Stanford University
Showing 7,451-7,500 of 7,896 Results
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Chad S. Weldy, M.D., Ph.D.
Instructor, Medicine - Cardiovascular Medicine
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsAs a physician-scientist I work to understand the genetic basis of cardiovascular disease and the transcriptional and epigenomic mechanisms of atherosclerosis. My work is focused across four main areas of cardiovascular genetics and mechanisms of coronary artery disease and smooth muscle biology:
1.Vascular smooth muscle specific ADAR1 mediated RNA editing of double stranded RNA and activation of the double stranded RNA receptor MDA5 in coronary artery disease and vascular calcification
2.Defining on single cell resolution the cellular and epigenomic features of human vascular disease across vascular beds of differing embryonic origin
3.CRISPRi screening with targeted perturb seq (TAPseq) to identify novel CAD genes in human coronary artery smooth muscle cells
4.Investigation of the epigenetic and molecular basis of coronary artery disease and smooth muscle cell transition in mice with conditional smooth muscle genetic deletion of CAD genes Pdgfd and Sox9
My work is focused on discovery of causal mechanisms of disease through leveraging human genetics with sophisticated molecular biology, single cell sequencing technologies, and mouse models of disease. This work attempts to apply multiple scientific research arms to ultimately lead to novel understandings of vascular disease and discover important new therapeutic approaches for drug discovery.
First Author Manuscripts for this work:
•Weldy, C. S., et al. (2025). Smooth muscle cell expression of RNA editing enzyme ADAR1 controls activation of RNA sensor MDA5 in atherosclerosis. (2025). Nature Cardiovascular Research. 1-17, PMID: 40958051, doi: 10.1038/s44161-025-00710-5
•*Selected as finalist for Louis N. and Arnold M. Katz Basic Science Research Prize from the American Heart Association, finalist competition November 16, 2024, Chicago
•Work was highlighted in the Stanford Department of Medicine News
https://medicine.stanford.edu/news/current-news/standard-news/RNA-editing.html
•Weldy, C.S., et al. (2025). Epigenomic landscape of single vascular cells reflects developmental origin and disease risk loci. Molecular Systems Biology. 1-25, PMID: 40931195, doi:10.1038/s44320-025-00140-2.
•*Selected for the cover of November 2025 edition of Molecular Systems Biology
Grant funding received for this work:
Mentored Clinical Scientist Research Career Development Award (K08)(NIH/NHLBI, 1 K08 HL167699-01), August, 2023 – July 2028. PI: Weldy, Chad
•Title of proposal: “ADAR Mediated RNA editing is a causal mechanism in coronary artery disease”.
•Activated 08/01/2023
•$850,000 over 5 years
Career Development Award, American Heart Association (AHA CDA)(23CDA1042900), July, 2023 – June, 2026. PI: Weldy, Chad
•Title of proposal: “Linking RNA editing to coronary artery calcification and disease”
•Activated 07/01/2023
•$231,000 over three years
NIH Loan Repayment Program (LRP) Award (NIH/NHLBI) Renewal Award, July, 2023. PI: Weldy, Chad
•Title of proposal: “RNA editing is a causal mechanism of coronary artery disease”
Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award (NRSA) Individual Postdoctoral Fellowship (F32) (NIH/NHLBI, 1 F32 HL160067-01), July, 2021 – June 2023 (Completed). PI: Weldy, Chad
• Titled, “A transcriptional network which governs smooth muscle transition is mediated by causal coronary artery disease gene PDGFD”
•*Received perfect score with impact score 10, 1st percentile
NIH Loan Repayment Program (LRP) Award (NIH/NHLBI), July, 2021. PI: Weldy, Chad
•Title of proposal: "Single cell transcriptomic and epigenomic features of human atherosclerosis".
