Meet our faculty
Elizabeth Reese
Assistant professor of law
Navi towa hahweh Yunpoví. Navi Americana hahweh Elizabeth Reese. Nah Nambé Owingeh we ang oh mu.
My name is Elizabeth Reese, Yunpoví, and I am from the Pueblo of Nambé. I was born in a house that was originally built by my great-grandparents out of traditional adobe brick, and I grew up praying in one of the oldest buildings on the continent.
My parents met as teachers at the Santa Fe Indian School. My mother is Pueblo and my father is from a small town in Pennsylvania, the seventh child of a Lutheran minister. Growing up, my mom took me to ceremony and instilled values from my Native culture and heritage, and my father—who loves history and the classics—read to me from Homer and took me to Shakespeare plays. I was navigating both cultures and worlds.
When I was 4, we moved away from Nambé Pueblo to Champaign–Urbana, and that was really hard. I went from being in this very Indian world to being basically the only Indian family in town, where the university had an Indian mascot. Some of the other kids in my class would say things like, “You can’t be an Indian. All the Indians are dead.” Or, “You don’t wear feathers.” That hurt, but it was also profoundly confusing. There’s still so much mythology around native people as being this thing of the past, as being erased from contemporary existence in the United States.
I’m not sure there was ever a moment when I knew I wanted to be a lawyer, or study law. What really happened was that I saw how much of our life on the reservation was dependent on federal law, from the price of gas and groceries to who answers a 911 call. It became clear to me that learning those rules and using them to fight and advocate for my community was something that could be really important.
I also realized that there were not a lot of people who looked like me at the table, who were in a position to be telling the important stories about who we were and where we belong in the future of American law and society. I just knew that was wrong and I was going to do something about it. I knew that we deserved a say in our own destinies.
There are 574 tribal governments that are making and passing laws all across the United States, that govern as much territory as the state of California. One of the things I write about is just how powerful it is to start paying attention to these communities in a more real and robust way as part of what we think of in the American system.
That point does this beautiful thing, when it clicks for people: it shatters an invisibility that has been comfortably the status quo for far too long.
Go to the web site to view the video.
Margot Gerritsen
Senior associate dean for educational affairs, professor of energy resources engineering, and senior fellow at the Precourt Institute for Energy
“I grew up in the Netherlands, on a small peninsula not too far from the North Sea and surrounded by river estuaries. Our village was quiet and quite religious. Luckily, like most kids at that time, my siblings and I were pretty much free-range kids. We would take our little bicycles and bike everywhere. But on rainy days and Sundays, we were mostly inside the house, and I became a ferocious reader. Reading allowed me to escape, and dream of sunnier places. I was very young when I decided that I wanted to move away.
“I’ve always loved math. In high school, it came easy to me, and I continued on with it at university because I was determined to challenge myself as much as I could; I’m a competitive person, and because there were such few women in the field, it was like, I’ve got to show people that I can do this. At the same time, I really wanted to be an ornithologist and study birds. I’ve also been interested in natural hazards and I was fascinated by fluid flow. I was pulled in multiple directions, but I realized that if I built a foundational background in math and physics I could keep all those doors open—be agile, move around, study different topics through the computational science and engineering lens. That’s exactly what I’ve done, and I’ve really enjoyed it.
“I’ve always been one of the very few women in my field. It’s a lonely experience at times. People notice you, and when you’re different, you’re often also scrutinized. I remember, in undergrad, our grades were always displayed by our names on a big list by the classroom door. People would look for my grade—”Let’s see what Margot has.” And they would compare and contrast. That was not such a nice feeling. Particularly when you’re a woman who’s like I can be—I wouldn’t say I’m in-your-face, but I’m assertive, I’m active—you can feel quite vulnerable at times.
“You could also say that being one of the few women in my field is what has given me a wonderful platform. I’ve always found that I could help make a difference to girls and other women, and that has been a big motivator for me. Even if I occasionally have trepidation or hesitation to do something, I tell myself, if I don’t do it, then other women may not do it.
“I co-founded Women in Data Science in 2015. I sometimes call it a revenge conference, but that’s a bit too dramatic. It came from the frustration of, for the umpteenth time, seeing a conference with only male speakers, and the response to it being the same as well: “We looked everywhere, but we just couldn’t find any women.” We thought, You know what? We’ll just set up a conference showcasing outstanding women doing outstanding work—simply saying, “You’re looking for women? Here they are.” We sold out and realized we’d hit the nerve; it was almost as if people had been waiting for this to happen. Now we have 500 ambassadors and 230 events and reach tens of thousands of girls and women across the globe each year. I’ve never been part of a conference with such energy and so much positivity. We’re not lamenting the state of things for women; we’re celebrating outstanding individuals. And it feels so good.”
