Elizabeth Davis – The Stanford Daily https://stanforddaily.com Breaking news from the Farm since 1892 Mon, 18 Nov 2013 09:39:29 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.4.3 https://stanforddaily.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/cropped-DailyIcon-CardinalRed.png?w=32 Elizabeth Davis – The Stanford Daily https://stanforddaily.com 32 32 204779320 Robert Mueller III, former director of the FBI, talks national security and technology https://stanforddaily.com/2013/11/18/robert-mueller-former-director-of-the-fbi-talks-national-security-and-technology/ https://stanforddaily.com/2013/11/18/robert-mueller-former-director-of-the-fbi-talks-national-security-and-technology/#respond Mon, 18 Nov 2013 09:34:37 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1080589 Robert Mueller III, retired sixth director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), visited Stanford last week to give a talk on the FBI’s role in safeguarding national security and technology’s impact on the future.

The event was sponsored by the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and held in the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research (SIEPR) Koret-Taube Conference Center.

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NICK SALAZAR/The Stanford Daily
NICK SALAZAR/The Stanford Daily

Robert Mueller III, retired sixth director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), visited Stanford last week to give a talk on the FBI’s role in safeguarding national security and technology’s impact on the future.

The event was sponsored by the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and held in the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research (SIEPR) Koret-Taube Conference Center.

Mueller was selected as the 2013-14 Payne Distinguished Lecturer in honor of his globally acclaimed leadership, visionary thinking and unique perspective on dealing with worldwide challenges in the future.

Mueller discussed how increasingly destructive threats to national security such as 9/11 have forced the FBI to move in a more preemptive direction. The FBI is no longer simply concerned with retroactive punitive actions, he said, but is also now focused on anticipating and preventing attacks before they happen.

“We all knew that, with 9/11, we faced extreme pressure to identify individuals and disrupt them at any cost,” Mueller said.

“We have to identify a particular threat, determine what we know about that threat, but, just as important, what are the gaps of our knowledge, and utilize our resources such as human intelligence, forensics and surveillance, to fill those gaps,” he added.

The new approach led the FBI to triple their cadre of analysts and change their direction of resources.

According to Mueller, in the years since 9/11, the FBI has had relative success in identifying and destroying threats. Though a few events such as the Boston Massacre have gotten through, Mueller said the FBI continues to improve and adapt to new challenges.

He also went on to discuss how national security threats are shifting from terrorism to cyber-attacks in its various iterations. He explained how these digital attacks are becoming increasingly difficult to attribute correctly since cyber-attack sources range from enemy governments to individuals associated with hacktivist groups.

Nevertheless, Mueller said that the FBI has established a national joint task force with other intelligence and security agencies to address those threats.

Mueller closed his talk by addressing the importance of not only defending against technology but also utilizing technology for national security protection.

He argued that the FBI could not claim to be the leading federal law enforcement in the world without being comfortable with and knowledgeable of information technology.

“For the FBI and for the United States, the war on terrorism is a complex and perplexing issue,” Mueller said. “It is as complex and perplexing as any issue we have ever faced.”

“I know that we will be judged in history by not only how we disrupt terrorism but how we protect the civil liberties and constitutional rights of all Americans, even Americans who don’t wish us well,” he added. “We must do all these things exceptionally well.”

Contact Elizabeth Davis at elizabethdavis ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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Instagram co-founders share success story https://stanforddaily.com/2013/11/13/instagram-co-founders-share-success-story/ https://stanforddaily.com/2013/11/13/instagram-co-founders-share-success-story/#respond Wed, 13 Nov 2013 10:29:58 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1080439 Co-founders of Instagram, Kevin Systrom ’06 and Mike Krieger ’08 M.S. ’09, discussed how life at Stanford prepared them for entrepreneurship and their work at Instagram to an audience of 250 at Cemex Auditorium Tuesday evening.

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Co-founders of Instagram, Kevin Systrom ’06 and Mike Krieger ’08 M.S. ’09, discussed how life at Stanford prepared them for entrepreneurship and their work at Instagram to an audience of 250 at Cemex Auditorium Tuesday evening.

The event was co-sponsored by Facebook and Jay Borenstein ’93 M.S. ’94, lecturer of CS210: Software Project Experience with Corporate Partners.

Systrom and Krieger began the night’s question-and-answer session by discussing their academic experiences at Stanford.

