Professor Harry B. Gray. She joined the Stanford Chemistry Department faculty in September 2012. Her research explores solution-state routes to new solid-state materials.

    Professor Karunadasa’s lab at Stanford takes a molecular approach to extended solids. Lab members gain expertise in solution- and solid-state synthetic techniques and structure determination through powder- and single-crystal x-ray diffraction. Lab tools also include a host of spectroscopic and electrochemical probes, imaging methods, and film deposition techniques. Group members further characterize their materials under extreme environments and in operating devices to tune new materials for diverse applications in renewable energy.

    Please visit the lab website for more details and recent news.

  • Chaitan Khosla

    Chaitan Khosla

    Wells H. Rauser and Harold M. Petiprin Professor and Professor of Chemistry and, by courtesy, of Biochemistry

    Current Research and Scholarly InterestsResearch in this laboratory focuses on problems where deep insights into enzymology and metabolism can be harnessed to improve human health.

    For the past two decades, we have studied and engineered enzymatic assembly lines called polyketide synthases that catalyze the biosynthesis of structurally complex and medicinally fascinating antibiotics in bacteria. An example of such an assembly line is found in the erythromycin biosynthetic pathway. Our current focus is on understanding the structure and mechanism of this polyketide synthase. At the same time, we are developing methods to decode the vast and growing number of orphan polyketide assembly lines in the sequence databases.

    For more than a decade, we have also investigated the pathogenesis of celiac disease, an autoimmune disorder of the small intestine, with the goal of discovering therapies and related management tools for this widespread but overlooked disease. Ongoing efforts focus on understanding the pivotal role of transglutaminase 2 in triggering the inflammatory response to dietary gluten in the celiac intestine.

  • Steven Kivelson

    Steven Kivelson

    Prabhu Goel Family Professor

    Current Research and Scholarly InterestsPast Graduate Students:

    Assa Auerbach - Professor of Physics, Technion University - deceased.
    Weikang Wu - deceased.
    Shoucheng Zhang - Professor of Physics, Stanford University - deceased.
    Shivaji Sondhi - Wykham Professor of Physics, Oxford University
    Markku Salkola - Facebook, Menlo Park
    Vadim Oganesyan - Professor of Physics CUNY
    Kyrill Shtengle - Professor of Physics, UC Riverside
    Oron Zachar
    Zohar Nussinov - Professor of Physics, Washington University
    Erica W. Carlson - Professor of Physics, Purdue University
    Edward Sleva
    John Robertson - Citadel, Austin
    Wei-Feng Tsai
    Ian Bindloss
    Paul Oreto - Head of Machine Learning at Cantor Fitzgerald, New York
    Erez Berg - Professor of Physics, Weizmann Institute
    Hong Yao - Professor of Physics, Tsinghua University
    Li Liu
    Weejee Cho
    George Karakonstantakis
    Sam Lederer - Physics and Science Research Teacher, Harker School, San Jose
    Laimei Nie - Assistant Professor of Physics, Purdue University
    Ilya Esterlis - Assistant Professor, University of Wisconsin, Madison
    John Dodaro - Research Associate, Stanford University
    Chao Wang - Citadel LLC, New York
    Yue Yu - Post Doctoral Fellow, University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee
    Yuval Gannot - Software Engineer, Google, Mtn. View
    Kyung-Su KIm - Post Doctoral Fellow, A.J. Leggett Institute, UIUC
    Zhaoyu Han - Post Doctoral Fellow, Harvard Univeristy
    Andrew Yuan - Post Doctoral Fellow, University of Maryland
    Vladimir Calvera - Post Doctoral Fellow, University of Minnesota
    Askhat Pandey - Fellow, All Souls College, Oxford

    Past Post Docs:

