Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability
Showing 361-376 of 376 Results
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Elliott White Jr.
Assistant Professor of Earth System Science and Center Fellow, by courtesy, at the Woods Institute for the Environment
BioElliott White Jr. is an assistant professor of Earth System Science. He is a coastal ecosystem scientist that studies the effects of saltwater intrusion and sea level rise (SWISLR) on vegetation in the coastal land margin. His research experience in wetlands spans the North American Coastal Plain of the US, in addition to constructed prairie potholes in Iowa. His interdisciplinary approach to research draws from ecology, hydrology, biogeochemistry, and remote sensing. He is expanding his research to also understand the effects of SWISLR on humans living in the coastal zone. He received a BS in Biology and Animal Ecology from Iowa State University in 2015 and PhD in Environmental Engineering Sciences from the University of Florida in 2019. For more information you can visit: https://coasts.stanford.edu/.
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Jane Kathryn Willenbring
Associate Professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences and, by courtesy of Earth System Science
BioJane Willenbring joined Stanford as an Associate Professor in the summer of 2020. Jane is a geologist who solves problems related to the Earth surface. Her research is primarily done to understand the evolution of the Earth’s surface - especially how landscapes are affected by tectonics, climate change, and life. She and her research group use geochemical techniques, high-resolution topographic data, field observations, and, when possible, couple these data to landscape evolution numerical models and ice sheet models. The geochemical tools she uses and develops often include cosmogenic nuclide systems, which provide powerful, novel methods to constrain rates of erosion and mineral weathering. Jane has also started to organize citizen science campaigns and apply basic science principles to problems of human health with an ultimate broader impact goal of cleaning up urban areas and environments impacted by agriculture. She received her B.Sc. with honors from the North Dakota State University where she was a McNair Scholar and in the NDSU scholars program. She holds a Masters degree from Boston University. Her Ph.D. is in Earth Science from Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia Canada where she was a Killam Scholar. She was a Synthesis Postdoctoral Fellow through the National Center for Earth Surface Dynamics at the Saint Anthony Falls Lab at the University of Minnesota, and an Alexander von Humboldt Postdoctoral Fellow and then subsequently a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Helmholz GFZ Potsdam, Germany. Jane was previously an Associate Professor in the Geosciences Research Division and Thomas and Evelyn Page Chancellor's Endowed Faculty Fellow at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UC San Diego where she was the director of the Scripps Cosmogenic Isotope Laboratory (SCI-Lab). She was also a tenure-track professor at the University of Pennsylvania. She will be a Stanford University Gabilan Faculty Fellow in 2021-2023. She is a Fellow of the Geological Society of America and was the inaugural recipient of the Marguerite T. Williams award from the American Geophysical Union.
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Earle Wilson
Assistant Professor of Earth System Science, by courtesy, of Geophysics, of Oceans and Center Fellow, by courtesy, at the Woods Institute for the Environment
BioEarle Wilson is an assistant professor in the Department of Earth System Science. He is a physical oceanographer who studies ocean dynamics at high latitudes and their far-reaching impacts on the global climate. He is particularly interested in the circulation of the Southern Ocean and its interactions with the cryosphere (i.e., sea ice and marine-terminating glaciers). Dr. Wilson and his group explore these research questions using various tools and methods, ranging from in situ ocean observations and idealized numerical models.
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Frank Wolak
Holbrook Working Professor of Price Theory and Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute, at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research and at the Precourt Institute for Energy
BioFrank A. Wolak is the Holbrook Working Professor of Commodity Price Studies in the Department of Economics and the Director of the Program on Energy and Sustainable Development at Stanford University. His research and teaching focuses on design, performance, and monitoring of energy and environmental markets. He served as Chair of the Market Surveillance Committee (MSC) of the California Independent System Operator and was a member of the Emissions Market Advisory Committee (EMAC) for California’s Market for Greenhouse Gas Emissions allowances.
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H.-S. Philip Wong
Willard R. and Inez Kerr Bell Professor in the School of Engineering
BioH.-S. Philip Wong is the Willard R. and Inez Kerr Bell Professor in the School of Engineering at Stanford University. He joined Stanford University as Professor of Electrical Engineering in 2004. From 1988 to 2004, he was with the IBM T.J. Watson Research Center. From 2018 to 2020, he was on leave from Stanford and was the Vice President of Corporate Research at TSMC, the largest semiconductor foundry in the world, and since 2020 remains the Chief Scientist of TSMC in a consulting, advisory role.
