School of Humanities and Sciences
Showing 1-100 of 132 Results
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Ethan Nadler
Ph.D. Student in Physics, admitted Autumn 2016
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsMy research aims to uncover the particle nature of dark matter through its influence on small-scale cosmological structure, and particularly on the abundance and properties of the faintest galaxies. My collaborators and I have characterized the imprint of dark matter microphysics on cosmological structure formation in terms of the minimum halo mass—i.e., the mass scale below which deviations from the cold or collisionless assumptions underlying standard dark matter theory prohibit the formation of gravitationally bound dark matter halos. This approach is compelling because the minimum halo mass is sensitive to a wide variety of dark matter properties, including its production mechanism, formation time, stability, warmth, self- and Standard Model-interactions, and de Broglie wavelength.
By combining the minimum halo mass formalism with a detailed galaxy–halo connection model based on high-resolution cosmological simulations, we are placing robust constraints on dark matter microphysics using the population of Milky Way satellite galaxies. Along with Vera Gluscevic, Kimberly Boddy, and Risa Wechsler, I derived the impact of early-universe dark matter–baryon scattering on dwarf galaxy abundances and set new constraints on these interactions, improving upon previous cosmological limits by several orders of magnitude. In an upcoming paper with the Dark Energy Survey, we apply this methodology to the full population of ultra-faint Milky Way satellites to place some of the most stringent limits to date on sterile neutrino, WIMP-like, and ultra-light axion dark matter. I am involved in related efforts to constrain dark matter self-interactions, following my work with Arka Banerjee and Susmita Adhikari on the phenomenology of self-interacting dark matter in the Milky Way.
I have worked closely with Yao-Yuan Mao, Gregory Green, and Risa Wechsler on a flexible and rigorous galaxy–halo connection model for faint systems. We developed a machine-learning algorithm that emulates subhalo disruption in hydrodynamic simulations, which we used to infer the properties of dwarf galaxy halos in a Bayesian framework. I am actively incorporating observations of Milky Way analogs from the Satellites Around Galactic Analogs (SAGA) survey into these constraints, which will place the Milky Way in a cosmological context and test the environmental dependence of the galaxy–halo connection in the dwarf regime.
I'm broadly interested in analytic and statistical techniques to describe cosmological structure formation; my undergraduate research with Peng Oh focused on the phase-space structure of dark matter halos, and I've studied halo clustering statistics using effective field theory techniques with Leonardo Senatore. I am also excited about interdisciplinary research, having co-authored papers in cognitive science and computational linguistics following my participation in the Santa Fe Institute's Complex Systems Summer School.
I am committed to education and mentorship with an emphasis on promoting diversity and equity for underrepresented groups in the physics community. I have mentored several undergraduate and post-baccalaureates on projects ranging from subhalo disruption in galaxy clusters (with Abigail Lee, now a University of Chicago graduate student) and hydrodynamic simulations (with Nicel Mohamed-Hinds, now a University of Washington graduate student), cosmological simulations of Milky Way-like systems (with Deveshi Buch, a Stanford undergraduate), and analyses of Large Magellanic Cloud analogs in the SAGA survey (with Veronica Pratt, also a Stanford undergraduate). I volunteered for Stanford’s Future Advancers of Science and Technology organization for several years, and I've volunteered as a public speaker for San Francisco’s Astronomy on Tap program. -
Stephanie Nail
Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Political Science
BioI am a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Stanford University working with Douglas Rivers, Morris Fiorina, and David Brady. I obtained a PhD in Political Science in July 2019 from the University of California, Merced. I received a Bachelor of Science in Psychology (Mathematics) and Managerial Economics with a minor in Statistics from the University of California, Davis in 2014.
I study how people use information to make decisions with methodology ranging from experimental studies and instrumental variables to spatial models and new measures. My current methodological interests include experiments, survey sampling, design, and analysis, Bayesian statistical inference, mathematical statistics, causal inference, and behavioral game theory. Substantively, my current interests include the study of information, party identification, polarization, judgement and decision-making, political behavior, and legislative politics.
