Research

The Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability’s Sustainability Accelerator has funded its first cohort of 30 teams with solutions generated through collaborations through partners locally and globally. One of the three large-scale projects funded is a project led by Ram Rajagopal, Marco Pavone, Nicholas Bambos, Liang Min, Omer Karaduman and Gustavo Cezar working to develop battery storage deployment to demonstrate a scalable 24/7 carbon-free solution with the Stanford electrified bus fleet. 

In this podcast from Stanford Engineering's The Future of Everything series, Stanford electrical engineer Philip Wong and host, Russ Altman discuss why filling the need for more computer chips will require a greater emphasis on semiconductor research in universities, global cooperation, and increased investment in both research and development and manufacturing.

Based upon its final report published in March 2021 by the National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence, this white paper outlines a blueprint for an AI research institute that can champion human-centered approaches to AI research, promote multi-stakeholder international R&D cooperation to unleash innovation and economic prosperity and cultivate AI talent.

The Stanford Energy Hydrogen Initiative was launched to figure out the best uses of hydrogen for decarbonization and to fund development of the necessary technologies, policies and financial mechanisms. More than 30 Stanford research programs are working on hydrogen-related challenges. The Hydrogen Initiative is intended to bolster that strength with additional research dollars and more interdisciplinary teams.

Using the breakthrough approach to Imitation Learning called, IQ-Learn, Divyansh Garg and Edmund Mills, placed second in an AI bot challenge. Garg developed this new method in collaboration with Stefano Ermon, associate professor in computer science. “IQ-Learn is performing beyond our own expectations,” Garg says. “It’s a new paradigm for scaling intelligent machines that will be able to do everything from autonomous driving to helping provide health care. 

A multi-institution team of researchers have found that factors behind battery decay change over time. Early on, decay seems to be driven by properties of individual electrode particles but after several dozen charging cycles, it's how these particles are put together that matters more.

Stanford's new dean of the Doerr School of Sustainability is Arun Majumdar, seen here at left. Majumdar is the Jay Precourt Professor, faculty in mechanical engineering, senior fellow and former co-director of the Precourt Institute for Energy and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution.

A compact, high-frequency, low-power optical device that allows standard digital cameras to perceive light in three dimensions was developed by Stanford researchers. The prototype captured megapixel-resolution depth maps and the team has further reduced the energy consumption by at least 10x and believes several-hundred-times greater energy reduction is within reach. If possible, a future of small-scale lidar with standard image sensors - and 3D smartphone cameras - could become reality.

A team led by Ram Rajagopal, seen here at left, associate professor, Civil and Environmental Engineering, developed a model framework that gives grid planners and policymakers information: where, when, how, how much and how often drivers will charge.

Stanford chemical engineers have developed high-brightness, stretchy color displays made entirely of stretchy polymers. Potential uses for a stretchable display include reshapable interactive screens or three-dimensional landscapes on a map.