He is a Fellow of the IEEE and received the IEEE Andrew S. Grove Award, the IEEE Technical Field Award to honor individuals for outstanding contributions to solid-state devices and technology, as well as the IEEE Electron Devices Society J.J. Ebers Award, the society’s highest honor to recognize outstanding technical contributions to the field of electron devices that have made a lasting impact.
He is the founding Faculty Co-Director of the Stanford SystemX Alliance – an industrial affiliate program focused on building systems and the faculty director of the Stanford Nanofabrication Facility – a shared facility for device fabrication on the Stanford campus that serves academic, industrial, and governmental researchers across the U.S. and around the globe, sponsored in part by the National Science Foundation. He is the Principal Investigator of the Microelectronics Commons California-Pacific-Northwest AI Hardware Hub, a consortium of over 40 companies and academic institutions funded by the CHIPS Act. He is a member of the US Department of Commerce Industrial Advisory Committee on microelectronics. -
Gabrielle Wong-Parodi
Associate Professor of Earth System Science and Senior Fellow at the Woods Institute for the Environment
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsTrained as an interdisciplinary social scientist theoretically grounded in psychology and decision science, my work has two aims. First, to understand how people make decisions to address the impacts of climate change. Second, to understand how robust interventions can empower people to make decisions that serve their lives, communities, and society.
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Jane Woodward
Adjunct Professor, Atmosphere and Energy
BioJane Woodward is an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Stanford University where she has taught classes on energy and environment since 1991. She currently serves on the teaching teams for Understand Energy and Stanford Climate Ventures. Jane also serves on Stanford's Precourt Institute for Energy Advisory Council and has founded and continues to fund multiple sustainable energy education initiatives at the university.
Jane is a Founder and Managing Partner of WovenEarth Ventures, a US early-stage climate venture fund of funds. Additionally, she is an investor in several early-stage sustainable energy companies and funds, as well as an advisor and director for some of them.
Jane is a Founding Partner at MAP Energy, an energy investment firm currently focused on oil and gas royalty interests. MAP began investing in natural gas mineral rights in 1987, wind energy in 2004, utility scale solar in 2015, and energy storage in 2017. In December 2020, MAP sold its renewable energy and energy storage assets under management to Global Infrastructure Partners (GIP). The company remains one of the longest-standing private energy investment fund management firms in the US.
In 2016, Jane created The Foster Museum, a 14,000-square-foot art venue in Palo Alto, to share artist-explorer Tony Foster’s powerful exhibitions of watercolor journeys with an intention to inspire connection to the natural world.
Prior to founding MAP in 1987, Jane worked as an exploration geologist with ARCO Exploration Company and later as a petroleum engineering consultant to Stanford University’s endowment. Jane has a BS in Geology from UC Santa Barbara, an MS in Engineering and Petroleum Geology, and an MBA, both from Stanford University. -
Siyuan (Simon) Xing
Visiting Associate Professor, Energy Science & Engineering
BioSiyuan (Simon) Xing is a Visiting Associate Professor in the Department of Energy Science & Engineering at Stanford University, hosted by Prof. Daniel Tartakovsky. He is also an Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering Department at California Polytechnic State University (Cal Poly). His research focuses on nonlinear dynamics and scientific machine learning, with an emphasis on developing computational tools to uncover governing equations, predict complex patterns, and analyze bifurcations in nonlinear systems. His recent work explores interpretable neural networks to accelerate scientific discovery and advance our understanding of complex phenomena.
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Da Yang
Assistant Professor Geophysics
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsMy research focuses on atmospheric convection and clouds—the major sources of uncertainty in predicting future climate change. Key questions in this field include: What makes air rise to form clouds? How do individual convective clouds organize into expansive rainstorms? How does convection work in warmer climates? I combine theory, observations, numerical models, and machine learning methods to address these most fundamental yet challenging questions.
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David Zhen Yin
Senior Research Scientist - Physical
BioDavid Zhen Yin is the co-founder and program director of Stanford Mineral-X, a research innovation hub on creating resilient mineral supply chains for energy transitions. He is also the principal scientist at Stanford Center for Earth Resources Forecasting. Since 2024, David has been serving on the US National Academies Committee on optimizing the USGS Mineral Resources Program.