At the undergraduate level, I have taught "Introduction to Judgment and Decision Making," an upper-division course that incorporates the foundations of information processing and biases while applying them to real life situations in political science, cognitive science, economics, and management. -
Carolyn Springer
Rosina Pierotti Professor in Italian Literature, Emerita
BioProfessor Carolyn Springer came to Stanford in 1985 after receiving a Ph.D. in Italian language and literature from Yale University. She has received fellowships and awards from the American Academy in Rome, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Harvard Center for Italian Renaissance Studies / Villa I Tatti, the Ford Foundation, and the Fulbright Foundation. Her research has focused primarily on Renaissance and nineteenth-century literature and cultural history. She has published articles and reviews in Annali d’italianistica, Boundary 2: A Journal of Postmodern Literature, Canadian Journal of Italian Studies, Forum Italicum, GRADIVA: International Journal of Literature, The International Journal of the Humanities, Italian Quarterly, The Italianist, Italica (Journal of the American Association of Italian Studies), Modern Language Studies, NEMLA Italian Studies, Quaderni d’italianistica, Renaissance Quarterly, Sixteenth Century Journal, Stanford Italian Review, Versus: Quaderni di studi semiotici, Woman’s Art Journal, The Wordsworth Circle, and Yale Italian Studies. Professor Springer’s books include The Marble Wilderness: Ruins and Representation in Italian Romanticism, 1775-1850 (Cambridge University Press, 1987; reprinted in paperback, 2010); Immagini del Novecento italiano (Macmillan, coeditors Pietro Frassica and Giovanni Pacchiano); and History and Memory in European Romanticism (special issue of Stanford Literature Review). Her latest book, Armour and Masculinity in the Italian Renaissance, appeared in 2010 with University of Toronto Press (reprinted in paperback, 2013).
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Joe Nation
Professor of the Practice of Public Policy
BioJoe Nation is a Professor of the Practice of Public Policy at Stanford University, where he directs the graduate student Practicum in public policy and teaches policy courses on climate change, health care, and California state issues. He also serves as the Grossman-Kennedy Fellow in Human Biology, teaching environmental and health policy. His current research is focused on public finance and public employee pensions. Nation sits on the board of Advisors for Georgetown’s School of Foreign Service and is a Faculty Affiliate at Stanford’s Center on Longevity. He has consulted for RAND for nearly 30 years since his graduation from Pardee RAND Graduate School (PRGS) in 1989.
From 1992-2000, he served on the Marin Water Board, including two terms as President. From 2000-2006, he represented Marin and Southern Sonoma Counties in the California State Assembly. He was the principal co-author of AB 32, California’s Global Warmings Solutions Act. Nation received a Ph.D. in Public Policy Analysis from PRGS. -
Vaidehi Natu
Physical Sci Res Scientist
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsI am a developmental neuroscientist. My research program aims to study how the human brain matures from infancy to adulthood, as it acquires new life skills and behaviors: What are the origins of neural and cellular mechanisms of brain development during infancy? How does the trajectory of cellular mechanisms unfold during development, as school-aged children acquire complex skills such as reading or face recognition? What are some of the parallels in brain development across primate species? What changes occur in the brain in developmental disorders such as autism, multiple sclerosis, and dyslexia.
I use a multi-modal approach by combining different techniques to study the brain. I use neuroimaging methods including functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), quantitative MRI (qMRI), and diffusion MRI (dMRI) as well as behavioral observations, histology, comparative methods across humans and macaques, and intracranial electroencephalography. This combination of complementary techniques provides a unified understanding of how the brain’s anatomy, function, and behavior co-develop to achieve complex human skills. -
Rosamond Naylor
William Wrigley Professor, Senior Fellow at the Woods Institute for the Environment and at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and Professor, by courtesy, of Economics
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsResearch Activities:
My research focuses on the environmental and equity dimensions of intensive food production systems, and the food security dimensions of low-input systems. I have been involved in a number of field-level research projects around the world and have published widely on issues related to climate impacts on agriculture, distributed irrigation systems for diversified cropping, nutrient use and loss in agriculture, biotechnology, aquaculture and livestock production, biofuels development, food price volatility, and food policy analysis.
Teaching Activities:
I teach courses on the world food economy, food and security, aquaculture science and policy, human society and environmental change, and food-water-health linkages. These courses are offered to graduate and undergraduate students through the departments of Earth System Science, Economics, History, and International Relations.
Professional Activities:
William Wrigley Professor of Earth Science (2015 - Present); Professor in Earth System Science (2009-present); Director, Stanford Center on Food Security and the Environment (2005-2018); Associate Professor of Economics by courtesy (2000-present); William Wrigley Senior Fellow, Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and the Woods Institute for the Environment (2007-2015); Trustee, The Nature Conservancy CA program (2012-present); Member of the Scientific Advisory Board for the Beijer Institute for Ecological Economics in Stockholm (2011-present), for the Aspen Global Change Institute (2011-present), and for the Aldo Leopold Leadership Program (2012-present); Aldo Leopold Leadership Fellow in Environmental Science and Public Policy (1999); Pew Fellow in Conservation and the Environment (1994). Associate Editor for the Journal on Food Security (2012-present). Editorial board member for Aquaculture-Environment Interactions (2009-present) and Global Food Security (2012-present). -
William Nelson
Rudy J. and Daphne Donohue Munzer Professor in the School of Medicine, Emeritus
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsOur research objectives are to understand the cellular mechanisms involved in the development and maintenance of epithelial cell polarity. Polarized epithelial cells play fundamental roles in the ontogeny and function of a variety of tissues and organs.