KRISTEN STIPANOV/The Stanford Daily
KRISTEN STIPANOV/The Stanford Daily

“The moment I got here, I heard about this thing called Symbolic Systems (SymSys) and realized that it was a really good mix of computers and design and cognitive science,” Krieger said. “So I ended up doing SymSys, took basically every human-interaction class designed here, then I stayed on for Mayfield Fellows.”

It was through Stanford’s Mayfield Fellows program that Krieger met Systrom, a Management Science and Engineering major. The two came together after going through the entrepreneurship-focused program and wanted to start a company.

Krieger noticed through his work on a check-in app that people enjoyed sharing photos. The idea for Instagram’s illustrious filters generated from Systrom’s vacation in Mexico during which his girlfriend suggested including filters to allow user’s photos to look as unique as those taken by professional photographers.

The two entrepreneurs combined their ideas and began to work on a photo-sharing application, which they later founded as Instagram.

Since then, Instagram has grown into an application that has over 100 million users and about 16 billion photos across two mobile application platforms. Facebook acquired Instagram in 2012 for $1 billion.

When asked about hindsight advice for Stanford students, Systrom said that people matter more than academics.

“People are the connections that end up building your life,” Systrom said. “They were really what helped us found Instagram. While you’re sitting here with the most intelligent people in the world all around you, take advantage of that.”

The moderated question-and-answer session ended with questions from attending students.

The founders touched on Instagram’s product changes along the way, including moving their product to the Google Play platform and adding videos. They also mentioned their goal of one day reaching one billion users and making advertising on Instagram more efficient.

“Hearing from the Instagram founders gave me a way better understanding of entrepreneurship,” said Allen Yu ’17. “Both of the founders were at one point just like us, and their story was real and not simply a fairy tale of how one idea just magically turned into something big.

“They realistically and candidly discussed how Instagram wasn’t built upon success but on a lot of failures that later developed into a successful product that millions of people use every day,” Yu added.

Contact Elizabeth Davis at elizabethdavis ‘at’ stanford.edu

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SLAC, IBM publishes reasearch with implications for ultra-efficient supercomputers https://stanforddaily.com/2013/11/06/slac-ibm-publishes-reasearch-with-implications-for-ultra-efficient-supercomputers/ https://stanforddaily.com/2013/11/06/slac-ibm-publishes-reasearch-with-implications-for-ultra-efficient-supercomputers/#respond Wed, 06 Nov 2013 10:15:23 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1080229 Researchers from the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and IBM published groundbreaking research on electronic material that has the potential to revolutionize modern technology.

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Courtesy of Nagaphani Aetukuri
Courtesy of Nagaphani Aetukuri

Researchers from the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and IBM published groundbreaking research on electronic material that has the potential to revolutionize modern technology.

Lead researcher Stuart Parkin – an IBM fellow and a Stanford consulting professor – and lead author, Nagaphani Aetukuri M.S.’08 Ph.D. ’13 – whose work on the project was advised by Electrical Engineering Professor James Harris’ 64 M.S.’65 Ph.D’69 – worked with scientists to study the behavior of vanadium oxide, an electronic material uniquely useful for research since it is a member of a certain class of strongly correlated electron systems.

These materials are able to transition from being conductors to insulators at certain temperatures. Research focused on understanding why the transition occurs, how to control the temperature at which the transition happens and how to apply the research to new technology in devices.

Through experimental observations, the IBM/SLAC team first proposed a theory as to why vanadium oxide transitioned into an insulating material. They determined that the transition was occurring due to a change in the subatomic structure of the compound.

“In the vanadium oxide we are differentiating the electron orbitals,” Aetukuri said. “There were two orbitals we could differentiate in our experiment. Usually the electrons occupy one set of orbitals. And when electrons occupy another set of orbitals they take on an insulating state.”

“So we can deterministically control the state of the material by putting the electrons in specific orbitals and that is something we inferred in our experiment,” he added.

Once the research team had a fundamental understanding of the material’s strong electronic properties, they were able to control and manipulate it.

Most of the paper the team published in “Nature Physics” centered on changing and engineering the conditions at which the material undergoes its transition.

To do this, the scientists grew thin films of vanadium dioxide, one subatomic level at a time, and changed the strain imposed on the material. This procedure allowed them to influence the material’s electronic properties and control its temperature to better understand how to take the insulating material and change it into metallic material almost instantly.