•This will award up to $100,000 towards student loans over the next 24 months with opportunity for renewal after 24 months. -
Andy Wen
Clinical Professor, Pediatrics - Critical Care
BioDr. Andy Y. Wen joined the Division of Pediatric Critical Care Medicine at Stanford University School of Medicine in 2019. He received his B.A. degree in Molecular Biology & Biochemistry at Rutgers University, and his medical degree from Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School. He completed a Pediatrics Residency Training Program at the State University of New York Downstate Medical Center and a Pediatric Critical Care Medicine Fellowship Training Program at the University of California Los Angeles.
After briefly working for Kaiser Permanente Southern California Permanente Medical Group, Dr. Wen joined the Division of Pediatric Critical Care at NYU School of Medicine. He assumed the role of Bellevue Hospital PICU medical director and helped to expand Bellevue's Pediatric Trauma Program and Pediatric Critical Care Transport Services for the New York City (NYC) public hospital system, NYC Health & Hospitals. During the 2014 to 2016 Ebola outbreak in West Africa, Dr. Wen was a member of the Special Pathogens Program at Bellevue Hospital, which was one of only four institutions in the US to treat a patient with Ebola and helped established the National Ebola Training and Education Center (NETEC).
While at UCLA, Dr. Wen received a T32 Training Grant to perform research investigating the role of transcription factor CREB in innate immune function using a murine model for AML. At NYU, his research projects included analyzing transfusion practices in the PICU, quality improvement projects targeting patients at high risk for unplanned extubation, and exploring the utility of NIRS as an early predictor of seizure activity. Dr. Wen is a member of Pediatric Acute Lung Injury & Sepsis Investigators (PALISI) and has been involved in multi-center studies looking at critical care patients with Bronchiolitis and COVID-19. Dr. Wen is the USA Editor for Journal of Pediatric Intensive Care and has reviewed abstracts for PAS, SCCM, and AMIA. His educational efforts have included teaching Pediatric Fundamental Critical Care Support (PFCCS) courses, helping develop a Pediatric Residency Simulation course curriculum, and helping develop a Point-of-Care Ultrasound course for critical care advanced practice providers.
At Stanford University School of Medicine, Dr. Wen is in charge of Regional Pediatric Critical Care Outreach with a goal to promote medical education and expand the Stanford Children’s Health network to improve access for sick children in need of high quality care. Dr. Wen provides clinical services at both John Muir Medical Center and Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital. -
Leif Wenar
Olive H. Palmer Professor of the Humanities, Professor of Philosophy, Senior Fellow at the Woods Institute for the Environment and Professor, by courtesy, of Political Science
BioLeif Wenar is a political philosopher. After receiving his AB at Stanford, he earned his PhD at Harvard, worked in Britain, and returned to Stanford in 2020.
He is the author of Blood Oil: Tyrants, Violence, and the Rules that Run the World and the author-meets-critics volume Beyond Blood Oil: Philosophy, Policy, and the Future. He is also the author of the entries for ‘John Rawls’ and ‘Rights’ in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. His articles have appeared in Mind, Analysis, Philosophy & Public Affairs, Ethics, The Journal of Political Philosophy, The Columbia Law Review, and The Philosopher’s Annual. He co-edited Giving Well: The Ethics of Philanthropy, as well as an autobiographical volume by the economist FA Hayek.
He has been a Visiting Professor at the Stanford Center on Ethics and Society, a fellow at the Center for Advanced Studies in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford, the William H. Bonsall Visiting Professor in the Stanford Philosophy Department, a Laurance S. Rockefeller Fellow and a Visiting Professor at Princeton’s University Center for Human Values, a Visiting Professor at the Princeton Department of Politics, a Fellow of the Program on Justice and the World Economy at the Carnegie Council on Ethics and International Affairs, a Faculty Fellow at the Center for Ethics and Public Affairs at The Murphy Institute of Political Economy, and a Visiting Fellow at the Australian National University School of Philosophy.
His public writing has been featured in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Los Angeles Times, Foreign Affairs, and the playbill for the White Light Festival at Lincoln Center. In London, he served for several years on the Mayor’s Policing Ethics Panel, which advises the Mayor and the Metropolitan Police on issues such as digital surveillance and the use of force.
