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The Stanford Graduate Fellowships Program in Science and Engineering first awarded fellowships in 1997. The program was initiated by Gerhard Casper, then President of Stanford University, and is designed to support the University's commitment to attract the very best graduate students and to reduce its dependence on federal funding for Ph.D. training. The fellowships are available in the natural sciences, mathematics, statistics, engineering, the basic sciences in the School of Medicine, and those social sciences, including education, which are now dependent on federal assistantship support for their doctoral students.

Over the years, over 750 Stanford Graduate Fellows students have conferred their PhD at Stanford University.

SGF in the News

• Daniel Pivonka, 2007 Burt and Deedee McMurtry Fellow, is part of a lab headed by Professor Ada Poon that has developed a self-propelled device capable of moving through the bloodstream. The wirelessly powered chip has the potential to deliver drugs, clear blood clots, and perform diagnostics.
• David Stavens, 2005 David Cheriton Stanford Graduate Fellow, is the CEO and co-founder of Know Labs.  Know Labs offers free and high-caliber college courses through the online education threshold, Udacity.  Know Labs just completed a very successful first round of courses and is optimistic about the future of cheap, online learning. 
• Michael Massey, 2009 Robert and Marvel Kirby SGF, participated in research led by Stanford geochemist Kate Maher on the possibility of using the precious gemstone opal to clean up areas with uranium contamination, a cost-effective solution to a very serious problem.
• Gary Shambat (Electrical Engineering), a 2008 Sequoia Capital Fellow, is part of a team of electrical engineers headed by associate professor Jelena Vuckovic that have developed a new nanoscale device that transmits data at ultrafast rates while using thousands of times less energy than current technologies. The nanophotonics device is a major step forward for on-chip data transmission.
• Electrical Engineering students, Tomer London, 2010 Robert Bosch Fellow and Asaf Cidon, 2010 Leonard Shustek Fellow, published a paper introducing Multi-threaded Dynamic Remote Execution, a technique that enables mobile devices operating systems to decide in real-time which parts of the code to execute locally, and which part to offload to a remote server, in order to both increase computing performance and reduce energy consumption. The paper shows that this technique improves performance by over 50% while reducing energy consumption by 33%.
  

• Yu Lin, a 2008 Larry Young SGF fellow, is the lead author on a paper about the creation of an amorphous form of diamond which becomes stronger as pressure increases, and has more uniform strength than true diamond.

• Dr. Omkar Deshpande, a 2002 David Cheriton Fellow, co-authored a paper that demonstrated the ability of societies with highly stratified class structures to perpetuate themselves on the basis of their instability and high rates of migration.

• Laurie Burns, a 2006 Gabilan Fellow in Applied Physics, co-authored the Nature Methods paper describing a fngertip-size microscope which can be used in the lab or in the field and has the potential for studying the brain and its diseases.
• Sara Brownell, a 2007 Smith Fellow in the Biology department, co-authored a study showing that students taking authentic research classes rather than "cookbook-style" lab classes were more confident performing lab tasks and more enthusiastic about pursuing research.
• Yuan Yang, a 2009 ABB fellow, partnered with associate professor Yi Cui to develop and author a paper on transparent lithium-ion batteries.
• Yi-Wei Chen, a 2008 Benchmark Fellow, is a lead doctoral student under Paul McIntyre and Christopher Chidsey and made a key discovery that lead to their successful development of an improved water-splitter.
• Ramsharan Rangarajan,  a 2006 William R. and Sarah Hart Kimball Fellow, and Anca Vacarescu, a 2006 Office of Technology Licensing Fellow, were awarded with the Centennial Teaching Assistant Award for their outstanding work as teaching assistants.

• Annemarie Baltay (Geophysics), a 2005 Gabilan Fellow, coauthored a Science Express paper exploring the unusual earthquake that gave the Japan 3/11 tsunami extra power.

• Dr. Sebastian Osterfeld (Materials Science and Engineering), a 2001 Leonard J. Shustek Fellow, participated in the research of and coatuhored the Nature Nanotechnology paper on a new biosensor microchip that could significantly speed up the process of drug development. Read more here.
• Paul Kempen (Materials Science and Engineering), a 2008 Gerhard Casper Stanford Graduate Fellow, did much of the hands-on work on a study that could yield to human trials using nanomedicine for detection of colorectal and possibly other cancers.
• Sabina Alistar (Management Science and Engineering), a 2007 Gabilan Stanford Graduate Fellow, is lead author of a study published in the March issue of PLoS-Medicine offers a plan to combat growing HIV epidemic in Ukraine. Read more.
• Suchi Saria, 2004 Rambus Corportation Fellow, led the research to develop PhysiScore,a non-invasive way of quickly predicting the future health of premature infants. This innovation may better target specialized medical intervention and reduce health-care costs.
• Keith Bechtol (Physics), a 2010 Stanford Graduate Fellow and mararthoning astrophysicist won the 2010 San Francisco Marathon -- the very first marathon he's ever run.
• Dr. Jeff Cooper (Psychology), a 2004 Regina Casper Stanford Graduate Fellow, spent his time at Stanford studying a part of the brain called the ventromedial prefrontal cortex. Through MRI scans showing brains' responses actions of others, Cooper found that when we believe a person is doing something nice for someone else, we really do take it personally. Our brains register the observation of a good deed as a personal reward. Read more here.
• 2006 Office of Technology Licensing Fellow Feng Zhang (Statistics) and Viviana Gradinaru (Neurosciences), a 2005 Smith SGF and 2008 Colella Family SIGF, are coauthors of an article in Cell describing advances in optogenetic techniques. Karl Deisseroth, MD, PhD, associate professor of bioengineering and of psychiatry and behavioral sciences, is senior author of the paper.
• 2006 Honorary Stanford Graduate Fellow (Buck Foundation Fellow) Rami Hindiyeh, Mechanical Engineering, talks about the autonomous, self-pilots car Shelley, and the anticipated climb up Pike's peak.
• 2007 William R. and Sara Hart Kimball SGF Rob Munro (Linguistics) has been honored for his work on behalf of the Haiti relief effort.
• Viviana Gradinaru (2005 Smith SGF and 2008 Colella Family SIGF), a Neurosciences student, and Bioengineering student Murtaza Morgri (2008 Regina Casper SGF) are first authors of ground-breaking research published in Nature. Both are in Karl Deisseroth's lab.
• Yuan Yang (Applied Physics), a 2009 ABB SGF, is on the team of Yi Cui, assistant professor of materials science and engineering. Cui's work is reported in the paper "Highly Conductive Paper for Energy Storage Devices," published online this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Using nanotechnology the team created a paper battery!

Especially for Fellows

• The annual SGF stipend for 2010-11 is $33,400 ($8,350 per quarter) and will increase to an annual amount of $34,200 ($8,550 per quarter for 2011-12.
• 2011 Stanford Graduate Fellowship Recipients
• Join the SGF Facebook Group
• SGF Welcome Dinner for 2011 recipients will be in November 2011, date to be decided.