alumni profiles

Mark Pinto

PhD 1990 EE, MS 1983 EE

From modeling to manufacturing, engineer applies innovations in silicon

The most recent recognition of Mark Pinto’s impact on semiconductor manufacturing came in December 2008 when he won the J.J. Ebers Award from the Electron Devices Society of the IEEE. The award recognized his “contributions to widely applied semiconductor technology simulation tools.”

But Pinto’s job as chief technology officer of the iconic Silicon Valley company Applied Materials, includes thinking well beyond traditional electronics. With a broad view of nanotechnology and silicon-based manufacturing, he has helped the company venture into environmental markets as well. Pinto (PhD 1990 EE, MS 1983 EE) recently took some time to look back—and forward—with us.

What are simulation tools and why are they important?

It is impossible to design the individual transistors and the integrated circuit process without some kind of computer assistance. There are billions of transistors on some chips, so it’s very complex, and also because the physics of the process are so complicated that you can’t just use an equation to figure out at what temperature to put the chip in the furnace or how many atoms of a material to deposit. You have to do some very sophisticated modeling and calculation.

Some of the early work in this area dates back to the mid-1960s. People started to use computers to design transis...More »

Sandra Begay-Campbell

MS 1991 CE

Off the grid: Alumna helps tribes bring electricity to rural homes

In a country where almost everyone has electric power, or at least access to it, it is easy to forget that nearly 20,000 households donít. Sandra Begay-Campbell is tackling the problem every day in her job. Begay-Campbell (MS 1991 CE) is a principal member of the technical staff at Sandia National Lab where she works in the Tribal Energy Program.

Begay-Campbell, a Navajo, grew up in Gallup, New Mexico and attended the University of New Mexico as an undergrad, studying Civil Engineering. She then came to Stanford to study structural engineering. She is proud to be Stanford alumna and found many challenges in obtaining a Stanford education (including surviving the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake). Yet just nine years following her graduation, Stanford honored her by inducting her into the Multicultural Alumni Hall of Fame. She recently spoke with us about her current work and her time at Stanford.

There are about 19,000 U.S. households, particularly on tribal reservations, that are still without power. Why is that?

When the U.S. was settled, there was a lot of development that went from the East coast to the West coast, but the majority of that development and infrastructure building skipped over the tribal reservations. Thatís part of it. In addition, about 50-60 years ago when there was a lot of activity in rural development including rural ele...More »

Carlos Guestrin

PhD 2003 CS

Alumnus’ algorithms frugal with resources yet have wealth of applications

If you need to monitor something big and complex with a tight budget of money, electrical power, or some other resource, Carlos Guestrin (PhD 2003 CS) knows just what to do. The Carnegie Mellon computer science assistant professor blends machine learning and optimization to produce algorithms that can optimize a wide variety of tasks. Applications range from cost-effectively placing contamination sensors in a municipal water system to determining which of the thousands of blogs around the Internet are the most influential.

Guestrin’s work so fascinated the editors of Popular Science magazine that earlier this fall they named him to their “Brilliant 10,” an annual list of top scientists under 40 years old (BioE Assistant Professor Karl Deisseroth was also on the list).

Below Guestrin discusses his work, its many applications, and how, early in his career, he made the decision to give his theoretical research a strong grounding in real problems.

What was the Popular Science award for, and how is that an outgrowth of what you are trying to do?

The question that came out from my research turned out to be a very general question, but started o...More »

Paul Kaminski

PhD 1971 AA

Medal honors alumnus who helped develop key defense innovations

For the last several decades, the U.S. military has had the decidedly useful advantages of seeing more and being seen less than its foes thanks to advanced reconnaissance and stealth technologies. Paul Kaminski (PhD 1971 AA) has been deeply involved in making those technologies a reality. For his efforts, he received the National Medal of Technology at the White House earlier this year. This fall, he was named a Pioneer by the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO).

Now a defense advisor and consultant, Kaminski continues to bridge the worlds of engineering and policy in the service of national security.

What were you honored for?

I was honored for two activities. The first began early in my career, in fact right after I left Stanford. I began work to help define and assess the utility of and the feasibility of a new type of national reconnaissance satellite. The ultimate result was an operational reconnaissance satellite, the basic version of which is still flying today and collecting useful intelligence. I’m unable to give you the name of the program or any details. That’s still classified. But it is an unconventional imaging satellite.

What does that mean, “unconventional”?

Our early reconnaissance satellites, the first one of wh... More »

Kim Goodman

MS 1987 IE

Taking charge: Alumna runs American Express merchant network

Most people probably don’t think deeply about their credit cards. They are just pieces of plastic that provide a shopping convenience. But Kim Goodman (BA 1987 Poli Sci, MS 1987 IE) is not most people. In September 2007 she joined American Express as an Executive Vice President responsible for maintaining and expanding the company’s multifaceted relationships with merchants across all of North America. It’s an enormous responsibility. This holiday season, for example, American Express enabled hundreds of millions of dollars in transactions between the company’s merchants and card holders.

Before American Express, Goodman was a senior executive at Dell. She says what gets her going is being in dynamic, innovative businesses. She credits Stanford for helping her develop that passion. Stanford, and the community at large, meanwhile, have benefited from her longstanding interest in getting involved in the communities in which she finds herself.

Tell us what your new job entails.

