Reilly P. Brennan, Lecturer, Stanford University
Reilly P. Brennan has been a core member of Stanford's automotive community since joining as Executive Director of the Revs automotive research program in 2012. He is a founding partner at Trucks, a seed-stage venture capital fund for entrepreneurs changing the future of transportation. Reilly holds a teaching appointment at Stanford University, where he teaches twice per year in the School of Engineering and the d.school. His classes bridge the fields of transportation, design and entrepreneurship. He is a dedicated educator and advisor to young researchers and entrepreneurs, actively participating in mentorship roles at Techstars Mobility and the University of Michigan.
His influential newsletter FoT is a radar for what's happening in transportation (link).
Prior to Trucks, Reilly was Executive Director for Stanford's automotive research program, Revs. Prior to Stanford he developed his love for transportation in media and technology at editorial publications ranging from Automobile to AOL to Monocle and seat time in over 1000 test cars. He was a member of the Le Mans-winning factory Corvette C5-R program. His personal land speed record is 168 mph, behind the wheel of a Chaparral 2E.
Understanding Corrosion and Preservation of Automobile Surfaces
d.school: Understanding Superfans and Their Heroes, Judging Historical Significance: The Automobile, ME302C: Mobility Entrepreneurship
J. Christian Gerdes, Director Revs Program at Stanford, Center for Automotive Research at Stanford (CARS), Director Dynamic Design Lab
Professor Gerdes' research centers on the application of dynamic modeling to problems in nonlinear control, estimation and diagnostics. Specific areas of interest include the development of driver assistance systems for lane keeping and collision avoidance, modeling and control of novel combustion processes for Internal Combustion engines and diagnostics for automotive drive-by-wire systems. Prior to joining Stanford, Professor Gerdes was the project leader for vehicle dynamics at the Vehicle Systems Technology Center of Daimler-Benz Research and Technology North America. His work at Daimler focused on safety analysis and simulation-based design of heavy trucks for the Freightliner Corporation. He leads the Revs research team looking at the inner workings of the driver through physiological data synchronized with a suite of mechanical data from the vehicle.
Joe Hustein, Lecturer in Mechanical Engineering-Design, Co-Director, Revs Program
Joe Hustein’s teaching focuses on the interplay of law, business, and intellectual property with a special emphasis on the design and commercialization of technology. He has been involved with the d.school and guest lectured in several departments at Stanford. Besides decades of experience practicing law and advising companies, he has taught for many years and was a long-time technology columnist. Prior to law, he obtained degrees in industrial design where he concentrated on vehicle design and electrical engineering where he worked on the US space program. Consistent with his multi-disciplinary background, his philosophy is that disparate collaborators can achieve breakthroughs in wonderfully synergistic ways. He’s always been a car enthusiast and for the last ten years has played key roles managing the Palo Alto Concours d’ Elegance.
S. Lochlann Jain, Associate Professor, Anthropology
Professor S. Lochlann Jain’s research is primarily concerned with the ways in which stories get told about injuries, how they are thought to be caused, and how that matters. Figuring out the political and social significance of these stories has led to the study of law, product design, medical error, and histories of engineering, regulation, corporations, and advertising. Her widely reviewed book, Injury, (Princeton University Press, 2006) aims to better understand how certain products come to be understood as dangerous, while others do not -- and what these differences can illustrate about differences such as race and gender and historically contingent notions such as responsibility and negligence. Jain’s current work offers an analysis of the cause and treatment of cancer as a key modality through which American high-tech is experienced and explained. She teaches the Revs sponsored course Car Culture.
Barbara A. Karanian, Lecturer, Department of Mechanical Engineering
Founder of the Design Entrepreneuring Studio, Barbara A. Karanian, Ph.D. is the author of, “Working Connection: The Relational Art of Leadership;” “Entrepreneurial Leadership: A Balancing Act in Engineering and Science;” “Analyzing Engineering Design Stories -Predicting Engagement;” and “Open Process for Entrepreneuring Team Collaboration: Story Parallels from an Academic Design Team to the Studied Start-Up.” Barbara makes productive partnerships with industry and creates collaborative teams with members from the areas of engineering, design, psychology, and communication. She bridges the intersection of Silicon Valley and Hollywood with story driven initiatives. Barbara developed and teaches the Revs course, ME 236, Tales to Design Cars By.