The team’s research has many impactful applications, notably the development of ultra-fast and more energy-efficient switches that can quickly turn on and off electronic devices. It would also be helpful in building devices with higher-level cognitive capabilities.

Though the computing power of supercomputers has increased over time, these computers are still nowhere as powerful as a human brain. The controlled use of the vanadium oxide material could be used in engineering three-dimensional supercomputers that are able to rewire their configurations as they are utilized in order to perform computations more efficiently.

The IBM/SLAC team will now move on to analyzing why the material switches so quickly, using SLAC’s Linac Coherent Light Source.

“I think this research is extremely fundamental,” Parkin said. “We’re going where no one’s been before, therefore there are no limitations.”

“It’s exploratory, so we have a direction we want to focus on and a question we want to answer, but it’s not limited at all,” he added. “However, the fundamental goal is basically the same: to build more efficient computing devices that can actually think, thinking systems.”

Contact Elizabeth Davis at elizabethdavis ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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Stanford Women in Business shifts focus for greater outreach https://stanforddaily.com/2013/11/04/stanford-women-in-business-shifts-focus-for-greater-outreach/ https://stanforddaily.com/2013/11/04/stanford-women-in-business-shifts-focus-for-greater-outreach/#respond Mon, 04 Nov 2013 08:49:50 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1080140 Stanford Women in Business (SWIB) - a student group dedicated to providing opportunities for women interested in pursuing careers in business - underwent fundamental changes this year from event scheduling to expanding its audience to both genders.

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Stanford Women in Business (SWIB) – a student group dedicated to providing opportunities for women interested in pursuing careers in business – underwent fundamental changes this year from event scheduling to expanding its audience to both genders.

Co-Presidents Lindsey Wilder ’14 and Lauryn Isford ’15 said the changes reflect the group’s commitment to evolving its focus.

In the past, SWIB’s most prominent event was the annual spring conference – typically a day filled with workshops and panelists including professors from the d.school, finance experts, local entrepreneurs and corporate-related speakers like last year’s keynote speakers Evan Spiegel’ 12, CEO and co-founder of Snapchat, and Drew Houston, CEO and co-founder of Dropbox.

This year, the conference will be split into three quarterly speaker events and renamed the Executive Leadership Series, inviting high-caliber business speakers to lecture in front of Stanford’s pre-business student audience.

The change was intended to allow more students to attend SWIB’s events since they require shorter time commitments. Both Wilder and Isford spearheaded the spring conference last year and understood the value in shortening the event to make it more compact.

“This is a decision process that has lasted for a few years,” Isford said. “Every year, past, present and future presidents think about how to make things better.

“The entire SWIB group agrees that the new speaker series would make it easier for everyone in SWIB and make it easier for people outside of SWIB,” Isford added.

SWIB was founded nine years ago by undergraduates who wanted to learn more about business and educate women about pursuing careers in the business world. Since its establishment, it has developed into a 30-member leadership core team that reaches out to a general group of over 1,000 students who attend conferences and engage in organized events. Throughout the year, SWIB board members provide educational opportunities for these pre-business students by organizing speaker series and facilitating workshops.

“Our mission is to provide business education to all Stanford students, especially women, to help them foster the skills they need to grow in their career,” Wilder said. “We’re also focused on making sure that we are a resource to these students.”

In recent years, the organization has begun to educate the entirety of Stanford’s pre-business population rather than focusing their resources on women. A specific focus for this year, the presidents have worked on making SWIB events equally popular for both genders.

“We want to emphasize that we want everyone in the Stanford community to benefit from our events,” Isford said. “It’s more than just about getting our 30 girls educated – we want all of Stanford’s men and women to be educated the best we can.”

Along with changes to SWIB’s target audience and annual conference, SWIB has also rearranged the leadership team to include younger members. Isford is the youngest president appointed by SWIB.

“One thing that’s different, that’s also kind of cool, is that our board for this year is very young – something very exciting for SWIB,” Wilder said. “There’s a new energy that comes with having a young board.”

The co-presidents hope that the board’s youth will bring consistency to the organization’s leadership as they continue to transform the structure and branding of the organization. Yet their main mission remains clear: to expose as many Stanford students as possible to careers in business.

“Over time, and since we became presidents, we’ve really pushed forward with the evolution of SWIB,” Wilder said. “It was a gradual process but once we became presidents we tried to put in place the evolution and refinement of team and the things that we need to focus on our core mission.”