Jennifer DeVere Brody
Professor of Theater and Performance Studies
“I come from a long line of academics, and that history has been hard-earned. My parents met in graduate school in 1959, and because they were an interracial couple, their marriage would have been illegal had they not been in a northern state. After they graduated, my father’s advisor reached out to a university through the ‘old boys’ network’ because this was before the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission had been established and before jobs were advertised publicly. My parents were told that the institution had met their quota for Jews and wouldn’t hire my mother because they didn’t accept black professors. Fast-forward 30 years, and they both got jobs at that same institution. Now that I’m the director of the Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity, I get to drive the mission to increase faculty diversity and carry on their legacy. As a black queer scholar, I don’t often see my identity reflected in the faculty at Stanford, but we’re working to make this a place where everyone of all faiths and persuasions feels welcome and can pursue their interests, where we can learn from one another and have truly robust intellectual discussions.
“I wouldn’t be where I am now if I hadn’t explored and stayed open to new conversations, possibilities and life paths. As an undergrad, I was a Victorian studies major, and early in my career I wanted to be a manuscripts librarian. One of the first fellowships I was awarded was at the British Library, where Marx used to study. While working there, I discovered 75 plays about black women and slavery in the 19th century and these ended up becoming an integral part of my first book project. About 15 years ago, I switched from English to theater and performance studies, which looks at a wider range of material than just the printed word. I’ve always loved thinking about the ways in which art is a matter of social justice. At one point, I thought I might want to be a museum curator, but I’m very glad I became a professor; I like the variety, the new questions that emerge and the opportunity to work with Stanford’s number-one asset – its brilliant students.”
Alexander Key
Assistant Professor of Arabic and of Comparative Literature
“Nothing separates us from scholars working in Arabic and Persian 1,000 years ago. When those scholars did work in science fields like physics and optics, they didn’t have all the tools we have now, but when it comes to how metaphors work or how poetry is beautiful, we’re at the same level of expertise. We have access to the same raw material – our brains, our words, literature, the things we like reading. Now, the task in my research is capturing the quality of their work and translating it into something that people interested in language can benefit from today. It’s tremendous fun. If you have a familiarity with how a language works, you can better understand the things people say and do using that and other languages.
“And the things we don’t know are worth finding out. Society needs universities that produce knowledge, including knowledge that doesn’t seem to have any immediate impact and doesn’t seem to be immediately monetizable. The process of translating something tells us about ourselves and where we are today. That’s the payoff – you get to think about how we humans find out knowledge.”
Kathryn Gin Lum
Associate Professor of Religious Studies
“Studying religion lets me ask what people care deeply about and what they do about it. Being a historian allows me to spend time in dusty archives hearing what they have to say. I enjoy telling stories rooted in archival finds and love sharing the richness of American religious history with students at Stanford.
“One thing that people don’t often realize about studying religion is that religious concepts can offer a unique window onto seemingly non-religious people and environments. ‘Religion’ doesn’t just have to mean traditions like Christianity, Judaism, Islam or Buddhism. The features of many religions – such as myths, rituals and end-times scenarios – can be found in environments that seem secular, too. Stanford, for instance, has myths about its founders and rituals like fountain hopping. The culture at Stanford, and Silicon Valley in general, instills a drive to save the world and preserve our minds through technology. Stanford creates community and a shared sense of identity as much as many churches or temples. Understanding how humans are religious is key to understanding what it means to be human in the world, both historically and in the present.”
Aditi Sheshadri
Assistant professor of earth system science
When I was very little, I wanted to be an astronaut. But it didn’t seem like it was an achievable goal. As I grew up, I continued to be interested in space and astronomy. I thought a lot about propulsion and things like that, I guess because I wanted to be like my dad, who’s a professor of aerospace engineering, and because I was reading a whole lot of science fiction. Arthur C. Clarke and Isaac Asimov were particular favorites.
I did my bachelor’s degree in Bangalore, in India. There were about 130 of us in the class doing mechanical engineering as a major. I was the only woman. I ended up at MIT in a PhD program in aeronautics and astronautics. It wasn’t a great fit. So I sort of sidestepped and got a PhD in atmospheric science instead. I already knew all the fluid dynamics, and I realized I could apply those skills to the climate problem, which is beautiful and fundamental and basic, but also has an immediate, practical importance in human lives.
