School of Humanities and Sciences
Showing 101-110 of 144 Results
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Richard Sommer
Lecturer
BioRick Sommer received both his bachelors and PhD degrees in Mathematics from UC Berkeley, where he began his research in mathematical logic. Rick held a research position at MSRI in 1989 - 1990, and became a Gabor Szego Assistant Professor in the Department of Mathematics at Stanford in 1990. In 1995, Rick co-founded the Stanford University Mathematics Camp, for which he served as Director for over 25 years, and continues in a role as Consultant and Instructor. Also in the mid-90s, Rick took on a leadership role in developing online courses and residential summer programs for Stanford's Education Program for Gifted Youth (EPGY). In 2012, EPGY transformed into Stanford Pre-Collegiate Studies (SPCS), providing a home to the Stanford Online High School as well as over a dozen summer and year-around pre-collegiate programs, many of which Rick played a role in designing, developing and leading. Rick served as Executive Director of SPCS from 2015-2020. Rick is currently Lecturer in Mathematics teaching a range of courses (Math 101, 110, 113, 115, 161), and he also teaches logic courses in the Philosophy Department (Phil 151, 152). Rick has a strong interest in mathematics education, and more generally in educational programs designed to inspire and develop the curiosity of young people. Rick is Co-Founder and Board Member of AI4ALL, working to increase diversity in the leadership of AI, and he is Treasurer and Board Member of the Gathering for Gardner Foundation, stimulating curiosity and the playful exchange of ideas in mathematics and related fields, in the spirit of Martin Gardner.
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Sarah Soule
Sara Miller McCune Director of the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences (CASBS), Morgridge Professor in the Graduate School of Business and Professor, by courtesy, of Sociology
BioSarah A. Soule is the Morgridge Professor of Organizational Behavior at the Graduate School of Business. Her major areas of interest are organizational theory, social movements, and political sociology. She has written two recent books, the first with Cambridge University Press, entitled Contention and Corporate Social Responsibility, and the second with Norton, called A Primer on Social Movements. She is the series editor for the Cambridge University Press Contentious Politics series. She is a member of the founding team of the new journal, Sociological Science, an open access journal that is disrupting academic publishing. She has served on a number of boards of non-profit organizations, is currently a member Board of Advisors to the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design (the Stanford d.school) Fellowship program, and is currently serving on the faculty advisory board to the Stanford Center for the Advancement of Women’s Leadership. She has taught a number of courses with the Stanford d.school, and is the Faculty Director for the Executive Program on Social Entrepreneurship at the Graduate School of Business. She has served as a judge for the Center for Social Innovation Fellowship program, and for the Tech Awards (Tech Museum of Innovation). Her research examines state and organizational-level policy change and diffusion, and the role social movements have on these processes. She has recently published papers on how protest impacts multi-national firm-level decisions regarding divestment in Burma, and on how advocacy organizations learn new strategies and tactics from those with which they collaborate. She is currently working on a study of how protest affects the outcomes of shareholder resolutions, and another study of how advocacy organizations innovate. She has published a book with Cambridge University Press, entitled Contention and Corporate Social Responsibility. Recent published work has appeared in the American Journal of Sociology, Administrative Science Quarterly, the American Sociological Review, Organizational Studies, the Strategic Management Journal, and the Annual Review of Sociology.
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Andrew Spakowitz
Tang Family Foundation Chair of the Department of Chemical Engineering, Professor of Chemical Engineering, of Materials Science and Engineering and, by courtesy, of Applied Physics
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsTheory and computation of biological processes and complex materials
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Daniel Stack
Associate Professor of Chemistry
BioResearch in the Stack group focuses on the mechanism of dioxygen activation and the subsequent oxidative reactivity with primarily copper complexes ligated by imidazoles or histamines. Specifically, the group is interested in substrate hydroxylations and full dioxygen reduction. The remarkable specificity and energy efficiency of metalloenzymes provide the inspiration for the work. Trapping and characterizing immediate species, primarily at low temperatures, provide key mechanistic insights especially through substrate reactivity along with spectroscopic and metrical correlation to DFT calculations. Our objective is to move these efficient enzymatic mechanisms into small synthetic complexes, not only to reproduce biological reactivity, but more importantly to move the oxidative mechanism beyond that possible in the protein matrix.
Daniel Stack was born, raised and attended college in Portland Oregon. He received his B.A. from Reed College in 1982 (Phi Beta Kappa), working with Professor Tom Dunne on weak nickel-pyrazine complexes. In Boston, he pursued his doctoral study in synthetic inorganic chemistry at Harvard University (Ph.D., 1988) with Professor R. H. Holm, investigating site-differentiated synthetic analogues of biological Fe4S4 cubanes. As an NSF Postdoctoral Fellow with Professor K. N. Raymond at the University of California at Berkeley, he worked on synthesizing new, higher iron affinity ligands similar to enterobactin, a bacterial iron sequestering agent. He started his independent career in 1991 at Stanford University primarily working on oxidation catalysis and dioxygen activation, and was promoted to an Associate Professor in 1998. His contributions to undergraduate education have been recognized at the University level on several occasions, including the Dinkelspiel Award for Outstanding Contribution to Undergraduate Education in 2003.
Areas of current focus include:
Copper Dioxygen Chemistry
Our current interests focus on stabilizing species formed in the reaction of dioxygen with Cu(I) complexes formed with biologically relevant imidazole or histamine ligation. Many multi-copper enzymes ligated in this manner are capable of impressive hydroxylation reactions, including oxidative depolymerization of cellulose, methane oxidation, and energy-efficient reduction of dioxygen to water. Oxygenation of such complexes at extreme solution temperatures (-125°C) yield transient Cu(III) containing complexes. As Cu(III) is currently uncharacterized in any biological enzyme, developing connections between the synthetic and biological realms is a major focus.