Research

As more of the world's population live in cities and with the clustering of cities along coastlines, transportation network disruptions from flooding or other natural disasters can have serious socioeconomic consequences. Stanford researchers sought to identify effects flooding would have on traffic delays and safety, as road closures rerouted vehicles to adjacent streets and neighborhoods. The study highlights challenges of preparing the traffic network in the Bay Area for climate change including those that do not encounter any flooding themselves.

A new paper by Stanford researchers along with researchers at the University of British Columbia and New York University, uncovers a long-overlooked way in which opening international borders to trade can spark more innovation and growth. The study which uses a formal model, demonstrates that increased competition from exporting foreign firms pushes domestic laggards to adopt more efficient practices and technologies.

Sharad Goel, assistant professor of management science engineering and founder of Stanford Open Policing Project and Allison Koenecke, Ph.D.

In this episode of The Future of Everything podcast, host Russ Altman talks with professor of electrical engineering, Kunle Olukotun about his current focus on new-age chips which will broaden the reach of artificial intelligence. He imagines a world filled with highly efficient, specialized chips built for specific purposes, versus the relatively inefficient but broadly applicable chips of today.

Stanford's "gecko gripper", a robotic mechanical attachment with gecko inspired adhesive, developed by Mark Cutkosky and Marco Pavone's labs was tested this April in the International Space Station on one of the station's free-flying Astrobee robots to see how it performs in a microgravity environment.

Stanford researchers have developed an optical device that changes and fine-tunes the frequencies of each individual photon in a stream of light to virtually any mixture of colors. This new photonic architecture could transform fields ranging from digital communications and artificial intelligence to cutting-edge quantum computing.

Stanford engineering, climate and geophysics experts discuss why climate change resiliency is at the center of federal infrastructure plans, how it could affect underserved communities and where to target investment for maximum impact. President Biden's American Jobs Plan is a wide-ranging infrastructure initiative to rebuild highways, airports, water systems and more to "prevent, reduce and withstand the impacts of the climate crisis."

Stanford is expecting to achieve 80% reduction in emissions from campus operations by 2022 when a new solar facility comes online. Now, Stanford is beginning to measure Scope 3 emissions, the indirect emissions from such things as growing and transporting food, travel, investments and producing the goods we buy. Sally Benson, professor of energy resources engineering and graduate student, Rebecca Grekin, are working on a tool to make quantifying Scope 3 emissions easier.

In this Future of Everything podcast, grid expert Ram Rajagopal, associate professor of civil and environmental engineering, discusses going from an "infrastructure-centric" model to a "human-centric" one. In order to move to a smarter, more inclusive, adaptable grid, new sensors and algorithms are needed to provide more data about who, how and when people are using power, says Rajagopal.

The NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) Program has funded two Stanford researchers for Phase I projects described as high-risk, high-reward ideas that may seem technologically out there but would have a huge impact on space exploration should they succeed. One project led by Marco Pavone, is a robot that extends its arms to climb in Martian caverns and grasp objects. The ReachBot uses extendable booms that can be rolled up and unrolled to anchor the bot or push off of surfaces like a leg.