Russ Biagio Altman, PhD '89, MD '90, Guidant Professor for Applied Biomedical Engineering and professor of genetics, of medicine, and, by courtesy, of computer science

Russ Biagio Altman, PhD '89, MD '90, Guidant Professor for Applied Biomedical Engineering and professor of genetics, of medicine, and, by courtesy, of computer science

Russ Altman's primary research interests are in the application of computing technology to basic molecular biological problems of relevance to medicine. He is particularly interested in informatics methods for advancing pharmacogenomics, the study of how human genetic variation impacts drug response. Some of his other work focuses on the analysis of functional sites within macromolecules and the application of algorithms for determining the structure, dynamics and function of biological macromolecules. Altman has been the recipient of the U.S. Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers and a National Science Foundation CAREER Award. He leads one of seven NIH-supported National Centers for Biomedical Computation, focusing on physics-based simulation of biological structures. He won the Stanford Medical School graduate teaching award in 2000.

Roger Blandford, Luke Blossom Professor of Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology. Pehong and Adele Chen Director, Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology

Roger Blandford, Luke Blossom Professor of Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology. Pehong and Adele Chen Director, Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology

Roger Blandford, a native of England, earned his BA, MA and PhD degrees at Cambridge University. Following postdoctoral research at Cambridge, Princeton and UC Berkeley, he accepted a faculty position at Caltech in 1976 where he was appointed the Richard Chace Tolman Professor of Theoretical Astrophysics. In 2003, he moved to Stanford to become the first director of the Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology and the Luke Blossom Chair in the School of Humanities and Science. His research interests include black hole astrophysics, cosmology, gravitational lensing, cosmic ray physics and compact stars. He is a fellow of the Royal Society and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a member of the National Academy of Science.

Helen M. Blau, Donald E. and Delia B. Baxter Professor, director of the Baxter Laboratory for Stem Cell Biology in the department of microbiology and immunology, and a member of the new Institute of Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine

Helen M. Blau, Donald E. and Delia B. Baxter Professor, director of the Baxter Laboratory for Stem Cell Biology in the department of microbiology and immunology, and a member of the new Institute of Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine

Helen Blau researches cell and developmental biology. She has had a longstanding interest in stem cell biology and cell specialization, and is especially well known for her research demonstrating plasticity of the differentiated state. Her research expertise is in nuclear reprogramming and stem cell biology, and she is renowned for her work on muscle stem cells and tissue regeneration in normal and dystrophic muscle of mice and humans. She is an elected member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences, a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a fellow of the American Academy for the Advancement of Sciences, and a recipient of numerous national and international awards.

Patricia Burchat, PhD '86, Gabilan Professor and Sapp Family University Fellow, chair of the physics department

Patricia Burchat, PhD '86, Gabilan Professor and Sapp Family University Fellow, chair of the physics department

Patricia Burchat studies differences in the time evolution of matter and antimatter created at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC), and the gravitational bending of light by massive clusters of galaxies in the universe. She has held several leadership positions in the 550-person international BABAR Collaboration at SLAC. She was appointed a fellow of the American Physical Society in 2001 and was granted a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2005. In 1997, Burchat received the Dean's Award for Distinguished Teaching and in 2007 the Walter J. Gores Award for excellence in teaching.

Joshua Cohen, Marta Sutton Weeks Professor of Ethics in Society and professor of political science, philosophy and law

Joshua Cohen, Marta Sutton Weeks Professor of Ethics in Society and professor of political science, philosophy and law

Joshua Cohen directs the Program on Global Justice and is a co-director of the Program on Liberation Technologies. A political theorist, trained in philosophy, Cohen has written on democratic theory, particularly deliberative democracy and the implications for personal liberty; freedom of expression; and campaign finance. Cohen is concentrating on global justice, including the foundations of human rights, distributive fairness and supranational democratic governance. A first volume of his selected papers, Philosophy, Politics, Democracy was published in 2009; a second volume, The Arc of the Moral Universe and Other Essays, will appear in fall 2010; and Rousseau: A Free Community of Equals is forthcoming. Cohen is a co-editor of Boston Review, a bimonthly magazine of political, cultural and literary ideas. A member of the American Academic of Arts and Sciences and a Tanner lecturer at UC Berkeley in 2007, Cohen taught philosophy and political science at MIT from 1977 to 2006, where he chaired both the philosophy program and the political science department.

