Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability


Showing 1-20 of 60 Results

  • Adrian A. Wackett

    Adrian A. Wackett

    Ph.D. Student in Geological Sciences, admitted Autumn 2022

    BioAdrian A. Wackett was born and raised in Saint Paul, Minnesota (unceded Wahpekute/Dakota lands). He double majored in Chemistry and Geosciences at Trinity University (TX) before returning to Saint Paul and completing his MS degree in Land & Atmospheric Sciences (specifically pedology/biogeochemistry) at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities, where he studied global w'o'rming. Before coming to Stanford as an NSF GRFP Fellow he traveled extensively through Latin America and SE Asia (by bike) and worked as an independent researcher affiliated with the Department of Ecology and Environmental Sciences at Umeå University and the Climate Impacts Research Centre in Abisko, Sweden. He is broadly curious in learning how the world works, and this informs his outlook towards research. Previous topics of inquiry include: coupling ant bioturbation to the erosion and weathering of hillslope soils in SE Australia, exploring earthworm invasions and their deterministic effects on soil carbon stocks and forms in Fennoscandian and Alaskan forests, and examining the biogeochemical diversity of ‘black smoker’ plume particles at deep-sea hydrothermal vents.

  • Diane M. Wade

    Diane M. Wade

    Research Admstr 3: Finance, Grant & Affiliate Management, Energy Science & Engineering

    BioDiane is a Research Administrator for the Department of Energy Science and Engineering at the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability. Her role involves Finance, Grant & Affiliate Management. She is responsible for affiliate accounts, department accounts, sponsored grants (pre & post award) and faculty financial portfolios. She is the financial liaison to the affiliates, works with faculty to submit research proposals and then manages sponsored awards. She also is responsible for affiliate faculty appointments and visas.

    Previously, she was interim Diversity Officer for the Office of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion while the Associate Dean was on leave.

    Diane’s university education includes Mechanical Engineering and an internship at NASA building flight simulators. Prior to earning her MBA, she was a board member and representative for three non-profits.

  • Virginia Walbot

    Virginia Walbot

    Professor of Biology, Emerita

    Current Research and Scholarly InterestsOur current focus is on maize anther development to understand how cell fate is specified. We discovered that hypoxia triggers specification of the archesporial (pre-meiotic) cells, and that these cells secrete a small protein MAC1 that patterns the adjacent soma to differentiate as endothecial and secondary parietal cell types. We also discovered a novel class of small RNA: 21-nt and 24-nt phasiRNAs that are exceptionally abundant in anthers and exhibit strict spatiotemporal dynamics.

  • Luwen Wan

    Luwen Wan

    Postdoctoral Scholar, Earth System Science

    BioLuwen is a Postdoctoral Fellow with the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence, working with Dr. Kate Maher, Professor at Stanford University in the Department of Earth System Science. Her postdoctoral research focuses on developing tools for tracking the recovery and activity of the North American beaver from a computer version and evaluating beaver as a tool for fostering sustainable waterways. She received her Ph.D. in Earth and Environmental Science from Michigan State University, where she worked on nutrient transport modeling across the Great Lakes Basin and agricultural tile drainage mapping across the US Midwest region.

  • Shiqi (Axel) Wang

    Shiqi (Axel) Wang

    Ph.D. Student in Geophysics, admitted Autumn 2017

    BioI am a PhD student in geophysics. My research interest is on high-frequency guided seismic waves primarily in the lithosphere. One application of these waves is to use their amplitude ratios to determine if an earthquake nucleated within the continental mantle.

  • Shan X. Wang

    Shan X. Wang

    Leland T. Edwards Professor in the School of Engineering and Professor of Electrical Engineering and, by courtesy, of Radiology (Molecular Imaging Program at Stanford)

    Current Research and Scholarly InterestsShan Wang was named the Leland T. Edwards Professor in the School of Engineering in 2018. He directs the Center for Magnetic Nanotechnology and is a leading expert in biosensors, information storage and spintronics. His research and inventions span across a variety of areas including magnetic biochips, in vitro diagnostics, cancer biomarkers, magnetic nanoparticles, magnetic sensors, magnetoresistive random access memory, and magnetic integrated inductors.

