Office of the Vice Provost and Dean of Research

This office recommends and promulgates new research policies and oversees implementation.  The office also provides financial and operational oversight for independent academic units and research support offices under the auspices of the VPDoR organization. As a university officer, the vice provost and dean acts as a senior advisor to the president and provost in a broad array of academic issues beyond research. As the cognizant dean, s/he oversees the program scope, direction, administration, and resources for the independent laboratories, institutes, and centers which operate outside school boundaries.

To provide guidance and support to facilitate, nurture, and safeguard a thriving research ecosystem.

We, as the members of the VPDoR Dean’s Office, will: 

• Encourage and facilitate interdisciplinary and disciplinary research and innovation; 

• Ensure Stanford’s research community earns and maintains the public trust;

• Sustain a culture of integrity and operational excellence; and 

• Celebrate diversity of individuals and ideas.

The VPDoR organization comprises eighteen independent academic units, five shared facilities and platforms, and six support offices that provide university-level oversight for research compliance and administration, as well as health and safety issues. For questions about the VPDoR organization, please contact Serena Rao, Senior Associate Dean for Finance and Administration.

A typical research lifecycle at Stanford consists of three stages: Plan & Propose, Do & Discover, and Conclude & Translate. The graph portrayed below is a simplification of the necessary steps a Principal Investigator would need to take to bring a research idea to life. VPDoR supports the entire research lifecycle and researchers at every stage of their careers.

Vice Provost and Dean of Research, Professor Kathryn Ann “Kam” Moler, oversees five shared research facilities and platforms and Stanford’s eighteen independent labs, institutes, and centers, which span the life sciences, physical sciences, social sciences, humanities, engineering, and medicine. She also oversees offices that support the research enterprise, including the offices of Environmental Health and Safety, STEM Outreach, Research Administration, Research Compliance, Research Development, and Technology Licensing. In addition she directs the Office of the Vice Provost and Dean of Research and its many functions including the cognizant dean's office for the independent labs, institutes and centers, export control, conflicts of interest, global engagement, and research data privacy. 

Vice Provost Moler earned her bachelor’s degree in physics with honors from Stanford in 1988 and her doctorate in physics from Stanford in 1995. After three years as an R. H. Dicke postdoctoral fellow at Princeton University, she became the first female faculty member in Stanford’s Department of Applied Physics in 1998. She conducts research in magnetic imaging, develops tools that measure nanoscale magnetic fields, and studies quantum materials and devices. She has authored or co-authored more than 80 scientific papers. Among other honors, she held a Packard Fellowship for Science and Engineering and received the William L. McMillan Award “for her fundamental studies of the superconducting pairing state, Josephson vortices, and the role of interlayer coupling in high-temperature superconductors.”

Vice Provost Moler has taught classes ranging from Advanced Topics in Quantum Mechanics to Professional Ethics for Physicists. She participated in Stanford’s Study of Undergraduate Education from 2010 to 2012. She received the American Association of Physics Teachers 2011 Richtmyer Award for Outstanding Leadership in Physics Education. In 2014, Stanford appointed her as the Sapp Family Fellow in Undergraduate Education to honor her sustained commitment to teaching.

From the Stanford News, May 29, 2018 with modifications on April 8^th, 2021 to reflect the most recent organizational structure