Stanford School of Engineering

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) is an eight-week program that brings approximately 20 undergraduate students from across the country to Stanford School of Engineering and provides them with an immersive research experience in one of our labs. In these stories, SURF 2020 students talk about their backgrounds, their summer research projects at Stanford and their plans. https://stanford.io/3e6F4Df

A new initiative seeks to integrate ethical thinking into computing | Stanford launches an embedded EthiCS program to help students consistently think through the common issues that arise in computer science. https://stanford.io/3oIPUnZ

Stanford scientists slow and steer light with resonant nanoantennas | Researchers have fashioned ultrathin silicon nanoantennas that trap and redirect light, for applications in quantum computing, LIDAR and even the detection of viruses. https://stanford.io/3mub9HW

A letter to the community: Voting is a civic duty | In an oped for the Stanford Daily, three Stanford deans urge students to register and exercise their right to vote. https://stanford.io/36EHYgW

Stanford Engineering’s The Future of Everything: COVID-19 special edition | Listen to this special series of our podcast to learn how researchers from across Stanford are bringing their insights and knowledge to address the challenges of COVID-19. https://stanford.io/3d6UR3i

Summer First program offers new grad students early intro to research | The eight-week immersion into Stanford’s research culture is designed to help first-year PhD students find their place and thrive personally and academically. https://stanford.io/3dWC9go

Researchers combine heat and humidity to disinfect N95 masks for reuse | Gently heating N95 masks at a relatively high humidity was found to inactivate any SARS-CoV-2 virus trapped within, without degrading the masks’ performance. https://stanford.io/3dwmBzP

As an engineer, I work on a concept called structure as a sensor. We usually think of things like buildings and bridges as passive lumps of concrete and metal, but every structure moves and vibrates as people walk around it. Even when you’re sitting still at a desk, your breathing and heartbeat create vibrations. My lab looks for ways to use that information to improve the lives of a building’s inhabitants. In healthcare settings, we might be able to detect if someone has f...allen down based on tiny spikes in building vibration, or even know how a disease is progressing over weeks or months based on people’s walking patterns. Is a patient favoring one foot or the other? Has their activity level changed? It could provide a way to monitor patients’ health no matter where they are in a building. We can even tell if doctors are washing their hands before seeing patients, measure how long they’re washing, and detect if they’re using soap all from different building vibrations. That could be really useful during the COVID-19 pandemic. I’ve always loved this sort of interdisciplinary problem-solving. Becoming a scientist was my dream job when I was a kid in Korea. I actually went to a science-focused high school there, but came to the U.S. during my first year of high school because I wanted to be an astronaut. I went to Cornell Aerospace for graduate school, but then discovered that becoming an astronaut requires a ton of physical exercise like military-level training so I decided maybe it wasn’t for me. Instead, I got interested in how big objects interact and vibrate and switched to earthquake engineering at Stanford to study, and that sort of got me into what I do now. Along the way, I really just followed my interests, even if they didn’t turn out how I expected. I always tell new students to do the same. Don’t be afraid to explore new ideas. Don’t be limited by saying, Oh, I’m a civil engineer. I can only do buildings and bridges, or, Oh, I’m a computer scientist, I shouldn’t touch what the mechanical engineers do. If you start limiting your thoughts, that will also limit your ability as well. Make a point to step outside of your familiar boundaries. It may be scary at the beginning because you have to deal with something unfamiliar, but failing will actually give you an excellent lesson. Research in general can’t happen without learning something you didn’t know before so you’re bound to fail at some point. Embrace it: It’s a blessing. Haeyoung Noh, Associate Professor of Civil & Environmental Engineering #IAmAnEngineer

How to hold a secure election | On the cusp of an historic election, two experts one from the field of computer science, the other from law discuss how to ensure a thriving democracy. https://stanford.io/3of9Kab

Stanford Engineering’s The Future of Everything: COVID-19 special edition. Listen to this special series of our podcast to learn how researchers from across Stanford are bringing their insights and knowledge to address the challenges of COVID-19. https://stanford.io/3d6UR3i

How are we training our health care AI? Too many algorithms rely on datasets from the same states. Patient data from just three states trains most AI diagnostic tools.

Sarah Heilshorn: Discovering how resilient and adaptable you can be. Heilshorn’s experience of navigating the unfamiliar and intimidating inspires her to encourage underserved students and create a more inclusive work environment in her lab. https://stanford.io/314UP8p

A sleep expert offers insight into why so many of us are not getting enough zzz’s, what the consequences are and, above all, how we can sleep better.