I do a lot of idealized modeling, which means that, for instance, I make up an ocean world in which there are no continents, and I ask, in some approximate scaling, can we come up with a theory about how many hurricanes we would expect under very different circumstances? One thing I find compelling in this work is that the small scales really affect the large scales. If you look down at the Earth from space, you see this whole range of motion, from little poofs to organized bands of clouds. They all impact weather and climate. I love this interplay between small and large and different time scales.
I don’t have a unified theory for dealing with people. I’m not a people person, except in the scientific context, I totally am. I’ve been having a whole lot of fun getting to know my colleagues across the world. I very much enjoy interacting with people who are thinking about similar sorts of problems in potentially different ways, and learning from them.
In science, there are so many times you feel like things aren’t going to work out. But you’ve just got to keep going. It’s all about curiosity and persistence.
Allison Okamura
Professor of Mechanical Engineering
“I’m always looking for ways to make connections between humans and science. I’m currently studying the development of an artificial sense of touch for humans, particularly for its applications in medicine and rehabilitation. I’ve always been interested in human-machine interactions, but I didn’t always know I wanted to be an engineer. When I first entered college, I was considering becoming a lawyer because I like working with people. But then I took an introductory mechanical engineering class and fell in love with the field when I discovered how technology allows you to directly improve people’s lives.
“Part of our research efforts to improve the future of human health and quality of life is developing minimally invasive medical robots for pediatric patients. These robots demonstrate enormous potential because they can precisely execute difficult maneuvers. Although some successful surgical robots exist, they’re too large for use on small children in certain procedures. One idea we’re pursuing is personalized surgical robots. These are made possible through 3D printing, medical imaging and virtual modeling — which would allow mechanical engineers and surgeons to work together to create robots customized for an individual’s body and needs. These tailored machines would minimize the invasiveness of operations and advance the precision of procedures, significantly reducing patients’ recovery time and risk of infection.
“To introduce robotics to groups that would otherwise be underrepresented in our field, my lab runs an outreach program to conduct introductory engineering sessions with small groups of students. We demonstrate what robots can do outside of the movies and show them what a diverse team can look like in practice. I strive to make my lab a good role model for diversity, and outreach allows me to share my vision for inclusion with more of the world, as well as provides the opportunity to positively influence younger generations.”
Richard Banks
Professor of Law and, by courtesy, of Education
“I’m not sure what grade my father completed, but I know he didn’t graduate high school. He was a barber, and he ran a shop with his brothers. They were well-known in Cleveland: if you wanted a proper haircut, you went to the Banks Brothers. He was a very smart and philosophical man but didn’t have much formal education. He envied people who did. If he met someone who was a lawyer, it was a big deal to him to know someone who’d achieved that status.
“The last chance I had to spend time with him was when I graduated from Stanford undergrad. He suffered from high blood pressure and prostate cancer, and his health went into a steep decline after a heart attack. Before he left the hospital to come to my graduation, the doctor told him not to go, that he wasn’t strong enough for the trip. My father shared with me that he told the doctor he was going to be at my graduation if he had to crawl. My mother had passed away when I was nine, so he was my only living parent. He made it, and that was the last time my family was together before he died. We had a different experience of Commencement compared to most families because he was so sick and I only had my dad and my sisters, but it meant a lot to me.
“It wasn’t until after his death that I decided to go to law school. He’d always wanted me to go to Harvard, which I refused. We had a big fight about it — one of the biggest fights of our life. He’d known someone else whose son went to Harvard and he wanted me to go too, but I refused to apply. He knew so little about college that I think Harvard may have been one of the only names he knew, but he knew that everyone else knew it, too, so that it must be good.
“After everything, I ended up going to Harvard Law. I applied about a year and a half after he died. It was in the wake of his death that I decided to go. Truth be told, in retrospect, I think it was partly a way to please him because of how much he had always respected lawyers – even if he wasn’t alive to see me become one. I was also drawn to Law because it’s a place where ideas meet the world. I get to think about the connections between big abstract issues and the concrete issues that arise in people’s lives.”
Zhenan Bao
Department chair and K.K. Lee professor of chemical engineering and, by courtesy, of materials science and engineering and of chemistry
“My father tells stories about how when I was younger, I often opened up gadgets in an attempt to figure out how they functioned. He also says that when I would ask questions, I already had some postulated explanations in mind—like hypotheses. Because I was naturally interested in building hypotheses and testing them through experimentation, chemistry felt like a natural fit once I discovered the field. I was drawn in by the limitless possibilities of chemical reactivity—the ability to create entirely new substances that could serve as solutions to complex real-world problems was really exciting to me. Over time, I dove deeper into materials chemistry, feeling called to create useful innovations for the world.