David develops data-scientific approaches for prediction, uncertainty quantification, and decision-making in critical earth resources exploration and development. He has broad experience with complex projects involving academia and industry and has broad knowledge of the fields. His research delivered several key technologies transferred as in-house technologies in Chevron, Equinor, and KoBold. In addition, his research developments have been implemented on various subjects, from Antarctica bed topography modeling, critical mineral explorations in Canada/China/US, and the North Sea and Gulf of Mexico projects.
Before joining Stanford, David was a Research Associate at the Edinburgh Time-Lapse Project in Scotland, leading a geophysical monitoring research project in collaboration with Equinor from 2016 to 2018. He was also a technology consultant at Equinor's Research Center in Bergen, Norway. Then, he was a Chevron CoRE Postdoctoral Fellow at Stanford from 2018 to 2021. He was the Co-PI of the Stanford-KoBold collaboration from 2020 to 2022 which led to a $192.5 million Series B fundraising.
David received his Ph.D. in Geosciences from Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh, UK, in 2016. His research interests include data science for geosciences, geological uncertainty quantification, and decision-making under uncertainty. He has authored one book and tens of articles in peer-reviewed journals and international conferences. -
Richard Zare
Marguerite Blake Wilbur Professor of Natural Science and Professor, by courtesy, of Physics
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsMy research group is exploring a variety of topics that range from the basic understanding of chemical reaction dynamics to the nature of the chemical contents of single cells.
Under thermal conditions nature seems to hide the details of how elementary reactions occur through a series of averages over reagent velocity, internal energy, impact parameter, and orientation. To discover the effects of these variables on reactivity, it is necessary to carry out studies of chemical reactions far from equilibrium in which the states of the reactants are more sharply restricted and can be varied in a controlled manner. My research group is attempting to meet this tough experimental challenge through a number of laser techniques that prepare reactants in specific quantum states and probe the quantum state distributions of the resulting products. It is our belief that such state-to-state information gives the deepest insight into the forces that operate in the breaking of old bonds and the making of new ones.
Space does not permit a full description of these projects, and I earnestly invite correspondence. The following examples are representative:
The simplest of all neutral bimolecular reactions is the exchange reaction H H2 -> H2 H. We are studying this system and various isotopic cousins using a tunable UV laser pulse to photodissociate HBr (DBr) and hence create fast H (D) atoms of known translational energy in the presence of H2 and/or D2 and using a laser multiphoton ionization time-of-flight mass spectrometer to detect the nascent molecular products in a quantum-state-specific manner by means of an imaging technique. It is expected that these product state distributions will provide a key test of the adequacy of various advanced theoretical schemes for modeling this reaction.
Analytical efforts involve the use of capillary zone electrophoresis, two-step laser desorption laser multiphoton ionization mass spectrometry, cavity ring-down spectroscopy, and Hadamard transform time-of-flight mass spectrometry. We believe these methods can revolutionize trace analysis, particularly of biomolecules in cells. -
Howard Zebker
Kwoh Ting Li Professor in the School of Engineering and Professor of Geophysics
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsResearch
My students and I study the surfaces of Earth and planets using radar remote sensing methods. Our specialization is interferometric radar, or InSAR. InSAR is a technique to measure mm-scale surface deformation at fine resolution over wide areas, and much of our work follows from applying this technique to the study of earthquakes, volcanoes, and human-induced subsidence. We also address global environmental problems by tracking the movement of ice in the polar regions. whose ice mass balance affects sea level rise and global climate. We participate in NASA space missions such as Cassini, in which we now are examining the largest moon of Saturn, Titan, to try and deduce its composition and evolution. Our work includes experimental observation and modeling the measurements to best understand processes affecting the Earth and solar system. We use data acquired by spaceborne satellites and by large, ground-based radar telescopes to support our research.
Teaching
I teach courses related to remote sensing methods and applications, and how these methods can be used to study the world around us. At the undergraduate level, these include introductory remote sensing uses of the full electromagnetic spectrum to characterize Earth and planetary surfaces and atmospheres, and methods of digital image processing. I also teach a freshman and sophomore seminar course on natural hazards. At the graduate level, the courses are more specialized, including the math and physics of two-dimensional imaging systems, plus detailed ourses on imaging radar systems for geophysical applications.