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Alexander Nemerov
Carl and Marilynn Thoma Provostial Professor of Arts and Humanities and Professor, by courtesy, of English
BioA scholar of American art, Nemerov writes about the presence of art, the recollection of the past, and the importance of the humanities in our lives today. Committed to teaching the history of art more broadly as well as topics in American visual culture--the history of American photography, for example--he is a noted writer and speaker on the arts. His most recent books are To Make a World: George Ault and 1940s America (2011), the catalogue to the exhibition of the same title he curated at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, and Acting in the Night: Macbeth and the Places of the Civil War (2010). His new book, Wartime Kiss: Visions of the Moment in the 1940s, will be published by Princeton University Press this fall.
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Reviel Netz
Suppes Professor of Greek Mathematics and Astronomy and Professor, by courtesy, of Philosophy and of History
BioNetz's main field is the history of pre-modern mathematics. His research involves the wider issues of the history of cognitive practices, e.g. visual culture, the history of the book, and literacy and numeracy. His books from Cambridge University Press include The Shaping of Deduction in Greek Mathematics: a Study in Cognitive History (1999, Runciman Award), The Transformation of Early Mediterranean Mathematics: From Problems to Equations (2004), and Ludic Proof: Greek Mathematics and the Alexandrian Aesthetic (2009).
He is also the author of the translation and commentary of the works of Archimedes, also with CUP, a three-volume work of which the first has appeared, The Two Books on Sphere and Cylinder (2004). Together with Nigel Wilson, he prepares the edition of the recently rediscovered Archimedes Palimpsest (evidence from which already gave rise to two major discoveries: a text showing actual infinity in Archimedes, published in SCIAMVS 2001-2002, and a text showing, possibly, combinatorics in Archimedes, published in SCIAMVS 2004.) Two volumes, Transcription and Critical Edition, are forthcoming from the British Academy, of which the transcription is already available online. His popular book on the Archimedes Palimpsest Project, The Archimedes Codex, (co-authored with William Noel, Neumann Prize) was published by Widenfeld and Nicolson, 2007, and is translated into 20 languages.
Related to his research in cognitive history is his interest in ecological history, and he has published Barbed Wire: an Ecology of Modernity (Wesleyan University Press, 2004, finalist for PEN award). Reviel Netz is also a poet (Adayin Bahuc, 1999 Shufra: Tel Aviv, AMOS prize), one of a group of Hebrew poets active today whose work revives formal verse and he is the co-author, together with his wife, the Israeli author Maya Arad, of a collection of essays on Israeli literature, Positions of Stress (Meqom Hata'am, 2008 Axuzat Bayit: Tel Aviv). -
William Newsome
Harman Family Provostial Professor and Professor of Neurobiology and, by courtesy, of Psychology
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsNeural processes that mediate visual perception and visually-based decision making. Influence of reward history on decision making.
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Natasha Newson
Student Services Manager, Sociology
Current Role at StanfordStudent Services Manager, Department of Sociology
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Laura Ng
Ph.D. Student in Anthropology, admitted Autumn 2015
BioI am a historical archaeologist who investigates the late 19th and early 20th century Chinese diaspora using material culture to understand the transpacific circulation of people, goods, and information.
My previous fieldwork includes archaeology at Manzanar National Historic Site and field projects in Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Massachusetts, Iceland, and China. -
Hieu Minh Nguyen
Graduate, English
BioHieu Minh Nguyen is the author of two collections of poetry, This Way to the Sugar (Write Bloody Press, 2014), and Not Here (Coffee House Press, 2018), which was named the winner of the Publishing Triangle's Thom Gunn Award for Gay Poetry. A recipient of the Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Fellowship from the Poetry Foundation, Hieu is also a 2018 McKnight Writing Fellow, a Kundiman Fellow, and a 2017 National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellow. His work has appeared in Poetry Magazine, Best American Poetry, The New York Times, and elsewhere. He is a graduate of the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College. Originally from the Twin Cities, Hieu now lives in Oakland.
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Andrea Nightingale
Professor of Classics
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsI am completing a book entitled "Eros and Epiphany: Plato on the Soul's Ascent to Divine Beings"
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Paul Nissler
Lecturer
BioPaul grew up in a German-heritage family outside of Madison,Wisconsin. He attended UW-Madison for his undergraduate studies and did his doctoral work at the Pennsylvania State University. He has spent extensive time, studying, researching, working, and engaging professionally, across the span of the German-speaking world.
In the Fall of 2005, Paul came to Stanford as a Lecturer, teaching both Spanish and German for numerous years. Since 2009 he has additionally served as the German Language Coordinator.
Dr. Nissler completed ACTFL OPI training in both Spanish and German and has been certified as an oral and written proficiency tester in German since 2010.
He is also active in the local Bay area German community. He has engaged with local German-schools and previously served as the AATG Testing Chair (currently committee member) and is the current President of the Northern California Chapter of the AATG.
Paul publishes and presents at academic conferences, both nationally and internationally. He is very enthusiastic about teaching and language learning.
