Report on Annual Giving
Once again we are humbled by our alumni who generously contribute to our Engineering Fund. Annual gifts continue to be the school’s most essential source of unrestricted support, allowing us to fund the people and programs that keep Stanford Engineering at the forefront of innovation and education.
As you will read below, this past year, annual gifts were used to sponsor new faculty, promote student programs that create well-rounded students with global perspectives, and to build and improve our research facilities.
Funding for Pioneering Research
Debbie Senesky joined the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics in 2012. She graduated with a BS degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Southern California, and went on to earn MS and PhD degrees in mechanical engineering from the University of California at Berkeley. Prior to coming to Stanford, Professor Senesky worked as a research specialist at the Berkeley Sensor and Actuator Center.
When Professor Senesky arrived at Stanford, alumni support was an essential resource for her as she set up her EXtreme Environment Microsystems Laboratory (XLab). Specifically, annual gifts enabled her to support graduate and undergraduate student researchers; purchase research supplies and equipment; utilize campus facilities such as the Stanford Nanofabrication Facility to perform research activities; and travel to conferences and technical workshops.
In her lab, Professor Senesky is researching the synthesis of temperature-tolerant, chemically resistant, and radiation-hardened wide bandgap semiconductor thin films and nanostructures. The technologies she is pioneering assist in the development of smart and adaptable structures, such as deep-space systems, hypersonic aircrafts, combustion monitoring, and subsurface monitoring that can withstand extreme environments. Professor Senesky’s research aids in the development of next generation tools for deep-space exploration and improves the efficiency of energy systems.
“Great engineering is where big challenges are met with even bigger ideas. Nowhere is this more apparent than at the Stanford School of Engineering.” ~ Jim Plummer
The Department of Mechanical Engineering welcomed David Lentink in May 2012. Originally from the Netherlands, Professor Lentink obtained BSc and MSc degrees in aerospace engineering from Delft University of Technology. He went on to earn a PhD
in experimental zoology from Wageningen University. While
there, he studied optimal fluid mechanic strategies in animal swimming and flight. He joined the faculty at Stanford because of its interdisciplinary nature: “I made the choice to come to Stanford because my work depends on biomechanics, engineering design, fluid mechanics, and biology. All of these departments are world class here.”
With support from annual gifts, Professor Lentink set up a lab where he and his students are studying bird flight to understand how the interplay between Newton’s laws of motion and Darwin’s theory of evolution enabled birds to develop into the most accomplished flying animals on the planet. Based on these findings, Professor Lentink is engineering novel, unmanned vehicles that can fly in complex, cluttered environments under realistic atmospheric conditions in which current robots fail. The real-world applications of his work include developing flying robots that can help during search and rescue missions.
He is currently organizing a project in which students will work with local birders to film birds using professional high-speed cameras to glean more insight into the mechanics of bird flight. He coordinated a similar project in the Netherlands, which earned him the Annual Academic Prize, an award given to Dutch scientists for the best proposal for a public engagement activity that features cutting-edge science.
China Programs
Mengyao Yuan was one of 16 students selected to participate in the School of Engineering’s 2012 China Internship Program this past summer. By interning at the Industrial Technology Research Institute, she was able to work with some of Taiwan’s top scientists and engineers.
Along with supporting faculty, innovative facilities and programs that enable students to explore interests outside of engineering, annual gifts have been critical to the School of Engineering’s China Programs. The goal of these programs is to provide Stanford students with opportunities to learn about China and gain real-world experience in a culturally diverse environment. They also strengthen the School of Engineering’s reputation in China by fostering student exchanges and research collaborations.
The Summer Internship Program enhances engineering education by providing students an opportunity to learn about China’s rapidly expanding role in global business and technology, and gain work experience in the world’s fastest growing economy. This past summer, 16 students participated, interning in 13 organizations. Since 2008, more than 60 students — from sophomores to PhDs — have participated in the program.
Along with the Summer Internship Program, the annual fund supports the Research Exchange Program, which promotes an exchange of PhD students between Stanford University and Peking University or Tsinghua University. It also helps sponsor the Undergraduate Visiting Researchers Program, through which Stanford Engineering faculty select top students from prestigious Chinese universities to conduct research in their labs for several weeks in the summer.
The Engineering Fund has enabled Stanford Engineering’s outreach in China to grow from a pilot exchange program to multiple activities that foster international collaborations among students and faculty.
21st Century Buildings
The Engineering Fund has once again been critical to our efforts to create innovative spaces to house the work of our faculty and students. Over the past year, we allocated a portion of the fund toward the renovation of buildings 520 and 524, which are home to the biomechanical, mechanics and computations, and thermosciences buildings.
By unifying 520 and 524 via a central atria entry, the renovation will result in an interior design that will invite creativity and collaboration, optimize space functionality, and promote strong interconnectivity among building occupants and visitors. The buildings will also have generous lighting for the student teaching spaces and faculty and student offices. Although 520 and 524 will experience dramatic transformations from within, the exteriors will remain consistent with the general architecture of campus.
In the future, we anticipate using a portion of the annual fund for renovations in the Packard Electrical Engineering Building and the Paul G. Allen Building, where there are currently vacant student spaces. We are working with a research team to conduct an ethnographic study to determine how to make the buildings more student friendly.
Engineering in the Arts
With resources from Annual Gifts, the Engineering in the Arts program continues to encourage engineering students to pursue their music studies while at Stanford. Kristen Lurie, PhD ’16, a participant of the program, is balancing double bass lessons with her biomedical research.
In addition to growing as a bassist under the guidance of her teacher, Kristen works in the Stanford Biomedical Optics group. She is interested in developing novel optic tools for addressing clinical needs. One of her team’s main focuses is optical coherence tomography (OCT), an imaging technique that is a light-based analog of ultrasound. She is developing an OCT endoscope for bladder cancer that will allow physicians to detect cancer and guide surgery to remove tumors.