“Human skin—which is a remarkable organic material that is stretchable, self-healable, and biodegradable all at the same time—serves as an inspiration for one of the current focuses of my research group: artificial electronic skin. We started out by trying to mimic our human sense of touch and were able to show that we can create flexible sensors that are just as sensitive—or even more sensitive—than human skin. Through material design and engineering, we added properties like stretchability, self-healing properties, and biodegradability without compromising electronic properties. Incorporating these skin-like abilities into our electronic devices will transform how we interface with electronics.
“These new materials open up so many possibilities, particularly for their applications in electronic medical devices. For example, it’s now possible to implant soft electronics inside the body without causing damage, while also being able to collect electrical and chemical information directly from within. We can build electronics that grow with the organs they wrap around without constraining the tissue. We can also make electronics accommodate dynamic human movement naturally, whether they are attached to the surface of the body or implanted inside. I believe this rapidly expanding research frontier is going to positively impact the lives of many, and I feel fortunate to be a part of the vision.”
Risa Wechsler
Director of the Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology and Associate Professor of Physics and of Particle Physics and Astrophysics
“One of my goals as a leader is to cultivate an environment that allows everyone to flourish. Physics is still a very white and male dominated field, and we lose a lot of talented people because we don’t have an environment that allows them to do their best work. I’ve faced challenges as a woman in physics, but I think obstacles are more severe for first generation college students and students of color. Now that I’m the director of the Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology, I want to make sure that we take advantage of our position as a leading institute to reach out to people who are underrepresented in the field, by doing active outreach and also by including a more diverse community of scientists. We host open houses where our students lead scientific activities for kids, we have researchers visit schools, and we bring students into SLAC for field trips to see our research in action.
“I want to share the sense of wonder that I experience in my work with others. I study how the universe forms, from its earliest moments until today, on scales from an individual galaxy to billions of galaxies. Understanding how this structure forms can teach us about what the universe is made of and how galaxies come into existence. We’re now building a camera for one of the largest cosmology projects of the next decade, called the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope, or LSST. It’s a 3.2 gigapixel camera that will scan the entire sky from a given point every three days, for 10 years. Over time, you’ll get a dynamic movie of the sky that captures asteroids, stars, galaxies, and supernova, and when you add the images together you’ll get a map of where all the matter is in the universe. I feel lucky to have a career where I get to enjoy the beauty of our universe, and I’m motivated to drive efforts that create opportunities for more people to explore these marvels.”
Nadeem Hussain
Associate Professor of Philosophy
“This past year, I took physics, math and chemistry courses with freshmen. It’s much easier the second time around – I’ve figured out how to learn! When you spend your time as a teacher carefully trying to explain things to others, it makes you better at understanding others’ explanations. Indeed, one of my professors last year taught me physics when I was a Stanford undergraduate. These classes may seem like they don’t have much to do with philosophy, but to make real progress on some central philosophical questions we need to look carefully at the interconnections between philosophy, science and mathematics.
“I think philosophy has often not been taught effectively. We often throw students in the deep end of the swimming pool by giving them difficult classics or hard contemporary research articles. More students would be interested in the humanities if they were given courses that met them where they are. I’ve also been studying non-Western intellectual traditions in the hopes of redesigning my classes so that they do a better job of assessing why we’ve ended up doing the kind of philosophy we do. We need to give our students the tools of rational, critical thinking so that they can engage in difficult conversations even when their disagreements are generated by deep differences in background worldviews.”
Wendy Mao
Associate Professor of Geological Sciences and of Photon Science
“My dad and I do similar work. He was a geology major in Taiwan and moved to the United States to do graduate work in material science research. I’m the youngest of three daughters, and none of us were interested in what he was doing when we were young, but we ended up peripherally learning more about it because he worked long hours during weekends. We’d regularly visit his lab and see a lot of cool stuff going on, but he never pressured us to pursue his line of work. I think he knew that if he did, we’d push back.
“Later on, after I made the difficult decision to take a hiatus from pursuing a graduate degree in a line of research I was no longer certain I wanted to follow, my dad offered to show me around his workplace. After seeing what he and his colleagues were doing, I became captivated with their projects and went on to pursue graduate research in a similar field. Now, I’m working to understand how materials from inside the Earth behave at extreme conditions, such as high pressures and variable temperatures. In my lab, we try to simulate the conditions inside our planet. We then study how lattice structures and atoms rearrange, and how the properties of materials change as a result. It’s exciting for me because it involves things that people haven’t seen before. We’re discovering new geological materials that nature knows exist, but that no person has ever seen.”