He is currently developing unity theory, a foundational account of what makes for more valuable lives, relationships, and societies. His published work can be found at wenar.info. -
Paul Wender
Francis W. Bergstrom Professor and Professor, by courtesy, of Chemical and Systems Biology
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsMolecular imaging, therapeutics, drug delivery, drug mode of action, synthesis
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Kirsti Weng Elder MD/MPH
Clinical Associate Professor, Medicine - Primary Care and Population Health
BioDr. Weng is the Section Chief of General Primary Care. She has over 25 years of experience caring for patients in primary care, urgent care and in the hospital. She is also a teacher of students and residents. As a leader in primary care re-design, she is passionate about practicing patient-centered medicine. She is a an advocate of Mindfulness Self-compassion to develop equanimity. She practices with an emphasis on musculoskeletal care as she feels fitness is the foundation of wellness. She is a leader in organizational change and physician management. She supports community health and care for the underserved. Outside of work she enjoys biking, reading and spending time with her 8 children.
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Wen-Kai Weng, MD, PhD
Professor of Medicine (Blood and Marrow Transplantation and Cellular Therapy) and, by courtesy, of Dermatology
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsMy research interest is on immunotherapy (including allogeneic transplant) of cancer. I have studies the mechanism of monoclonal antibody therapy in lymphoma patients and am currently working on designing new strategy to enhance the clinical efficacy of antibody therapy by infusing expanded NK cells. I am also interested in using tumor vaccine along with hematopoietic cell transplant.
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Gerlinde Wernig
Associate Professor of Pathology
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsFibrotic diseases kill more people than cancer in this country and worldwide. We believe that scar-forming cells called fibroblasts are at the core of the fibrotic response in parenchymal organ fibrosis in the lung, liver, skin, bone marrow and tumor stroma. At the cellular level we think of fibrosis as a step wise process which implicates inflammation and fibrosis. We seek to identify new effective immune therapy targets to treat fibrotic diseases.
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Marius Wernig
Professor of Pathology and, by courtesy, of Chemical and Systems Biology
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsEpigenetic Reprogramming, Direct conversion of fibroblasts into neurons, Pluripotent Stem Cells, Neural Differentiation: implications in development and regenerative medicine
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Dee W. West
Professor of Health Research and Policy, Emeritus
Current Research and Scholarly Interests- Cancer etiology (diet, familial, genetic), especially breast, prostate and colon cancer
- Cancer surveillance (Cancer registration, cancer patterns)
- Cancer outcomes (Survival, quality of life, quality of care) -
Robert West
Sabine Kohler, MD, Professor of Pathology
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsRob West, MD, PhD, is a Professor of Pathology at Stanford University Medical Center. He is a clinician scientist with experience in translational genomics research to identify new prognostic and therapeutic markers in cancer. His research focus is on the progression of neoplasia to carcinoma. His lab has developed spatially oriented in situ methods to study archival specimens. He also serves as a surgical pathologist specializing in breast pathology.
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M. Brandon Westover, MD, PhD
Professor of Neurology and Neurological Sciences (Adulty Neurology) and, by courtesy, of Biomedical Data Science and of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences
BioDr. M. Brandon Westover is a board-certified, fellowship-trained epilepsy specialist, clinical neurophysiologist, and neurologist with Stanford Health Care. He is also a professor in the Department of Neurology and Neurological Sciences at Stanford University School of Medicine and director of the Stanford Epilepsy Center.
Dr. Westover specializes in caring for adults with epilepsy and other neurological conditions. He focuses on developing automated tools that improve the quality and reach of his patients' care. He also treats patients with life-threatening unrelenting seizures (status epilepticus), reduced blood flow to the brain (cerebral ischemia), and reduced oxygen to the brain (anoxic brain injury). In addition, he helps patients experiencing delirium, seizures, and sleep disorders.