 

Contact Elizabeth Davis at elizabethdavis ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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San Antonio Mayor Julian Castro ’96 talks Stanford experience https://stanforddaily.com/2013/10/23/san-antonio-mayor-julian-castro-96-talks-stanford-experience/ https://stanforddaily.com/2013/10/23/san-antonio-mayor-julian-castro-96-talks-stanford-experience/#respond Wed, 23 Oct 2013 10:41:15 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1079722 In front of over a hundred students gathered in Cubberley Auditorium Monday evening, Julian Castro ‘96, current mayor of San Antonio, discussed how his life at Stanford prepared him for the political world and provided advice on how to make a difference through public service.

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In front of over a hundred students gathered in Cubberley Auditorium Monday evening, Julian Castro ‘96, current mayor of San Antonio, discussed how his life at Stanford prepared him for the political world and provided advice on how to make a difference through public service.

“Getting a great education [at Stanford] prepared me to understand complex issues, and studying with a diverse student population helped prepare me for leading a diverse community,” Castro said. “From Stanford, I got a sense of what’s possible and a confidence about achieving my dreams.”

A political science and communication major, Castro and his twin brother Joaquín Castro ‘96—currently a San Antonio congressman—both ran for ASSU Senate while at Stanford. The brothers tied for first place in the election, receiving exactly 811 votes each. Julian Castro then went on to attend Harvard Law School, and later won another political election—this time as the youngest mayor of San Antonio—with his campaign focusing on education initiatives.

“I have felt very blessed to get to attend Stanford and Harvard, and a primary goal of mine is to help extend that opportunity to all young people in San Antonio,” Castro said. “And that was my motivation for focusing on improving education in our city.”

Castro went on to discuss his major accomplishments in education including his biggest capital investment: Café College, a resource center that is designed to help San Antonio students pursue higher education by offering free advice on college admission and financial aid, as well as test preparation for the SAT.

Castro’s greatest operational investment was in Pre-K 4 SA, a program that will provide pre-kindergarten services to thousands of four year-old children annually.

Though Castro does not have definitive plans for his political future yet, he intends to serve out his term in San Antonio and continue to make an impact through community-based educational programs. He is also considering running for another public office.

Castro advised students to simply follow their passions and understand that meaningful impact on society can be achieved through the private sector, such as through entrepreneurial enterprises.

When asked about what students should do prior to running for public office, Castro said “first to understand what they believe, what their fundamental principles are before they go into office and to be willing to listen to others and to learn from them.”

 Contact Elizabeth Davis at eseraiah ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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Nobel Laureate Carl Wieman Ph.D. ’77 is revolutionizing science education https://stanforddaily.com/2013/10/15/nobel-laureate-carl-wieman-77-is-revolutionizing-science-education/ https://stanforddaily.com/2013/10/15/nobel-laureate-carl-wieman-77-is-revolutionizing-science-education/#respond Tue, 15 Oct 2013 08:58:29 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1079419 Nobel Laureate Carl Wieman Ph.D. ’77 is applying his passion for science in a unique way: by researching how to teach students to think like scientists and thereby revolutionize science education.

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Nobel Laureate Carl Wieman Ph.D. ’77 is applying his passion for science in a unique way: by researching how to teach students to think like scientists and thereby revolutionize science education.

Wieman recently became Stanford’s only professor holding a joint appointment at the Department of Physics and the Graduate School of Education.

COURTESY OF UBC OFFICE OF PUBLIC AFFAIRS/The Stanford Daily
Courtesy of UBC Office of Public Affairs

“I’m not really here to change how Stanford teaches,” Wieman said. “My peak interest is doing research on learning and research on different ways to teach things and carefully measure what people are learning—and measure that in a deeper more thorough way.”

Wieman discovered the importance of hands-on learning starting his freshman year at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he lived and breathed physics.

“I got involved in research very early on, and my MIT career was largely spent trying to avoid taking any classes and spending all my time on research,” Wieman said. “I did realize how little use classes were compared to what I was learning in the lab and talking to the research scientists.”

In fact, Wieman became so dedicated to physics research that he decided to move out of his dorm room entirely and into his lab.

“After a while, I had this laboratory of my own, and I spent all my time there, so it seemed kind of silly to be paying for a dorm room,” Wieman said.

Wieman later discovered his passion for laser physics and moved to Stanford to pursue his Ph.D., where most of his learning took place in the laboratory. He then went on to become a professor at the University of Colorado at Boulder, where his research on the Bose-Einstein condensate earned him and two other physicists the 2001 Nobel Prize in Physics.