    Douglas Stone - Professor of Physics, Yale University
    Gergeley Zimanyi - Professor of Physics, UC Davis
    Dror Orgad - Professor of Physics, Tel Aviv University
    Hae-Young Kee - Professor of Physics, University of Toronto
    Oskar Vafek - Professor of Physics, University of Florida
    Eun-Ah Kim - Professor of Physics, Cornell University
    Srinivas Raghu - Professor of Physics, Stanford University
    Maisam Barkeshli - Professor of Physics, University of Maryland
    Michael Mulligan - Associate Professor of Physics, UC Riverside
    Pavan Hosur - Professor of Physics, University of Houston
    Yi Zhang - Professor of Physics, Tsinghua University
    Abulhassan Vaezi - Professor of Physics, Sharifi University
    Tomas Bzdusek - Professor of Physics, University of Zurich
    Jingyuan Chen - Assistant Professor of Physics, Tsinghua University
    Yoni Schattner - Research Scientist, Quantum Computing at the Amazon Center for
    Quantum Computing at Caltech, Pasadena
    John Sous - Assistant Professor of Chemistry, Yale University
    Chaitanya Murthy - Assistant Professor, University of Rochester

    Past Undergraduate Research Assistants:

    Kevin S. Wang - Graduate student, Princeton University
    Jeffrey Chang - Graduate student, Harvard University
    Vijay Nathan Josephs - Graduate Student, Stanford University

    Unofficial Past Students and Post Docs:

    (i.e. where I believe I played the corresponding mentoring role, but the connection
    was unofficial - a shameless attempt to claim partial credit):
    Shoucheng Zhang - (did his final year of PhD work, the part in CMT, under my direction and
    worked with me extensively while a post doc)
    Jainendra Jain - (did the final portion of his PhD work, the part relevant to the quantum
    Hall effect, under my guidance and worked with me extensively while a post doc)
    Daniel Rokhsar - (No official connection at all, but did significant portion of both his
    graduate and post-doctoral research in collaboration with me.)
    Akash Maharaj - (was a student of Srinivas Raghu with whom he worked extensively, but
    he also did a significant portion of his graduate research in collaboration with me.)

  • Courtney Klepac

    Courtney Klepac

    Basic Life Res Scientist

    Current Research and Scholarly InterestsCourtney will be involved with mapping coral heat resistance across multiple Pacific reefs as part of a collaborative (NSF) Super Reefs project, where she will train and collaborate with local students and researchers on coral tolerance experiments. By investigating the influence of environment, physiological plasticity, and genetic adaptation on the stress tolerance scope of corals, her research aims are to understand how corals will respond to future climate change and identify putatively tolerant corals for management.

  • Eric Kool

    Eric Kool

    George A. and Hilda M. Daubert Professor of Chemistry

    Current Research and Scholarly Interests• Design of cell-permeable reagents for profiling, modifying, and controlling RNAs
    • Developing fluorescent probes of DNA repair pathways, with applications in cancer, aging, and neurodegenerative disease
    • Discovery and development of small-molecule modulators of DNA repair enzymes, with focus on cancer and inflammation

  • Ron Kopito

    Ron Kopito

    Professor of Biology

    Current Research and Scholarly InterestsOur laboratory use state-of-the-art cell biological, genetic and systems-level approaches to understand how proteins are correctly synthesized, folded and assembled in the mammalian secretory pathway, how errors in this process are detected and how abnormal proteins are destroyed by the ubiquitin-proteasome system.

  • Chao-Lin Kuo

    Chao-Lin Kuo

    Professor of Physics and of Particle Physics and Astrophysics

    Current Research and Scholarly Interests1. Searching/measuring primordial gravitational waves in the CMB (Cosmic Microwave Background) through experiments at the South Pole (BICEP and SPT), high plateaus in Tibet (AliCPT) and Atacama (Simons Observatory), as well as in space (LiteBIRD).

    2. Development and applications of superconducting detector and readout systems in astrophysics, cosmology, and other areas.