Dr. Westover's research develops artificial intelligence technology to protect and improve brain health. His interests include predicting seizures and detecting and forecasting disorders of memory, cognition, and consciousness—such as delirium and coma—in older adults. His work has also used deep learning to estimate the risk of developing epilepsy after a brain injury from brain-wave recordings (electroencephalograms, or EEGs).
Dr. Westover has published his research in leading peer-reviewed journals, including Neurology, JAMA Neurology, Annals of Neurology, Epilepsia, the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association, and Lancet Digital Health. He has presented his work at international, national, and regional meetings, including the annual meetings of the American Epilepsy Society, the American Clinical Neurophysiology Society, the American Academy of Neurology, and SLEEP. -
Lynn Marie Westphal, M.D.
Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology (Reproductive Endocrinology and Infertility) at Stanford University Medical Center, Emerita
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsInfertility, fertility preservation, oocyte cryopreservation
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Gordon Wetzstein
Associate Professor of Electrical Engineering and, by courtesy, of Computer Science
BioGordon Wetzstein is an Associate Professor of Electrical Engineering and, by courtesy, of Computer Science at Stanford University. He is the leader of the Stanford Computational Imaging Lab and a faculty co-director of the Stanford Center for Image Systems Engineering. At the intersection of computer graphics and vision, artificial intelligence, computational optics, and applied vision science, Prof. Wetzstein's research has a wide range of applications in next-generation imaging, wearable computing, and neural rendering systems. Prof. Wetzstein is a Fellow of Optica and the recipient of numerous awards, including an NSF CAREER Award, an Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship, an ACM SIGGRAPH Significant New Researcher Award, a Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE), an SPIE Early Career Achievement Award, an Electronic Imaging Scientist of the Year Award, an Alain Fournier Ph.D. Dissertation Award as well as many Best Paper and Demo Awards.
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Cornelia Weyand
Professor of Medicine (Immunology and Rheumatology), Emerita
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsAutoimmunity
Chronic inflammatory disease
Metabolic control of immune function -
John Weyant
Professor (Research) of Management Science and Engineering, of Energy Science Engineering and Senior Fellow at the Precourt Institute for Energy
BioJohn P. Weyant is Professor of Management Science and Engineering, Professor of Energy Science & Engineering, and Director of the Energy Modeling Forum (EMF) at Stanford University. He is also a Senior Fellow of the Precourt Institute for Energy and an an affiliated faculty member of the Stanford School of Earth, Environment and Energy Sciences, the Woods Institute for the Environment, and the Freeman-Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford. His current research focuses on analysis of multi-sector, multi-region coupled human and earth systems dynamics, global change systems analysis, energy technology assessment, and models for strategic planning.
Weyant was a founder and serves as chairman of the Integrated Assessment Modeling Consortium (IAMC), a seventeen-year old collaboration among over 60 member institutions from around the world. He has been an active adviser to the United Nations, the European Commission, U.S.Department of Energy, the U.S. Department of State, and the Environmental Protection Agency. In California, he has been and adviser to the California Air Resources, the California Energy Commission and the California Public Utilities Commission..
Weyant was awarded the US Association for Energy Economics’ 2008 Adelmann-Frankel award for unique and innovative contributions to the field of energy economics and the award for outstanding lifetime contributions to the Profession for 2017 from the International Association for Energy Economics, and a Life Time Achievement award from the Integrated Assessment Modeling Consortium in 2018. Weyant was honored in 2007 as a major contributor to the Nobel Peace prize awarded to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and in 2008 by Chairman Mary Nichols for contributions to the to the California Air Resources Board's Economic and Technology Advancement Advisory Committee on AB 32.