Nevertheless, it was clear from the very beginning that undergraduate education was a focus for Wieman.

He developed a website that uses interactive simulations to teach scientific concepts. This website has more than 50 million users each year and continues to help students visualize and understand what’s going on in science at the molecular and even subatomic level.

Wieman said that real learning is about practicing “thinking like a scientist.”

“It’s sort of giving the brain the right kind of exercise and feedback,” Wieman said.

Wieman’s research on science education later led him to launch the $12-million Carl Wieman Science Education Initiative at the University of British Columbia. This initiative helped eight academic departments move away from lecture-style teaching and toward interactive learning through problem solving and small discussions.

He continued to advocate for science education at a national level, becoming the associate director for science at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.

Wieman’s recent employment at Stanford has generated excitement among faculty. Many professors immediately reached out for Wieman’s help in improving their courses and teaching styles.

“There’s always been an interest in our department in not just research, but having both research and education as a mission,” said Peter Michelson M.S. ’76 Ph.D. ’80, chair of the Physics Department. “Wieman was actually quantifying the effects of various new teaching techniques, and that’s something that really resonates with physicists.”

Wieman hopes to continue his mission of motivating students to become passionate about physics and other sciences.

Contact Elizabeth Davis at elizabethdavis ‘at’ stanford.edu

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GSB, CS department to launch three-year joint degree program https://stanforddaily.com/2013/10/14/gsb-cs-department-to-launch-three-year-joint-degree-program/ https://stanforddaily.com/2013/10/14/gsb-cs-department-to-launch-three-year-joint-degree-program/#comments Mon, 14 Oct 2013 09:56:53 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1079385 Stanford’s Graduate School of Business (GSB) and the Computer Science (CS) Department have launched a three-year joint degree program that will allow students to earn both MBA and M.S. degrees.

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Stanford’s Graduate School of Business (GSB) and the Computer Science (CS) Department have launched a three-year joint degree program that will allow students to earn both MBA and M.S. degrees.

Courtesy of Colleen McCallion
Courtesy of Colleen McCallion

Recently approved for the 2014-15 academic year, the program will combine two of the University’s most in-demand degrees into one curriculum–a combination never been seen before at peer institutions.

The program targets students who have interests in going into technology yet also want to develop skills in management and finance.

“Stanford’s really well known as being an incubator for new technology ventures,” said Mary Oleksy, associate director of joint and dual-degree programs at the GSB. “Our hope is that this degree is going to foster innovation that springs naturally from two of our world-class programs, the GSB and our Computer Science Department.”

Students interested in Stanford’s Computer Science M.S./MBA program must apply for the master’s programs in CS and the GSB in two separate applications. Students accepted into the joint degree program will ideally spend the first year of their three-year program taking MBA courses. They will then spend their remaining two years taking courses in both programs.

Over two dozen of Stanford’s GSB courses, including “Creating a Startup,” “Strategic Management of Technology” and “Innovation and Stochastic Networks,” may count towards M.S. requirements. The program demands a total of 129 units, with 84 taken in the GSB and 45 taken in the CS Department. The computer science curriculum also offers the opportunity for students to specialize in various concentrations, such as artificial intelligence and biocomputation.

The Computer Science M.S./MBA program is notably Stanford’s first joint degree program with the School of Engineering. The CS department offers one other joint degree, a J.D./M.S. with the Stanford Law School.

The GSB already offers joint degree programs with other schools, such as a J.D./MBA with the Stanford Law School, an M.A./MBA with the Graduate School of Education and an MPP/MBA with the Public Policy Program in the School of Humanities and Sciences. The GSB also offers a dual degree M.D./MBA with the Stanford Medical School and the chance to pursue degrees with other universities.

Nevertheless, the GSB has plans to continue combining business with other graduate technology programs, such as electrical engineering.

“Increasingly, it’s very hard to think of technology as its own industry,” said Madhav Rajan, senior associate dean for academic affairs at the GSB, discussing the GSB’s technology focus for future joint degree programs.

“Technology really goes across every industry. For example, finance is going to be disrupted by a lot of tech-based startups,” he added. “We’re not thinking of this degree as simply being for corporate positions in technology companies but as preparation for going into any industry that will be affected or disrupted by technology in the near future.”

Contact Elizabeth Davis at elizabethdavis ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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