Professional Activities
InSAR Review Board, NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (2006-present); editorial board, IEEE Proceedings (2005-present); NRC Earth Science and Applications from Space Panel on Solid Earth Hazards, Resources, and Dynamics (2005-present); Chair, Western North America InSAR (WInSAR) Consortium (2004-06); organizing committee, NASA/NSF/USGS InSAR working group; International Union of Radioscience (URSI) Board of Experts for Medal Evaluations (2004-05); National Astronomy and Ionospheric Center, Arecibo Observatory, Visiting Committee, (2002-04; chair, 2003-04); NASA Alaska SAR Facility users working group (2000-present); associate editor, IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing (1998-present); fellow, IEEE (1998) -
Xiaolin Zheng
Professor of Mechanical Engineering, of Energy Science Engineering, Senior Fellow at the Precourt Institute for Energy and Professor, by courtesy, of Materials Science and Engineering
BioProfessor Zheng received her Ph.D. in Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering from Princeton University (2006), B.S. in Thermal Engineering from Tsinghua University (2000). Prior to joining Stanford in 2007, Professor Zheng did her postdoctoral work in the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology at Harvard University. Professor Zheng is a member of MRS, ACS and combustion institute. Professor Zheng received the TR35 Award from the MIT Technology Review (2013), one of the 100 Leading Global Thinkers by the Foreign Policy Magazine (2013), 3M Nontenured Faculty Grant Award (2013), the Presidential Early Career Award (PECASE) from the white house (2009), Young Investigator Awards from the ONR (2008), DARPA (2008), Terman Fellowship from Stanford (2007), and Bernard Lewis Fellowship from the Combustion Institute (2004).
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Mengye Zhu
Social Science Research Scholar, Doerr School; Senior Scientist, NatCap
BioDr. Mengye Zhu (she/her) is a Senior Scientist at the Natural Capital Alliance and a Social Science Research Scholar at Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability. Her research is focused on climate and environmental policy and political economy, with a particular emphasis on the science–policy interface. She examines key climate discourses, including energy transitions and methane mitigation, with special attention to the roles of “keystone actors,” such as state-owned enterprises. Her work also combines policy analysis with sectoral technical assessments, including leading the development of Global Methane Abatement Solutions Tracker (G-MAST). She has extensive policy engagement experience, supporting high-level climate and environmental dialogues and advancing international collaboration. Before joining Stanford, she worked as an Assistant Research Professor and China Program Co-Director at the Center for Global Sustainability, University of Maryland. She received a Ph.D. in Public Administration from Tsinghua University and a Master's in Public Administration from the University of Pittsburgh.
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Mark Zoback
Benjamin M. Page Professor in Earth Sciences, Emeritus
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsResearch
I conduct research on in situ stress, fault mechanics, and reservoir geomechanics with an emphasis on shale gas, tight gas and tight oil production, the feasibility of long-term geologic storage of CO2 and the occurrence of induced and triggered earthquakes. I was one of the principal investigators of the SAFOD project in which a scientific research well was successfully drilled through the San Andreas Fault at seismogenic depth. I am the author of a textbook entitled Reservoir Geomechanics published in 2007 by Cambridge University Press, now in its sixth printing. I served on the National Academy of Energy committee investigating the Deepwater Horizon accident and the Secretary of Energy’s committee on shale gas development and environmental protection. I currently serve on a Canadian Council of Academies panel investigating the same topic.
Teaching
I teach both undergraduate and graduate students. Reservoir Geomechanics is a graduate class for students in the departments of Geophysics, GES, and ERE, and Tectonophysics, a graduate class for students principally in Geophysics and GES. I co-teach a Freshman class entitled Sustainability and Collapse with Professor Ursula Heise of the English Department. I also help lead two graduate seminars each week and frequently attend and participate in other seminars.
Professional Activities
Member, Canadian Council of Academies Committee on Shale Gas Development (2012-2013); Member, Secretary of Energy Committee on Shale Gas Development (2011-2012); Member, NAE Committee Investigating Deepwater Horizon Accident (2010-2011); President, American Rock Mechanics Association (2011-2013); Member of Board of RPSEA (2010-); Chair, Scientific Earthquake Studies Advisory Group of USGS (2007-2011); Advisory Board, Department of Geosciences, University of Arizona (2008-2013); Chair, Stanford Faculty Senate (1999-2000); Chair, Department of Geophysics (1991-97); Chair, Science Advisory Group, ICDP (1999-2006); President, Tectonophysics Section, AGU (1988-89)
