School of Humanities and Sciences
Showing 1,601-1,700 of 2,123 Results
-
Monika Schleier-Smith
Associate Professor of Physics
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsIn between the few-particle realm where we have mastered quantum mechanics and the macroscopic domain describable by classical physics, there lies a broad swath of territory where quantum effects are relevant but still largely out of our control and partly beyond our comprehension. This territory includes metrological instruments whose precision is limited by the quantum projection noise of millions of atoms; and materials whose bulk properties emerge from many-body interactions intractable to simulation on classical computers. Professor Schleier-Smith’s research aims to advance our control and understanding of many-particle quantum systems by engineering new quantum states and Hamiltonians with ensembles of laser-cooled atoms.
-
Mark J. Schnitzer
Professor of Biology and of Applied Physics
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsThe goal of our research is to advance experimental paradigms for understanding normal cognitive and disease processes at the level of neural circuits, with emphasis on learning and memory processes. To advance these paradigms, we invent optical brain imaging techniques, several of which have been widely adopted. Our neuroscience studies combine these imaging innovations with behavioral, electrophysiological, optogenetic and computational methods, enabling a holistic approach to brain science.
-
Molly Schumer
Assistant Professor of Biology
BioMolly Schumer is an Assistant Professor in Biology. She is interested in the genetic and evolutionary consequences of hybridization. After receiving her PhD at Princeton, she did her postdoctoral work at Columbia and was a Junior Fellow in the Harvard Society of Fellows and Hanna H. Gray Fellow at Harvard Medical School. Current research in the lab focuses on understanding genetic interactions that occur in hybrids and how these impact genome evolution.
-
Jennifer Schwartz Poehlmann
Senior Lecturer of Chemistry
BioReaching out to Stanford’s diverse body of students and beyond to share the excitement of scientific discovery has been a growing passion for Dr. Jennifer Schwartz Poehlmann. In addition to coordinating and co-teaching Stanford’s freshmen chemistry sequence, she takes a leadership role in developing training programs for teaching assistants and enhancing classroom and lab experiences for undergraduates, while also providing STEM learning opportunities for incoming freshmen and local high school students.
Jennifer Schwartz Poehlmann studied chemistry at Washington University in Saint Louis Missouri (A.B. 2002) before coming to Stanford University as a graduate student (Ph.D. 2008). Her thesis work under Prof. Edward Solomon addressed structural contributions to reactivity in active sites of non-heme di-iron enzymes, including ferritins. She joined the Stanford Center (now Vice Provost) for Teaching and Learning as a Teaching Fellow in 2008. In 2009, she became Lecturer and Introductory Course Coordinator for the Department of Chemistry, and in 2011 was promoted to Senior Lecturer. She has received multiple awards for her teaching and training work, including the Walter J. Gores Award for Excellence in Teaching, Dean’s Award for Achievements in Teaching, Hoagland Award Fund for Innovations in Undergraduate Teaching, and Society of Latino Engineers and School of Engineering’s Professor of the Year Award.
Teaching
Dr. Schwartz coordinates and co-teaches the introductory course sequence of Chem31A, 31B, and 33 for about 450 students each year. She has also created a set of companion courses (Chem31A-C, 31B-C, and 33-C) designed to provide motivated students an opportunity to build stronger study habits and problem solving tools that help them persevere in the sciences regardless of prior science background. In parallel, she has been involved in the creation and teaching of the Leland Scholars Program, which facilitates the transition to college for incoming freshman intending to study in STEM or pre-health fields.
Instructor Training
Dr. Schwartz has always believed that well-prepared and enthusiastic teachers inspire and motivate learning, yet excellent teaching requires training, feedback, reflection and support. She has worked both within the department and more broadly to help ensure that teaching assistants throughout the university receive the training, practice and mentorship they need to grow and excel as educators. She previously directed the Department of Chemistry’s TA Training program and, with the Vice Provost for Teaching and Learning, co-founded and directs the Mentors in Teaching Program, MinT, which provides training and resources to teaching mentors from more than 15 departments on campus. Through MinT, advanced graduate students learn effective ways to mentor TAs, through mid-quarter feedback, classroom observation, establishment of teaching goals, and workshops that enable new TAs to better engage with students in the classroom.