Fields of Specialization:
Energy/Environmental Policy Analysis, Strategic Planning
Interests:
Overall goal is to accelerate the use of systems models at state, country, and global scales, aiming to provide the best available information and insights to government and private-sector decision makers. Specific areas include energy, climate change, and sustainable development policy, including emerging technologies and market design alternatives. Draws on concepts and techniques from science and engineering fundamentals (e.g., thermodynamics, fluid mechanics, materials science, and electrical power systems), operations research, economics, finance, and decision theory. -
Steven Whang
Visiting Associate Professor, Computer Science
BioSteven E. Whang is a Visiting Associate Professor at Stanford University, Computer Science (host: Prof. Christopher Ré). He is an Associate Professor with Tenure at KAIST Electrical Engineering and jointly affiliated with the Kim Jaechul Graduate School of AI. His research interests include Data-centric AI and Responsible AI. He is an Associate Editor of IEEE TKDE (2023-2025) and VLDB (2026, 2025), and an Area Chair of ICLR 2025. Previously he was a Research Scientist at Google Research and co-developed the data infrastructure of the TensorFlow Extended (TFX) machine learning platform. Steven earned his PhD in Computer Science in 2012 from Stanford University under Prof. Hector Garcia-Molina. He is a Y-KAST (Young Korean Academy of Science and Technology) member, was a Kwon Oh-Hyun Endowed Chair Professor (2020-2023), and received a Google AI Focused Research Award (2018, the first in Asia). Homepage: https://stevenwhang.com
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Matthew T. Wheeler
Associate Professor of Medicine (Cardiovascular Medicine)
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsTranslational research in rare and undiagnosed diseases. Basic and clinical research in cardiomyopathy genetics, mechanisms, screening, and treatment. Investigating novel agents for treatment of hypertrophic cardiomyopathy and new mechanisms in heart failure. Cardiovascular screening and genetics in competitive athletes, disease gene discovery in cardiomyopathy and rare disease. Informatics approaches to rare disease and multiomics. Molecular transducers of physical activity bioinformatics.
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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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Ian Whitmore
Professor (Teaching) of Surgery (Anatomy)
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsThe development of better regimes for teaching Anatomy using Cadavers.
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Alice S Whittemore
Professor Emerita, Epidemiology and Population Health
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsCancers of the prostate, breast and ovary account for a major proportion of new cancer cases and cancer deaths in the U.S. each year. Our recent research focus has been on developing improved statistical methods for the design and conduct of studies involving hereditary predisposition and modifiable lifestyle characteristics in the etiologies of site-specific cancers.
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Aileen Whyte, PhD
Clinical Associate Professor, Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences - Child & Adolescent Psychiatry and Child Development
BioDr. Aileen Whyte, a licensed psychologist in California, brings over two decades of specialized expertise to the treatment of eating disorders in young people. Beyond her clinical practice, Dr. Whyte actively works on implementing strategies to expand the reach of evidence-based treatments for eating disorders, aiming to make these best-practice interventions more accessible to a wider population.
Dr Whyte serves as the Director of the Stanford Outpatient Child & Adolescent Eating Disorders Clinic, where she provides treatment to young people with eating disorders and provides supervision to psychology and psychiatry fellows. Dr Whyte is a certified practitioner and consultant in Family-Based Treatment (FBT) for eating disorders. She serves as a study therapist in NIMH-sponsored randomized clinical trials focused on examining FBT and related adaptations.
In addition to her clinical responsibilities, Dr. Whyte has led multiple seminars, workshops, and training sessions dedicated to the treatment of eating disorders. She provides ongoing training and consultation in FBT, reaching diverse audiences, including multidisciplinary clinicians, psychologists, and psychiatrists, within the US and internationally.
Dr. Whyte earned her PhD in Clinical Psychology from the New School for Social Research in New York. Her research and clinical interests converge on the implementation and dissemination of evidence-based treatments for eating disorders. -
Jennifer Widom
Frederick Emmons Terman Dean of the School of Engineering, Fletcher Jones Professor of Computer Science and Professor of Electrical Engineering
BioJennifer Widom is the Frederick Emmons Terman Dean of the School of Engineering and the Fletcher Jones Professor in Computer Science and Electrical Engineering at Stanford University. She served as Computer Science Department Chair from 2009-2014 and School of Engineering Senior Associate Dean from 2014-2016. Jennifer received her Bachelor's degree from the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music in 1982 and her Computer Science Ph.D. from Cornell University in 1987. She was a Research Staff Member at the IBM Almaden Research Center before joining the Stanford faculty in 1993. Her research interests span many aspects of nontraditional data management. She is an ACM Fellow and a member of the National Academy of Engineering and the American Academy of Arts & Sciences; she received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2000, the ACM SIGMOD Edgar F. Codd Innovations Award in 2007, the ACM-W Athena Lecturer Award in 2015, and the EPFL-WISH Foundation Erna Hamburger Prize in 2018.