  • Yuan Wang

    Yuan Wang

    Assistant Professor of Earth System Science

    BioYuan Wang is an assistant professor in the Department of Earth System Science at the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability. He is also an affiliated faculty in the Woods Institute for the Environment. Prior to joining Stanford, he was an associate professor at Purdue University and a research scientist at California Institute of Technology. His research group aims to advance the understanding of the physical and chemical interactions between atmospheric constituents and climate change. Specifically, his group conducts research related to aerosol-cloud-precipitation interactions and their climatic implications, aerosol properties and haze formation, cloud microphysics and dynamics, and the assessment of the greenhouse gas and aerosol forcings on the atmosphere, ocean, and cryosphere. They develop and use hierarchical and multiscale weather and climate models in combination with space-borne and in situ measurements to address those scientific questions.

  • Michael Wara

    Michael Wara

    Senior Research Scholar

    BioMichael Wara is a lawyer and scholar focused on climate and energy policy.

    Wara is Director of the Climate and Energy Policy Program and a senior research scholar at the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment as well as Senior Director for Policy at the Sustainability Accelerator within the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability. Wara organizes and manages cross-functional teams of post docs, legal fellows and graduate students that provide fact-based, bipartisan, technical and legal assistance to policymakers, environmental justice advocates, and tribes engaged in the development of novel climate and energy law and regulation. He also facilitates the connection of Stanford faculty with cutting edge policy debates on climate, energy and climate impacts, leveraging Stanford’s energy, climate and natural resource expertise to craft real world solutions to these challenges.

    Wara’s legal and policy scholarship focuses on wildfire, climate mitigation, energy innovation, and regulated industries. He collaborates with economists, engineers and scientists in research on the design and evaluation of technical and regulatory solutions to society's climate and energy challenges.

    Wara has served as a Wildfire Commissioner for the California, as a member of the California Catastrophe Council, the oversight body of the California Wildfire Fund, as a consultant to the Senate pro Tem on wildfire issues, and as a consultant to CPUC and OEIS on utility wildfire risk management. Wara has served on multiple National Academy of Sciences and California Council on Science and Technology reports. He is also a member of the Tamalpais Design Review Board.

    Prior to joining Woods, Wara was an associate professor at Stanford Law School and an associate in Holland & Knight’s government practice. He received his J.D. from Stanford Law School and his Ph.D. in Ocean Sciences from the University of California at Santa Cruz.

  • Robert Waymouth

    Robert Waymouth

    Robert Eckles Swain Professor of Chemistry and Professor, by courtesy, of Chemical Engineering

    BioRobert Eckles Swain Professor in Chemistry Robert Waymouth investigates new catalytic strategies to create useful new molecules, including bioactive polymers, synthetic fuels, and sustainable plastics. In one such breakthrough, Professor Waymouth and Professor Wender developed a new class of gene delivery agents.

    Born in 1960 in Warner Robins, Georgia, Robert Waymouth studied chemistry and mathematics at Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Virginia (B.S. and B.A., respectively, both summa cum laude, 1982). He developed an interest in synthetic and mechanistic organometallic chemistry during his doctoral studies in chemistry at the California Institute of Technology under Professor R.H. Grubbs (Ph.D., 1987). His postdoctoral research with Professor Piero Pino at the Institut fur Polymere, ETH Zurich, Switzerland, focused on catalytic hydrogenation with chiral metallocene catalysts. He joined the Stanford University faculty as assistant professor in 1988, becoming full professor in 1997 and in 2000 the Robert Eckles Swain Professor of Chemistry.

    Today, the Waymouth Group applies mechanistic principles to develop new concepts in catalysis, with particular focus on the development of organometallic and organic catalysts for the synthesis of complex macromolecular architectures. In organometallic catalysis, the group devised a highly selective alcohol oxidation catalyst that selectively oxidizes unprotected polyols and carbohydrates to alpha-hyroxyketones. In collaboration with Dr. James Hedrick of IBM, we have developed a platform of highly active organic catalysts and continuous flow reactors that provide access to polymer architectures that are difficult to access by conventional approaches.

    The Waymouth group has devised selective organocatalytic strategies for the synthesis of functional degradable polymers and oligomers that function as "molecular transporters" to deliver genes, drugs and probes into cells and live animals. These advances led to the joint discovery with the Wender group of a general, safe, and remarkably effective concept for RNA delivery based on a new class of synthetic cationic materials, Charge-Altering Releasable Transporters (CARTs). This technology has been shown to be effective for mRNA based cancer vaccines.