Hakeem Jefferson
Assistant professor of political science
My research focuses on questions of race and identity in American politics, especially the politics of marginalized groups. Instead of focusing on more dominant groups – white Americans and their attitudes toward African Americans, for example – I’m much more interested in the lived experiences of the stigmatized. How does being Black condition one’s politics? What are the concerns and considerations that come about because of that experience of living on the margins of society?
I grew up in rural South Carolina, and it was clear to me early on that politics matter. When my mom worked late, I’d spend a lot of time with my grandparents, and my granddad in particular. Neighbors would stop by to talk about politics on the front porch, and it was never an occasion where I was told to go away and be quiet; I could engage in those conversations. I learned about politics literally at the feet of people who understood its power both to set free and to oppress.
I had the occasion to travel around and speak publicly as a young teenager after I won an essay contest for King Day. I only remember small bits of it, but it focused on the various inequities that remained in the public school systems of South Carolina. We have what’s called the “Corridor of Shame,” where schools built after the Civil War are falling apart, where students have access to so little, where teachers are forced to buy things out of pocket. I went to that kind of school. So thinking about these issues, and being unsettled by them, was part of my early socialization, and they move me still.
I think I’ve been teaching privileged folks about race for as long as I can remember. But in my formal role as a teacher, mentor and advisor here at Stanford, I see it as a deep obligation that I have. As I tell my students, my job is never to force them to think a certain way but it’s at least to force them to reckon with why they think the way they think – to engage the possibility of being wrong. I have attempted to create a space where truth is held in very high regard but students can feel comfortable laying bare their ignorance on some topic, their belief set that differs from my own. And I also think I benefit from telling my students the truth about who I am.
I think treating students as full beings who can understand the complexities of the world, who can engage you as a serious interlocutor – students are ready for that kind of education. And that’s what I try to give every time I have the privilege of teaching them.
Go to the web site to view the video.
Paula Moya
Professor of English
“Stories – narratives – are very powerful. I love literature for what it can teach us, what it makes us feel and how we use it to communicate with each other. The first book I remember really affecting me was the children’s book Striped Ice Cream by Joan Lexau. It moved me deeply. Raised in Santa Fe, New Mexico, I grew up around Mexican Americans and Native Americans. I did not know any African Americans at the time and would not meet any for several years. And so the book powerfully framed my understanding of what kind of people African Americans might be. The experience provided an early lesson in the power of narrative to create understanding and foster empathy.
“As much as I loved reading as a child, I did not always know that I would – or even could – be a professor. And my path to Stanford was by no means a smooth or straight one! Few people know that for the first 10 years of my young adulthood, I was involved in electoral politics in Houston, Texas – I was, in fact, a political wife. At that point, I would never have believed it if you told me that I would ever be a professor at Stanford.
“But my love of reading and my desire to seek out answers to some of humanity’s most fundamental questions took me on the path to graduate school and academia. Now, in my ongoing conversations with scholars across the disciplines, I research how narrative shapes the schemas through which people understand race and other significant issues in the world today.”
Grant Parker
Associate Professor of Classics
“Studying the ancient Romans is like doing a 1,000-piece jigsaw puzzle with only 53 pieces. When studying contemporary society, there’s no shortage of source material. With the Romans there’s much less, so we need to be creative to fill in the picture and bring it to life. I want to show students the rich variety within ancient cultures and their afterlives. They’re much more than just the columns outside the Supreme Court building. Let’s try to understand the hopes and fears of different communities around the ancient Mediterranean, even if they’re not the ones whose texts have survived.
“I focus on what happens when different groups of people come into contact: What persons, ideas and objects can we discern? What kinds of impact are involved? Generally speaking, it’s the victors that tell the stories, so we need to look for ways of going beyond that. It’s an intellectual challenge, but also an ethical one. In such ways we need a critical and self-aware dimension in our research. Stanford makes it easy to collaborate with scholars from different fields, and this has helped me develop a broader approach. In studying any society, ancient or not, language deserves to be a key element whenever possible. Regardless of your field, you can never know enough languages. Studying languages – even just a little bit, and even if a language is no longer anyone’s mother tongue – is fundamental if we’re going to be humble, respect different perspectives and see the breadth of human experience.”