Gretchen Daily, '86, MS '87, Bing Professor of Environmental Science, senior fellow of the Woods Institute, director of the Center for Conservation Biology, chair of the Natural Capital Project

Gretchen Daily, '86, MS '87, Bing Professor of Environmental Science, senior fellow of the Woods Institute, director of the Center for Conservation Biology, chair of the Natural Capital Project

An ecologist by training, Gretchen Daily's work spans scientific research, teaching, public education and working with leaders to advance practical approaches to environmental challenges. Daily's scientific research focuses on biodiversity change, on the scope for harmonizing biodiversity conservation and agriculture, on quantifying the production and value of ecosystem services across landscapes, and on new policy and finance mechanisms for integrating the values of natural capital into major decisions. Her efforts span fundamental research and policy-oriented demonstration projects in Africa, Asia, Europe, Latin America, North America and Oceania. Daily works extensively with private landowners, economists, lawyers, businesses and government agencies to incorporate environmental issues into business practice and public policy. She has published over 200 scientific and popular articles; her most recent book is The New Economy of Nature: The Quest to Make Conservation Profitable, with journalist Katherine Ellison.

Francis Flynn, associate professor, Graduate School of Business

Francis Flynn, associate professor, Graduate School of Business

Frank Flynn's research focuses on interpersonal relations in organizations. In particular, he studies three topics of interest: (1) how employees can develop healthy patterns of cooperation, (2) how the negative impact of racial and gender stereotyping in the workplace can be mitigated and (3) how people can emerge as leaders and assume positions of power in organizations. His work bridges management and social psychology, leading to scholarly as well as practical insights on organizational life. A winner of multiple teaching awards, Flynn's courses focus on leadership issues, particularly how young managers can learn to navigate complex political environments and build interpersonal influence.

Chris Gerdes, associate professor of mechanical engineering and director of the Center for Automotive Research at Stanford (CARS)

Chris Gerdes, associate professor of mechanical engineering and director of the Center for Automotive Research at Stanford (CARS)

Chris Gerdes's research interests include vehicle dynamics, design of x-by-wire systems, driver assistance systems and control of homogeneous charge compression ignition engines. Research projects in the lab include the development of autonomous racing and drifting algorithms to enable Shelley, an Audi TT-S, to race up Pikes Peak without a driver. Prior to joining Stanford in 1998, Gerdes was the project leader for virtual proving grounds development at the Vehicle Systems Technology Center of Daimler-Benz Research and Technology, North America. He is a past recipient of the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers in recognition for his work with driver assistance systems.

Sarah Heilshorn, assistant professor of materials science and engineering

Sarah Heilshorn, assistant professor of materials science and engineering

Prior to joining the Stanford School of Engineering in 2006, Sarah Heilshorn was a postdoctoral scholar in neurobiology at the UC Berkeley. She completed her PhD and MS studies in chemical engineering at Caltech with a minor in biology, and her BS degree in chemical engineering at Georgia Tech. She combines these diverse fields to design materials that mimic those found in our own bodies; applications include tissue engineering and regenerative medicine. In 2009, Heilshorn received the National Science Foundation CAREER Award and the New Innovator Award from the National Institutes of Health.