Joseph Kott, Lecturer and Visiting Scholar, Program on Urban Studies at Stanford
Since 2004, Dr. Kott has taught "Planning Sustainable Urban and Regional Transportion" within the Stanford Program on Urban Studies. This course explores the relationship between the transportation system in cities and regions and community environmental, social, and economic well-being. Prior to forming his own consulting firm, Kott held senior positions as a transportation planner with the County of San Mateo, Wilbur Smith Associates in San Francisco, Nelson/Nygaard Consulting Associates in San Francisco, and as Chief Transportation Official for the City of Palo Alto. He has been a member of the American Institute of Certified Planners (AICP) since 1982 and in 2007 was awarded Professional Transportation Planner (PTP) certification from the Transportation Professional Certification Board Inc., an affiliate of the Institute of Transportation Engineers, achieving the highest certification test score in the nation.
Christina Mesa, Lecturer, American Studies and by courtesy, Comparative Literature
Christina has been teaching at Stanford since 1997. She is interested in vehicles of change -- geographic, social, vocational, status, and self-image -- and is currently writing Auto-mobility: the Car in American Literature and Culture with students from her Revs sponsored class On the Road: Cars and the Auto-Mobility of Race, Gender, Class, and Age in American Literature. The automobile provides a liberating power for drivers, in particular, for the working class, women, and people of color. Her current scholarship seeks to show how the car accelerates personal transformations and reversals of fortunes once unthinkable in our society. Projects for 2012-13 include: Nella’s Solo, a film based on the life of Harlem Renaissance writer Nella Larsen and Car Fashioned: Advertising Americans in the Age of Auto-production.
On The Road: Cars and the Auto-Mobility of Race, Gender, Class and Age in American Literature, On The Road: Cars and the Auto-Mobility of Race, Gender, Class and Age in American Literature
Michael Shanks, Professor of Classics and Faculty of the Stanford Archaeology Center
For Michael, archaeologists do not discover the past; they work on what remains. Michael's research has taken in the building of prehistoric monuments in northern Europe (megaliths and mortuary practices), art and manufacture in the early cities of the Mediterranean (ancient Greek perfume jars), and life at the edge of the Roman empire (he currently directs the excavation of Vinovium, a Roman town in the English/Scottish borders). He has also researched ontemporary design (beer cans, and cars), and has worked with contemporary artists on the presence of the past, in deep-mapping historical senses of place, and in pragmatogony - accounts of the genealogy of things, where things have come from. At Stanford he teaches in programs in Classics, Archaeology, Urban Studies, Science, Technology and Society, Writing and Rhetoric, and in the d.school.
Frederic Stout, Lecturer, Program in Urban Studies
Frederic Stout served as the first director of the Program on Urban Studies at Stanford from 1973 to 1976, and has been a lecturer ever since. He is the co-author and co-editor (with Michele Marincovich and Jack Prostko) of The Professional Development of Graduate Teaching Assistants (Anker Publishing, 1998) and a contributor to The Encyclopedia of the City and The Encyclopedia of Urban Studies. Stout is co-editor (with Richard LeGates) of The City Reader, a widely cited anthology of contemporary and classic readings in Urban Studies now in its fifth edition from Routledge Press, and of Early Urban Planning 1870-1940. Stout developed and will be teaching the Revs sponsored Urban Studies class, The Automobile and the City.
The Automobile and the City, Utopia and Reality: Introduction to Urban Studies
Fred Turner, Associate Professor of Communication at Stanford University, Director, Program in Science, Technology and Society
Professor Turner's research and teaching focus on digital media, journalism and the roles played by media in American cultural history. Turner is the author of two books, From Counterculture to Cyberculture: Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Network and the Rise of Digital Utopianism (2006) and Echoes of Combat: The Vietnam War in American Memory (1996; Revised 2nd ed. 2001). His essays have tackled topics ranging from the rise of reality crime television to the role of the Burning Man festival in contemporary new media industries. As Director of Stanford's Program in Science, Technology, and Society, Prof. Turner is helping develop new courses focusing on the automobile for undergraduates.