School of Humanities and Sciences


Showing 5,121-5,130 of 6,463 Results

  • Agripino S. Silveira

    Agripino S. Silveira

    Advanced Lecturer

    BioAgripino is as Advanced Lecturer in Portuguese at the Stanford Language Center. He earned his Ph.D. in Linguistics from the University of New Mexico with a research focus on “Subject Expression in Brazilian Portuguese.” Over the years, Agripino has made significant contributions to the field of linguistics and Portuguese language studies, with publications that include the "Modern Brazilian Portuguese Grammar" (co-authored) and several research articles in notable journals.

    In addition to his academic accomplishments, Agripino has a rich history of teaching, having been a faculty member at the Middlebury Language Schools and an ESL instructor at the University of New Mexico. He has also held administrative roles, including co-chairing the Portuguese Special Interest Group (SIG) and coordinating pronunciation courses at the Middlebury Portuguese Language School.

    Agripino's expertise is further highlighted by his role as a rater and tester of Oral Proficiency Interviews (OPIs) and as a rater of Written Proficiency Tests (WPTs), both in Portuguese.

    His professional affiliations include the American Organization of Teachers of Portuguese (AOTP), American Portuguese Studies Association (APSA), Linguistic Society of America (LSA), and the American Council of Teachers of Foreign Languages (ACTFL), among others.

  • Eva Silverstein

    Eva Silverstein

    Wells Family Director of the Stanford Institute for Theoretical Physics and Professor of Physics

    BioProfessor Silverstein conducts research in theoretical physics -- particularly gravitation and cosmology, as well as recently developing new methods and applications for machine learning.

    What 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 emergent 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 stabilizing the extra dimensions of string theory to model the accelerated expansion of the universe. In addition, Professor Silverstein develops methods to address questions of quantum gravity, such as singularity resolution and the physics of black hole and cosmological horizons.

    Areas of focus:
    - optimization algorithms derived from physical dynamics, analyzing its behavior and advantages theoretically and in numerical experiments
    - 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