David Kelley, MS '78, Donald W. Whittier Professor in Mechanical Engineering and founder of IDEO

David Kelley, MS '78, Donald W. Whittier Professor in Mechanical Engineering and founder of IDEO

After earning his master's degree David Kelley started his own design firm, vowing to work only on cool projects with people he liked. The company became IDEO, a worldwide leader in the user-centered design of products, services and environments. Kelley also began teaching design at Stanford in 1978, and became a tenured professor in 1991. Kelley now heads the Stanford d.school, and he is on a mission to add design thinking to Stanford's existing competence of teaching analytical thinking. This will result in students who create delightful design experiences and embrace and promote a culture of innovation. In Stanford's 100-year retrospective on the people who most epitomized its tradition of academic excellence, Kelley was recognized for encouraging "the melding of can-do spirit with limitless imagination." In 2000, he was honored with the annual Chrysler Design Award and elected to the National Academy of Engineering, which recognized him for affecting the practice of design. Most recently, Kelley received the 2005 Sir Misha Black Medal for his distinguished services to design education.

George Kembel, '94, MS '97, executive director of the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford (Stanford d.school)

George Kembel, '94, MS '97, executive director of the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford (Stanford d.school)

George Kembel has led the conceptualization, design and development of new products and technologies for over 10 years in both research and industry. He specializes in the design process, idea generation, concept development and rapid prototyping. He has built and led successful interdisciplinary teams from four-person projects to 120-person organizations and has co-founded and built two design-centered corporations: Engaje, a design consulting and product development company; and DoDots, a venture capital funded software technology startup. As a former entrepreneur, Kembel also helped lead new investments for a $2.5 billion venture capital firm in Silicon Valley. He has taught on subjects ranging from human values and innovation in design, to creativity and visual thinking. He has also won national and industry awards for entrepreneurship and excellence in design. Kembel's current design interests include biologically inspired design and design methodologies.

Perry Klebahn, MS '91, consulting associate professor of the Stanford d.school, founder of Atlas Snowshoes and former CEO of Timbuk2

Perry Klebahn, MS '91, consulting associate professor of the Stanford d.school, founder of Atlas Snowshoes and former CEO of Timbuk2

Perry Klebahn left Stanford with his master's thesis in hand—a high-performance snowshoe. He was hell-bent on starting his own business and expected the world to beat a path to his door. Ultimately, he built a sport around snowshoeing and started Atlas Snowshoe Company. Through this experience he learned two things: you can't do anything significant on your own, and engineering is not nearly as much fun as marketing what you have engineered. In 2000, Klebahn sold Atlas to run sales and marketing for Patagonia. In 2007, he became CEO of Timbuk2 in San Francisco, leading not only the original bike messenger bag company, but also one of the last manufacturers in San Francisco. Klebahn has been teaching at the Stanford d.school since 1996. He can regularly be heard telling students, "Get out there where the answers are." An entrepreneur to the core, Klebahn measures his teaching success by the number of student projects that get to market.

Clifford Nass, Thomas M. Storke Professor of Communications

Clifford Nass, Thomas M. Storke Professor of Communications

Clifford Nass focuses on experimental studies of the social-psychological aspects of human-computer interaction. He directs the Communication between Humans and Interactive Media (CHIMe) Lab, which focuses on communication in and between automobiles, mobile and ubiquitous technology, and human-robot interaction. He is also a co-director of the Kozmetsky Global Collaboratory, which focuses on developing countries. Nass is co-author of two books: The Media Equation: How People Treat Computers, Television, and New Media Like Real People and Places and Wired for Speech: How Voice Activates and Advances the Human-Computer Relationship, which won the International Communication Association Outstanding Book Award for 2007. He is the author of more than 100 papers on the psychology of technology and statistical methodology. His research has been applied to more than 250 media products and services including Microsoft, Toyota, Nissan, BMW, Philips, Sony, Time-Warner, Hewlett-Packard, Charles Schwab and Fidelity.