    3. Novel detector concepts for axion searches (https://youtu.be/UBscQSFzpLE)

  • Brian Lantz

    Brian Lantz

    Professor (Research) of Applied Physics

    Current Research and Scholarly InterestsMeasure gravitational waves

  • Robert Laughlin

    Robert Laughlin

    Anne T. and Robert M. Bass Professor in the School of Humanities and Sciences

    BioProfessor Laughlin is a theorist with interests ranging from hard-core engineering to cosmology. He is an expert in semiconductors (Nobel Prize 1998) and has also worked on plasma and nuclear physics issues related to fusion and nuclear-pumped X-ray lasers. His technical work at the moment focuses on “correlated-electron” phenomenology – working backward from experimental properties of materials to infer the presence (or not) of new kinds of quantum self-organization. He recently proposed that all Mott insulators – including the notorious doped ones that exhibit high-temperature superconductivity – are plagued by a new kind of subsidiary order called “orbital antiferromagnetism” that is difficult to detect directly. He is also the author of A Different Universe, a lay-accessible book explaining emergent law.

  • Benjamin Lev

    Benjamin Lev

    Professor of Applied Physics and of Physics

    Current Research and Scholarly InterestsLevLab is a joint AMO & CM experimental group that explores the question: Can new classes of states and phases of quantum matter be created far away from equilibrium, and if so, what do we learn? We use our new technique, confocal cavity QED, to both engineer out-of-equilibrium quantum gases and 2D materials and to image and control their new properties.

  • Craig Levin

    Craig Levin

    Professor of Radiology (Molecular Imaging Program at Stanford/Nuclear Medicine) and, by courtesy, of Physics, of Electrical Engineering and of Bioengineering

    Current Research and Scholarly InterestsMolecular Imaging Instrumentation
    Laboratory

    Our research interests involve the development of novel instrumentation and software algorithms for in vivo imaging of cellular and molecular signatures of disease in humans and small laboratory animal subjects.

  • Xing Liang

    Xing Liang

    Basic Life Res Scientist

    Current Research and Scholarly InterestsMechanism of MT polarity establishment during PVD neuron dendrite outgrowing in C. elegans.

  • Jared Duker Lichtman

    Jared Duker Lichtman

    Szego Assistant Professor of Mathematics

    BioJared Duker Lichtman is a Szegő Assistant Professor in the Department of Mathematics. Jared earned his doctorate in 2023 at the University of Oxford, supervised by Prof. James Maynard.

  • Andrei Linde

    Andrei Linde

    Humanities and Sciences Professor, Emeritus

    BioWhat is the origin and the global structure of the universe?

    For a long time, scientists believed that our universe was born in the big bang, as an expanding ball of fire. This scenario dramatically changed during the last 35 years. Now we think that initially the universe was rapidly inflating, being in an unstable energetic vacuum-like state. It became hot only later, when this vacuum-like state decayed. Quantum fluctuations produced during inflation are responsible for galaxy formation. In some places, these quantum fluctuations are so large that they can produce new rapidly expanding parts of the universe. This process makes the universe immortal and transforms it into a multiverse, a huge fractal consisting of many exponentially large parts with different laws of low-energy physics operating in each of them.

    Professor Linde is one of the authors of inflationary theory and of the theory of an eternal inflationary multiverse. His work emphasizes the cosmological implications of string theory and supergravity.

    Current areas of focus:

    - Construction of realistic models of inflation based on supergravity and string theory
    - Investigation of conceptual issues related to the theory of inflationary multiverse

  • Scott W Linderman

    Scott W Linderman

    Assistant Professor of Statistics

    BioScott Linderman, PhD, is an Assistant Professor at Stanford University in the Statistics Department and the Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute, as well as the Co-Director of the Stanford Center for Neural Data Science. His research focuses on machine learning, computational neuroscience, and the general question of how computational and statistical methods can help to decipher neural computation. His work combines novel methodological development in the areas of state space models, deep generative models, point processes, and approximate Bayesian inference with applied statistical analyses of large-scale neural and behavioral data. Previously, he was a postdoctoral fellow at Columbia University and a graduate student at Harvard University. His work has been recognized with a Savage Award from the International Society for Bayesian Analysis, an AISTATS Best Paper Award, an NSF CAREER Award, and fellowships from the McKnight, Sloan, and Simons Foundations.

