Research

More and more supercomputers are needed to analyze large datasets and scientists struggle with the complexity of the software used to program these computers. A new programming language, Regent, developed by a group led by Prof. Alex Aiken, makes supercomputers easier to use by allowing programmers to assign serial processing tasks to CPUs and parallel processing tasks to GPUs. A compiler, called Legion, also developed by Aiken, generates machine code which allows programmers control over where to store data while awaiting computation.

Stanford researchers have designed a new photon diode – a device that allows light to only flow in one direction – which, unlike other light-based diodes, is small enough for consumer electronics. They’ve also created the necessary nanostructures – the custom smaller-than-microscopic components – and are installing the light source that they hope will bring their theorized system to life.

New research co-authored by Stefan J. Reichelstein, GSB Professor, finds that a partial solution to the cost of renewable systems may lie with hybrid energy systems that use surplus renewable electricity to make pure hydrogen. Hybrid energy plants take surplus electricity from solar or wind farms and feed it into a power-to-gas process that relies on electrolysis to split water molecules into hydrogen and oxygen. The authors looked at equipment costs, hydrogen prices and hour-by-hour wholesale electricity prices and wind generation data for a full year in Germany and California.

The  camera system  developed by Gordon Wetzstein's lab captures more light from a greater variety of surfaces, can see wider and farther away and is fast enough to monitor out-of-sight movement for the first time. This system builds upon previous around-the-corner cameras this team developed. Along with improvements to speed and resolution, they’ll also work at making their system address challenging visual conditions such as fog, rain, sandstorms and snow.

Three Stanford professors spoke on a panel moderated by the dean of Stanford Graduate School of Business on how innovation is measured, the role of markets and what types of firms are likely to innovate. Other topics examined were how productivity affects wages, skills, and social inequality, and what kind of policies ensure a brisk pace of innovation.

Stanford Graduate School of Business, will make its proprietary entrepreneurship-centered content and teaching accessible as part of its commitment to global reach and meaningful impact. An interactive membership based toolkit for emerging and established entrepreneurs, Stanford Embark draws on more than two decades of teaching and research on entrepreneurship.

The U.S. EPA replaced the Obama-era Clean Power Plan (CPP) with the newly released Affordable Clean Energy (ACE) rule on June 19. ACE aims to reduce power plant carbon emissions without setting limits and instead calls for efficiency improvements at generating stations and directs states to take the initiative on power plant emissions. Stanford experts on law, energy policy and economics discuss the new rule and potential impacts.

A multi-institute team of researchers created a new technique for probing the chemistry of battery samples and creating images in near-atomic detail to understand how electrode damage reduces a battery's charging capacity. Using X-ray facilities at the European Synchrotron Radiation facility (ESRF) and SLAC's Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Lightsource (SSRL), researchers scanned as many electrode particles as possible in a single round and produced X-ray images for analysis.

Stanford researchers presented their work on developing better, faster ways of providing human guidance to autonomous systems at the June Robotics: Science and Systems conference. The team's process to providing instruction to robots combines demonstrations and user preference surveys, with the goal of combining data from both of these sources for robots to better learn about humans' preferred reward function.

To prevent the possibility that hackers could misuse a chip's features to carry out criminal threats, Stanford engineering professors have adapted their algorithms to help prevent this type of unintended consequences. Originally developed to automate the process of finding bugs in chips and fixing these before manufacturing, their technique called Symbolic QED, has been used to debug chips developed for vehicle braking and steering systems.