Peggy Phelan, Ann O'Day Maples Professor in the Arts

Peggy Phelan, Ann O'Day Maples Professor in the Arts

Peggy Phelan is the author of Unmarked: The Politics of Performance (1993) and Mourning Sex: Performing Public Memories (1997), which received an honorable mention Calloway Prize for dramatic criticism 1997-1999. She has written more than 60 articles and essays in scholarly, artistic and commercial magazines ranging from Artforum to Signs. These essays have been cited in architecture, art history, psychoanalytic criticism, visual culture, performance studies, theatre studies and film and video studies. She has edited special issues of the journals Narrative and Women and Performance. She has been a fellow of the Humanities Institute at UC-Irvine and of the Humanities Institute of the Australian National University in Canberra. She served on the editorial board of Art Journal, one of three quarterly publications of the College Art Association, and as chairwoman of the board. She has been president of Performance Studies International. In 2006, Phelan joined the English department and now holds a joint appointment in drama and English.

Denise Clark Pope, '88, PhD '99, senior lecturer in the School of Education, founder of Challenge Success

Denise Clark Pope, '88, PhD '99, senior lecturer in the School of Education, founder of Challenge Success

For the past 10 years, Denise Pope has specialized in student engagement, curriculum studies, qualitative research methods and service learning. She is a co-founder of Challenge Success, a research and intervention project that aims to reduce unhealthy pressure on youth and champions a broader vision of youth success. Challenge Success is an expanded version of the SOS: Stressed-Out Students project that Pope founded and directed from 2003 to 2008. She lectures nationally on parenting techniques and pedagogical strategies to improve student health, engagement with learning and integrity. Her book, Doing School: How We Are Creating a Generation of Stressed Out, Materialistic, and Miseducated Students (2001) was awarded Notable Book in Education by the American School Board Journal. Pope is a three-time recipient of the Stanford University School of Education Outstanding Teacher and Mentor Award. Prior to teaching at Stanford, Pope taught high school English in Fremont and college composition and rhetoric courses at Santa Clara University.

Channing Robertson, PhD '70, Ruth G. and William K. Bowes Professor in the School of Engineering

Channing Robertson, PhD '70, Ruth G. and William K. Bowes Professor in the School of Engineering

Channing Robertson's research encompasses mathematical modeling of mammalian kidney function, compact bioreactor design, protein behavior at interfaces and interfacial enzyme reactivity. He has received both Faculty of the Year and Teacher of the Year awards, and was featured in Upside Magazine's special issue, "100 People Who Have Changed the World." He served on the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) Committee on Science, Law and Technology, the NAS committee that recently published an evaluation of the state of forensic science in the United States, and is revising the Reference Manual on Scientific Evidence under the auspices of the NAS and the Federal Judicial Center. Robertson has published over 160 articles in peer-reviewed journals, supervised the doctoral theses of 44 students, and has served as chair of the department of chemical engineering and as senior associate dean for faculty and academic affairs. He has also been involved in numerous start-up companies as co-founder and consultant.

Diego Rodriguez, '92, consulting associate professor at the Stanford d.school, partner at IDEO and blogger (Metacool)

Diego Rodriguez, '92, consulting associate professor at the Stanford d.school, partner at IDEO and blogger (Metacool)

A leading thinker on innovation in business, technology and design, Diego Rodriguez leads IDEO's Palo Alto location. He works with clients on venture design, organizational processes and marketing. Rodriguez pioneered a new discipline called business design, now a central part of the firm's offering. At Stanford, Rodriguez created a new paradigm for active learning in his class, Creating Infectious Action, where business, engineering and social scientists use design thinking to prototype disruptive new offerings and services. Rodriguez's influential blog, Metacool, is an opinion leader on design and business; Fast Company called the site, "...a must-read for anyone who wants to incorporate design thinking into their work." Prior to IDEO, Rodriguez held operating positions at Nissan, Hewlett-Packard, a software startup flameout and Intuit. He is the recipient of a Chicago Athenaeum Good Design Award and holds multiple patents. A Harvard MBA, Rodriguez sits on the advisory board of the Harvard Business School California Research Center, which facilitates faculty research and case writing in Silicon Valley and the San Francisco Bay Area.