Enhanced Learning Experiences
Dr. Schwartz has been heavily involved in the development of hands-on, guided-inquiry lab activities that are now fully integrated into lab/lecture courses throughout the introductory general and organic chemistry sequence. Through the “Inspiring Future Scientists in Chemistry” Outreach Program, she is also helping to bring the excitement of exploring real-world chemistry into local high schools. She works with local high school teachers to design lab experiences that reinforce and compliment the chemistry concepts in the California State curriculum. Stanford Chemistry students take these activities to local high schools, providing hundreds of students the opportunity to work with enthusiastic young scientists while getting hands-on experience in chemistry. The program aims to demonstrate how chemistry relates to the ‘real world’ and to promote an appreciation for both science and higher education. -
Naima G. Sharaf
Assistant Professor of Biology
BioNaima Sharaf got her undergraduate degree in Chemistry at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. She carried out her Ph.D. studies at the University of Pittsburgh in the lab of Dr. Angela Gronenborn where she used fluorine solution NMR to understand inhibitor-induced conformational changes with HIV-1 reverse transcriptase. To expand her structural biology skill set, she undertook postdoctoral training at Caltech in the lab of Dr. Doug Rees where she characterized the structure and function of the Neisseria meningitides methionine ABC transport system using x-ray crystallography and single-particle cryo-EM. This research sparked Dr. Sharaf's current interest in lipoproteins, particularly their roles in bacterial physiology and potential in vaccine design. Research in the Sharaf Lab bridges biochemistry, biology, microbiology, and immunology to translate lipoprotein research into therapeutics.
-
Carla Shatz
Sapp Family Provostial Professor, The Catherine Holman Johnson Director of Stanford Bio-X and Professor of Biology and of Neurobiology
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsThe goal of research in the Shatz Laboratory is to discover how brain circuits are tuned up by experience during critical periods of development both before and after birth by elucidating cellular and molecular mechanisms that transform early fetal and neonatal brain circuits into mature connections. To discover mechanistic underpinnings of circuit tuning, the lab has conducted functional screens for genes regulated by neural activity and studied their function for vision, learning and memory.
-
Fangfang Shen
Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Chemistry
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsIdentify protein inhibitors and develop novel specific protein delivery systems.
-
Kang Shen
Professor of Biology and of Pathology
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsThe connectivity of a neuron (its unique constellation of synaptic inputs and outputs) is essential for its function. Neuronal connections are made with exquisite accuracy between specific types of neurons. How each neuron finds its synaptic partners has been a central question in developmental neurobiology. We utilize the relatively simple nervous system of nematode C. elegans, to search for molecules that can specify synaptic connections and understand the molecular mechanisms of synaptic as
-
Zhi-Xun Shen
Paul Pigott Professor in Physical Sciences, Professor of Applied Physics, of Physics and Senior Fellow at the Precourt Institute for Energy
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsDr. Shen's main research interest lies in the area of condensed matter and materials physics, as well as the applications of materials and devices. He develops photon based innovative instrumentation and advanced experimental techniques, ranging from angle-resolved photoemission to microwave imaging, soft x-ray scattering and time domain spectroscopy and scattering. He has created a body of literature that advanced our understanding of quantum materials, including superconductors, semiconductors, novel magnets, topological insulators, novel carbon and electron emitters. He is best known for his discoveries of the momentum structure of anisotropic d-wave pairing gap and anomalous normal state pseudogap in high temperature superconductors. He has further leveraged the advanced characterization tool to make better materials through thin film and interface engineering.
-
Stephen Shenker
Richard Herschel Weiland Professor
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsProfessor Shenker’s research focuses on quantum gravity, in particular string theory and M theory, with an emphasis on nonperturbative aspects.
-
Milind Shyani
Ph.D. Student in Physics, admitted Summer 2017
BioI am a PhD student at the department of Physics, specializing in high energy theory. My interests include understanding strongly coupled field theories and quantum gravity, and the interplay between them.
-
Eva Silverstein
Professor of Physics
BioWhat are the basic degrees of freedom and interactions underlying gravitational and particle physics? What is the mechanism behind the initial seeds of structure in the universe, and how can we test it using cosmological observations? Is there a holographic framework for cosmology that applies throughout the history of the universe, accounting for the effects of horizons and singularities? What new phenomena arise in quantum field theory in generic conditions such as finite density, temperature, or in time dependent backgrounds?