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Lyris Wiedemann
Senior Lecturer in the Language Center
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsMy research interests include sociolinguistics, discourse analysis, acquisition of cognate languages, development of cultural competence, and translation. I am one of the creators of the international symposium on Portuguese for Spanish Speakers: Acquisition and Teaching, which had its fifth edition in 2014, and an author and editor of several scholarly articles and books. My current focus is on the acquisition of Portuguese by speakers of Spanish and other Romance languages.
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Simon Wiederhold
Visiting Fellow, HOOVER RESEARCH
BioSimon Wiederhold is a Visiting Fellow at the Hoover Institution for the 2024/2025 academic year. He is Professor of Labor Economics at the Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg and Senior Research Advisor at the Halle Institute for Economic Research (IWH), where he leads the research group on Education, Skills, and the Labor Market.
Wiederhold's research focuses on labor and education economics, particularly the formation and impact of skills. He investigates the determinants of skill development, including family background, formal education, and on-the-job training, and examines the role of skills in labor market success throughout workers' careers. He also investigates how inequalities in the education system arise. Methodologically, Wiederhold emphasizes rigorous research designs using modern microeconometric methods to provide evidence-based policy recommendations.
He has published extensively in leading journals such as the Journal of Political Economy, Journal of the European Economic Association, and American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics. His contributions to the field have been recognized with awards including the CESifo Young Affiliate Award, the ifo Research Award, and the CIDER Public Science Award. His joint work with Hoover Fellow Eric Hanushek on returns to skills worldwide has won the Best Paper Award of the European Economic Review.
Wiederhold held previous academic positions at the Catholic University Eichstätt-Ingolstadt and the ifo Institute, and spent extended research visits at Harvard University and Duke University. He holds a doctorate in economics from the University of Jena, where he also studied. He actively contributes to public debates on education and labor market policies, providing numerous policy reports for the European Commission and other organizations. His research has been featured in prominent media outlets, reflecting his influence on contemporary economic policy discussions. -
Carl Wieman
Cheriton Family Professor and Professor of Physics and of Education, Emeritus
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsThe Wieman group’s research generally focuses on the nature of expertise in science and engineering, particularly physics, and how that expertise is best learned, measured, and taught. This involves a range of approaches, including individual cognitive interviews, laboratory experiments, and classroom interventions with controls for comparisons. We are also looking at how different classroom practices impact the attitudes and learning of different demographic groups.
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Karen Wigen
Frances and Charles Field Professor of History
BioKären Wigen teaches Japanese history and the history of cartography at Stanford. A geographer by training, she earned her doctorate at the University of California at Berkeley. Her first book, The Making of a Japanese Periphery, 1750-1920 (1995), mapped the economic transformation of southern Nagano Prefecture during the heyday of the silk industry. Her second book, A Malleable Map: Geographies of Restoration in Central Japan, 1600-1912 (2010), returned to the ground of that study, exploring the roles of cartography, chorography, and regionalism in the making of modern Shinano.