Michael Shanks, Omar and Althea Dwyer Hoskins Professor of Classical Archaeology

Michael Shanks, Omar and Althea Dwyer Hoskins Professor of Classical Archaeology

Michael Shanks is the director of Stanford Archaeology Center's Metamedia Lab, which applies an archaeological sensibility to media new and old, and is a co-director of the Stanford Humanities Lab, a groundbreaking cross-disciplinary center of digital humanities. One of his current projects is the archaeology of car design—mobile media and the car interior of the future—an experimental project that applies classical archaeology to predictive cultural modeling. For Shanks, archaeology began, and continues, in the Roman borders of the north of England and Scotland: Hadrian's Wall and the great medieval city of Newcastle-upon-Tyne. He also specializes in the early Greek cities in the Mediterranean, as well as early farming societies and their monuments in Wessex and Sweden. Shanks believes archaeology is a bridging field: archaeology concerns our relationships with what is left of the past.

Buzz Thompson, '73, MBA '75, JD '76, Paradise Professor of Natural Resources Law and McCarty Director of the Woods Institute for the Environment

Buzz Thompson, '73, MBA '75, JD '76, Paradise Professor of Natural Resources Law and McCarty Director of the Woods Institute for the Environment

Barton "Buzz" Thompson, Jr., a leading authority on environmental and natural resources law, is one of the founding directors of Stanford's new Woods Institute for the Environment. His research, scholarship and teaching focus on water and biodiversity policies, fisheries management, and market and other alternative solutions to environmental problems. Thompson is the chairman of the Resources Legacy Fund and a board member of the Nature Conservancy of California, the American Farmland Trust and the Natural Heritage Institute. He also is a member of the Science Advisory Board for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Thompson was a law clerk to the late Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, '50, JD '52, of the Supreme Court of the United States.

Sebastian Thrun, professor of computer science and electrical engineering

Sebastian Thrun, professor of computer science and electrical engineering

Sebastian Thrun researches artificial intelligence and robotics. His team won the DARPA Grand Challenge, a U.S. government-sponsored autonomous robot race that is regarded as a breakthrough in self-driving cars. Robots by Thrun and his students have been deployed in museums as tour guides, in elderly care facilities as personal assistants and walking aids, and in abandoned mines as tools for acquiring mine maps. Thrun is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and has authored or edited 11 books and over 350 research papers.

Abraham Verghese, professor and senior associate chair for the theory and practice of medicine; and author

Abraham Verghese, professor and senior associate chair for the theory and practice of medicine; and author

Abraham Verghese obtained a master of fine arts from the Iowa Writers Workshop in 1990 while he was taking a sabbatical from an active AIDS practice. His first book, My Own Country, about AIDS in rural Tennessee, was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for 1994 and was made into a movie. His second book, The Tennis Partner, was a New York Times notable book and a national best seller. His third book, Cutting for Stone, was published by Knopf in February 2009. He has published extensively in medical literature, and his writing has appeared in The New Yorker, Sports Illustrated, The Atlantic, Esquire, Granta, The New York Times Magazine, The Wall Street Journal and elsewhere. He is board certified in internal medicine, pulmonary diseases and infectious diseases. Verghese is acclaimed as a dedicated and inspiring teacher of medicine at the bedside, and is a sought-after clinician and diagnostician.

Terry Winograd, professor of computer science

Terry Winograd, professor of computer science

Terry Winograd co-directs the Human-Computer Interaction Group and the teaching and research program in Human-Computer Interaction Design. He is also a founding faculty member of the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford and of the Liberation Technology Project at the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law. He is a consultant to Google, whose founders worked on some of his projects. His early research on natural language understanding by computers (SHRDLU) was the basis for two books and numerous articles. He is developing courses and research in applying mobile communication technologies to improve access to health care in the developing world, including a course this spring in conjunction with the University of Nairobi and Nokia Research Center Africa. Winograd was a founding member and is a past president of Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility. He is on the editorial board of several journals, including Human-Computer Interaction, ACM Transactions on Human-Computer Interaction, Information Technology and People.