School of Humanities and Sciences


Showing 3,861-3,880 of 6,869 Results

  • Nathan McDonald

    Nathan McDonald

    Basic Life Science Research Associate, Biology

    Current Research and Scholarly InterestsI am interested in the fundamental cell biology of neurons. In particular, I study how neuronal synapses are formed and function. Synapses are specialized intercellular junctions that facilitate rapid communication between neurons, and thus form the basis of neural circuits and nervous system function.

    Within a synapse, synaptic vesicles containing neurotransmitters are released at a specific region termed the active zone. The active zone is composed of a variety of molecules that coordinate the tethering and priming of synaptic vesicles, the recruitment of ion channels to respond to action potentials, and the stabilization of the synapse through transmembrane connections to a postsynaptic cell.

    A wide range of transmembrane proteins are capable of initiating synapse formation during development and provide specificity for targeting the proper postsynaptic cell, including Neurexins/Neuroligins, LRRTMs, DIPs/DPRs, and many Ig domain proteins. However, in all synapses, these molecules must signal to build a common active zone core. I am studying how the conserved active zone core assembles downstream of this complexity, a fundamental unresolved question in developmental neurobiology.

    To study this problem, I use the simple and stereotyped nervous system of the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans. I use fluorescent imaging of endogenous proteins at single neuron and single synapse resolution, as well as genetic and biochemical methods.

  • Kristin McFadden

    Kristin McFadden

    Ph.D. Student in Anthropology, admitted Autumn 2019

    BioKristin McFadden is a PhD Candidate in Anthropology at Stanford and a JD Candidate at the University of South Carolina Joseph F. Rice School of Law. Her research broadly focuses on the socio-legal mechanisms of dispossession and disenfranchisement in the American South. Her dissertation investigates the risk of Black land dispossession in the South Carolina Low Country with particular attention to heirs property as a multifaceted legal and political category. Kristin received her B.A. in Anthropology and African American Studies from Emory University, where she was a Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellow, and received her M.A. in Anthropology from Stanford. Kristin has previously worked as a political organizer in rural regions of South Carolina and research analyst with the South Carolina Commission for Minority Affairs.

  • Daniel McFarland

    Daniel McFarland

    Professor of Education and, by courtesy, of Sociology and of Organizational Behavior at the Graduate School of Business

    Current Research and Scholarly InterestsThe majority of my current research projects concern the sociology of science and research innovation. Here are some examples of projects we are pursuing:
    1. the process of intellectual jurisdiction across fields and disciplines
    2. the process of knowledge innovation diffusion in science
    3. the propagators of scientific careers and advance
    4. the role of identity and diversity on the process of knowledge diffusion and career advance
    5. the process of research translation across scientific fields and into practice
    6. the formal properties and mechanisms of ideational change (network analysis, or holistic conceptions of scientific propositions and ideas)
    7. developing methods for identifying the rediscovery of old ideas recast anew
    8. investigating the process of scientific review

    I am also heavily involved in research on social networks and social network theory development. Some of my work concerns relational dynamics and cognitive networks as represented in communication. This often concerns the communication of children (in their writings and speech in classrooms) and academic scholars. I am also co-editing a special issue in Social Networks on "network ecology", and I am a coauthor on a social network methods textbook coming out with Cambridge Press (Forthcoming, by Craig Rawlings, Jeff Smith, James Moody and Daniel McFarland).

    Last, I am heavily involved in institutional efforts to develop computational social science, computational sociology, and education data science on Stanford's campus.

  • Michael McFaul

    Michael McFaul

    Director, Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, Ken Olivier and Angela Nomellini Professor of International Studies and Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, the Freeman Spogli Institute and the Woods Institute

    Current Research and Scholarly InterestsAmerican foreign policy, great power relations, comparative autocracies, and the relationship between democracy and development.

  • Geoffrey McGhee

    Geoffrey McGhee

    Staff, Bill Lane Center for the American West
    Web And Graphics Associate, Bill Lane Center for the American West

    BioGeoff McGhee specializes in interactive data visualization and multimedia storytelling. He is a veteran of the multimedia and infographics staffs at The New York Times, Le Monde and ABCNews.com. Geoff spent a Knight Fellowship year at Stanford in 2009-2010 researching data visualization, which resulted in the acclaimed video documentary “Journalism in the Age of Data,” which has been widely used in classrooms.

    At the Bill Lane Center for the American West, Geoff is responsible for the Center’s websites and digital publications such as the ‘...& the West’ blog he co-produces with Felicity Barringer, and the EcoWest series of environmental data trackers on wildfires, drought, and snowpack, among others. Geoff has also worked on Center projects like Water in the West, a joint program with the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment, and the Center’s Rural West Initiative, which conducted research and reporting on the alternative energy boom, as well as retracing a 100-year-old survey of country life originally commissioned by President Theodore Roosevelt. He also contributed a chapter on rural broadband internet issues to the Rural West Initiative’s 2015 book, Bridging the Distance: Common Issues of the Rural West.

    Geoff oversees the Center’s Western Journalism and Media Fellowships program, which brings journalists to the Center for brief collaborations and supports travel and research expenses for work on critical western issues.

    Previously, Geoff worked as the multimedia editor at Le Monde in Paris from 2008-2009 and at The New York Times from 2000 to 2008 as Graphics Editor, Enterprise Editor, Chief Multimedia Producer and Video Journalist. He also worked at ABC News from 1999-2000. He was the lead writer on National Geographic’s “Data Points” column on information visualization in 2015-16.

    He received his master's degree in journalism from Columbia University in 1999.

    His personal site is at geoffmcghee.com.

  • Robert McGinn

    Robert McGinn

    Professor (Teaching) of Management Science and Engineering, Emeritus

    Current Research and Scholarly Interestsexploration of ethical issues related to nanotechnology

  • Richard McGrail

    Richard McGrail

    Ph.D. Student in Anthropology, admitted Autumn 2010

    Current Research and Scholarly InterestsEthnographic research describes the daily lives of children in California's foster care system who live in therapeutic residential group homes. Research questions how relationships of trust and attachement are formed between children and their adult caregivers, as well as among the children themselves.

  • Mark McGurl

    Mark McGurl

    Albert Guérard Professor of Literature

    BioMark McGurl's scholarly work centers on the relation of literature to social, educational and other institutions from the late 19th century to the present. He is the author of The Program Era: Postwar Fiction and the Rise of Creative Writing (Harvard), which was the recipient of the Truman Capote Award for Literary Criticism for 2011. His most recent book, Everything and Less: Fiction in the Age of Amazon (Verso 2021), was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for criticism.

    McGurl’s first book was The Novel Art: Elevations of American Fiction after Henry James (Princeton). He has also published articles in journals such as Critical Inquiry, Representations, American Literary History, and New Literary History. He teaches a range of classes on American literature and related topics.

    McGurl received his BA from Harvard, then worked at the New York Times and the New York Review of Books before earning his PhD in comparative literature from Johns Hopkins. He has held fellowships from Office of the President of the University of California and the Stanford Humanities Center.