An abiding interest in world history led her to co-author The Myth of Continents (1997) with Martin Lewis, and to co-direct the "Oceans Connect" project at Duke University. She also introduced a forum on oceans in history for the American Historical Review and co-edited Seascapes: Maritime Histories, Littoral Cultures, and Transoceanic Exchanges (2007) with Jerry Bentley and Renate Bridenthal. Her latest project is another collaboration, Cartographic Japan: A History in Maps, with co-editors Sugimoto Fumiko and Cary Karacas ( University of Chicago Press, forthcoming 2016). -
Benny Starr
Visiting Artist, Stanford Arts Office Programs
BioBlack music and Southern culture find a unique voice in Benny Starr, an artist and cultural strategist who fuses Southern musical traditions with storytelling to explore identity, history, and social change. His deep affection for hip-hop, gospel, jazz, blues, and rock has created a fusion steeped in memory, creativity, and the lived experiences of the South. His creations offer a captivating journey that invites you to explore these roots, offering a fresh perspective on a familiar narrative.
Benny Starr's most recent solo project, A Water Album, was not just a milestone in his career but a significant historical moment. Recorded live with his bandmates, The Four20s, at Charleston Music Hall and released on Juneteenth 2019, it marked Benny Starr as the first Hip-Hop artist to perform at Spoleto Festival USA. The album itself was a triumph and a testament to his talent, earning the "South Carolina's Best Album" 2019 title by the Free Times, solidifying Benny Starr's place as a visionary independent artist in the South.
In 2020, Native Son, a duo of Benny Starr and harmonious singer, songwriter, producer, and multi-instrumentalist Rodrick Cliche, was formed. Together, they are redefining what it means to be dynamic while remaining highly respected. Their music, which combines the comforting allure of Southern breakfast at Grandma's house with the triumphant command of a revolutionary's chant, is a sonic resonance that is both decadent and nourishing. This unique blend of their musical influences sets them apart from other artists and makes their sound a must-listen for any music lover.
Native Son's most recent release, "The Land," is a rallying cry that echoes the injustices of Black Legacy Farmers at the hands of the USDA and is part of an ongoing partnership with The Acres of Ancestry Initiative/Black Agrarian Fund and The Black Farmers Appeal: Cancel Pigford Debt Campaign. As a part of the ongoing collaboration, Native Son screened "Restoration: A Concert Film" on Juneteenth 2020. In the fall, "Restoration" was also released for a limited-time viewing to coincide with the Justice for Black Farmers Act of 2020, introduced by U.S. Senators Cory Booker, Elizabeth Warren, and Kirsten Gillibrand on November 30th. To date, "Restoration" has been screened at the Pan African Film Festival, WorldFest-Houston International Film Festival, Seattle Black Film Festival, Reel Sisters of the Diaspora Film Festival & Lecture Series, Nevada City Film Festival, Rhode Island Black Film Festival, Las Vegas Black Film Festival, Nice International Film Festival, and more.
The U.S. Water Alliance recognized Benny Starr's commitment to the creative and artistic process by naming him their inaugural One Water Artist-in-Residence in October 2020. During his 18-month residency and subsequent tenure as Senior Fellow of Arts & Culture, Benny infused arts and cultural strategies into innovative thinking, problem-solving, and programming. In 2021, Grist named him one of their 50 Fixers, highlighting his leadership in climate, sustainability, and equity. In 2023, Benny launched Watercolor Creative, an umbrella for artistic projects, creative strategy, and social practice work with creators, communities, and equity-centered partners, furthering his mission to use creativity for justice and kinship.
Benny later served as a creative strategist with Communities First Fund, embedding arts and culture into their initiatives and programming. He is currently a U.S. Cultural Policy Fellow at Stanford University, examining the intersections of arts, culture, and civic infrastructure. -
Gail Wight
Professor of Art and Art History, Emerita
BioGail Wight holds an MFA in New Genres from the San Francisco Art Institute where she was a Javits Fellow, and a BFA from the Studio for Interrelated Media at Massachusetts College of Art. She has an extensive international exhibition record, with over a dozen solo exhibits throughout North America and Great Britain, and her work has been collected by numerous institutions including the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Among her many artist residencies are western Australia’s Symbiotica, Art & Archaeology at Stonehenge, the Rockefeller Foundation in Bellagio, and San Francisco’s Exploratorium. Her work is represented by Patricia Sweetow Gallery in San Francisco.