Professor Silverstein attacks basic problems in several areas of theoretical physics. She develops concrete and testable mechanisms for cosmic inflation, accounting for its sensitivity to very high energy physics. This has led to a fruitful interface with cosmic microwave background research, contributing to a more systematic analysis of its observable phenomenology.
Professor Silverstein also develops mechanisms for breaking supersymmetry and for stabilizing the extra dimensions of string theory to model the immense hierarchies between the cosmological horizon, electroweak, and Planck scales in nature. In addition, Professor Silverstein uses the ultraviolet completion of gravity afforded by string theory to address questions of quantum gravity, such as singularity resolution and the physics of black hole and cosmological horizons. Professor Silverstein also uses modern techniques in quantum field theory to model strongly coupled phenomena motivated by measurements in condensed matter physics.
Areas of focus:
- UV complete mechanisms and systematics of cosmic inflation, including string-theoretic versions of large-field inflation (with gravity wave CMB signatures) and novel mechanisms involving inflaton interactions (with non-Gaussian signatures in the CMB)
-Systematic theory and analysis of primordial Non-Gaussianity, taking into account strongly non-linear effects in quantum field theory encoded in multi-point correlation functions
-Long-range interactions in string theory and implications for black hole physics
- Concrete holographic models of de Sitter expansion in string theory, aimed at upgrading the AdS/CFT correspondence to cosmology
- Mechanisms for non-Fermi liquid transport and $2k_F$ singularities from strongly coupled finite density quantum field theory
- Mechanisms by which the extra degrees of freedom in string theory induce transitions and duality symmetries between spaces of different topology and dimensionality -
Michael Simon
Professor of Biology
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsPlanar cell polarity, cell shape and mobility, and control of cell fate
-
Robert Simoni
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsCholesterol in biological membranes; genetic mechanisms & cholesterol production
-
Jan Skotheim
Professor of Biology and, by courtesy, of Chemical and Systems Biology
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsMy overarching goal is to understand how cell growth triggers cell division. Linking growth to division is important because it allows cells to maintain specific size range to best perform their physiological functions. For example, red blood cells must be small enough to flow through small capillaries, whereas macrophages must be large enough to engulf pathogens. In addition to being important for normal cell and tissue physiology, the link between growth and division is misregulated in cancer.
-
Jeffrey Smith
Affiliate, Biology
BioI am a currently a lecturer in the Biology Department at Stanford University, working both with the Stanford Center for Conservation Biology and the Natural Capital Project on understanding the impacts of human land use on biodiversity. My empirical work focuses principally on insect biodiversity in southern Costa Rica. In addition to this field work, I employ a variety of spatial modelling techniques to extrapolate local findings to regional and global patterns of diversity.
I obtained my PhD at Stanford University working with Dr. Gretchen Daily. Prior to starting at Stanford, I obtained a Masters of Environmental Science from the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, where I worked with Dr. Os Schmitz to determine how New England old-field arthropod food webs varied along a suburban-forest gradient. I received my Bachelor of Science (in Ecology and Environmental Science) from the University of Delaware. While there I researched biological control of invasive weeds and restoration ecology with Dr. Judy Hough-Goldstein. -
Edward I. Solomon
Monroe E. Spaght Professor of Chemistry and Professor of Photon Science
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsProf. Solomon's work spans physical-inorganic, bioinorganic, and theoretical-inorganic chemistry, focusing on spectroscopic elucidation of the electronic structure of transition metal complexes and its contribution to reactivity. He has advanced our understanding of metal sites involved in electron transfer, copper sites involved in O2 binding, activation and reduction to water, structure/function correlations over non-heme iron enzymes, and correlation of biological to heterogeneous catalysis.
-
George Somero
David and Lucile Packard Professor in Marine Science, Emeritus
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsWe examine two aspects of organism-environment interactions: How does stress from physical (e.g., temperature) and chemical (oxygen levels, pH) factors perturb organisms and how do organisms respond, adaptively, to cope with this stress? We examine evolutionary adaptation and phenotypic acclimatization using a wide variety of marine animals, including Antarctic fishes and invertebrates from intertidal habitats on the coastlines of temperate and tropical seas.
-
Freya Sommer
Stanford University Diving Safety Officer, Hopkins Marine Station
Current Role at StanfordDiving Safety Officer, Stanford University Scientific Diving Program.
Boating safety, Hopkins Marine Station.