  • John Lipa

    John Lipa

    Professor (Research) of Physics, Emeritus

    BioJohn Lipa received his PhD at the University of Western Austrailia. He has acted as an assistant professor, senior research associate, and professor at Stanford University. Research interests include testing of various aspects of the renormalization group theory of cooperative phase transitions.

  • Marc Lipsitch

    Marc Lipsitch

    Michael and Barbara Berberian Professor, Professor of Biology and Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies

    BioMarc Lipsitch started his appointments at Stanford on January 1, 2026. From 1999-2025 he was a faculty member at Harvard TH Chan Schooll of Public Health, where he was Professor of Epidemiology (20062025) and founding Director of the Center for Communicable Disease Dynamics (2009-2025).

  • Elena Litchman

    Elena Litchman

    Professor (By Courtesy), Biology

    BioElena Litchman is a faculty member in the Department of Global Ecology of the Carnegie Institution for Science and a Professor (by courtesy) in the Department of Earth System Science. Prior to joining Carnegie and Stanford, she was an MSU Foundation Professor at Michigan State University. She received her undergraduate degree from Moscow State University, Russia, and Ph.D. in Ecology from University of Minnesota.

    Dr. Litchman is an ecologist, interested in community assembly, resilience, and eco-evolutionary responses of microbial communities to changing environments, including anthropogenic global change, and the consequences of community changes for biodiversity, biogeochemical cycles, and ecosystem functioning. She works on a wide range of systems, from freshwater lakes, to oceans, gut microbiota and algal biofuel communities. She uses experiments, field work, data analyses and models to investigate fundamental and applied questions in ecology and environmental science.

    She received the G. Evelyn Hutchinson Award from the Association for the Sciences of Limnology and Oceanography (ASLO), and the Petersen Foundation Excellence Professorship Award from the Helmholtz Center for Ocean Research, Germany. She is the recipient of the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE) and the NSF CAREER Award.

  • Fang Liu

    Fang Liu

    Assistant Professor of Chemistry

    Current Research and Scholarly InterestsThe group will develop scalable and controllable processes to produce low dimensional materials and their artificial structures, and unravel their novel static and dynamical properties of broad interest to future photonic, electronic and energy technologies. The topics will include: a) Unraveling time-resolved dynamics in light-induced electronic response of two dimensional (2D) materials artificial structures. b) Fabrication of 1D atomically thin nanoribbon arrays and characterization of the electronic and magnetic properties for the prominent edge states. c) Lightwave manipulation with 2D superlattices. These research projects will provide participating students with broad interdisciplinary training across physics, chemistry, and materials science.

  • Sharon R. Long

    Sharon R. Long

    William C. Steere, Jr. - Pfizer Inc. Professor of Biological Sciences and Professor, by courtesy, of Biochemistry

    Current Research and Scholarly InterestsBiochemistry, genetics and cell biology of plant-bacterial symbiosis

  • Christopher Lowe

    Christopher Lowe

    John B. and Jean De Nault Professor of Marine Science at the Hopkins Marine Station

    Current Research and Scholarly InterestsEvolution and development, specifically the evolution of the deuterostomes

  • Liqun Luo

    Liqun Luo

    Ann and Bill Swindells Professor and Professor, by courtesy, of Neurobiology

    Current Research and Scholarly InterestsWe study how neurons are organized into specialized circuits to perform specific functions and how these circuits are assembled during development. We have developed molecular-genetic and viral tools, and are combining them with transcriptomic, proteomic, physiological, and behavioral approaches to study these problems. Topics include: 1) assembly of the fly olfactory circuit; 2) assembly of neural circuits in the mouse brain; 3) organization and function of neural circuits; 4) Tool development.