My job is to work very diligently with the merchants across North America. Our goal in working with those merchants is to, number one, make sure all elements of our service delivery are done in a high quality and flawless manner so that our merchants can conduct their business with our card members in a fast, efficient, and effective way. Number two, is that our teams are trying to deliver meaningful value to those merchants. Typically that takes the form of us worki...More »

Ross Evans

BS 1999 ME

Alumnus’ bicycle design integrates cycling into everyday lifestyle

Ross Evans (BS 1999 ME) likes making things that solve problems and so he became a rather prolific and diverse inventor when he was an undergraduate in the product design program at Stanford. Among his brainchildren were an underwater breathing system for capsized kayakers, a kids fort-building system now sold by Cranium, and an innovative wall system for quickly partitioning rooms. 

But Evans’ big passion is bicycles and one of his Stanford inventions in this area led to his career as the founder of Xtracycle, where he’s pedaling a “bicycle lifestyle” by turning bikes into versatile cargo vehicles (they can also power small appliances). In the developed world, “sport utility” bikes enable healthy fun. In poorer countries, they could also be the most practical option for moving goods and people.

How did the Xtracycle idea get started?

I came to Stanford really interested in bicycles. I had done some work volunteering with Bikes not Bombs. I was inv... More »

Nick Baxter

BS Math 1979, MS CS 1980

Conundrum captain: Alumnus leads U.S. puzzle competitors

Nick Baxter (BS 1979 Math, MS 1980 CS) is a software product manager by profession, but his real passion is puzzles. It’s not just a matter of rushing out to get the Sunday paper with a sharpened pencil. He has been at the pinnacle of the international competitive puzzle world for 16 years. Over that time, he has risen from being a high-ranking player to becoming captain of both the U.S. puzzle and sudoku teams.

Baxter appreciates puzzles as more than just an intellectual challenge. To him, they are often art — he has an extensive collection — and a uniquely rewarding medium for group interaction. On a recent “treasure hunt” in New York promoting the National Treasure sequel, he and each of his fellow team members won $15,000 in free travel. Perhaps he’ll use that to get to the World Puzzle Championship this fall in Lithuania.

What do you do as the captain of the U.S. puzzle teams?

Well, along with Will Shortz, who edits the New York Times crossword puzzles, I run the U.S. puzzle team and the U.S. sudoku team. With the sudoku team it’s pretty obvious what we do — we do sudoku puzzles! But there’s actually quite a number of varieties of sudokus, each starting with the same general theme o... More »

Judy Estrin

MS 1977 EE

Prominent alumna calls attention to America's 'Innovation Gap' in new book

Judy Estrin (MS 1977 EE) is well known in Silicon Valley and business circles as an innovator and entrepreneur, having founded multiple companies in the data networking field and having served as the CTO of networking giant Cisco Systems and on the board of directors of The Walt Disney Company and FedEx Corp. At Stanford, she studied with then-Professor and Internet pioneer Vint Cerf.

In her new book, Closing the Innovation Gap, she takes a look at the big picture of innovation in the United States and is worried by what she sees. A short-term focus, both in business and culture in general, combined with misguided policy and leadership, have undermined the long-term investments needed to produce the foundation for future innovations, she says.

Below, she talks about the inspiration for the book, how the innovation gap came to be, and what can be done.

Chapter two of your book starts right out with Stanford-inspired metaphor.

I am an avid Dish walker. I have done some of my best thinking about the book, and bouncing ideas off of people, walking the Stanford Dish. People tend to only think about innovation in terms of somethin...More »

Hervé Lebret’s

(MS 1990 EE)

Entrepreneurship in Europe: Alumnus brings Silicon Valley culture across the Atlantic

Stanford kindled Hervé Lebret’s (MS 1990 EE) love of entrepreneurship, a passion that he took back home with him to Europe after studying here. He wants to see more a more entrepreneurial culture there and is working in more than one way to effect that change. After he earned his EE PhD in France, he became a venture capitalist with Index Ventures. Now his job at the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL) in Switzerland is to steer seed grants to scientists and engineers with promising ideas. Last year he also wrote a book, “Start-Up,” examining the business culture in Silicon Valley and in Europe, in hopes of encouraging the latter to be a bit more like the former.

A bit like the 19th Century French scholar Alexis de Tocqueville, his view of a slice of America can also teach Americans something about themselves.

What is “Start-Up” about? What are the main points you wanted to get across?

The book is subtitled “what we may still learn from Silicon Valley”. Many regions in the world, in Europe, in Asia, and also in the USA have been struggling with innovation and high-tech startups. No other area has given such success stories as Intel, Cisco, Apple, Oracle, Yahoo, and Google. I wanted to explain my views about this unique phenomenon. One feature which may have been missed is that Silicon Valley (“SV”) is about individuals — passionate individuals in a very... More »

Ben Wildman-Tobriner

(BS 2007 Biomechanical Eng.)

Stroke of genius: Swimmer looks to Olympics and then medical school

Ben Wildman-Tobriner (BS 2007 Biomechanical Eng.) is one of the best swimmers in Stanford history and has earned three gold medals in two events at the last two World Championships (the 50m sprint and 400m freestyle relay). He almost undoubtedly is the only alumnus of the school to have an endorsement contract with the swimsuit maker Speedo.

This summer he is training hard for the Olympic trials. As talented as he is, he is fighting to come back from a terrible injury in December. He is optimistic, however, that he’ll make it to Beijing. Even if he doesn’t make it, he has quite a future ahead, with acceptances from top medical schools. We spoke with him in late April [editor's note: he made it to Beijing].

How's your summer looking?

It’s looking good. It’s a little complicated, partially because in December I tore my pectoral tendon, in my shoulder, which was not a good thing to do. Not that it’s ever a good thing to do, but I was less than thrilled to sustain the first serious injury of my career in the Olympic year. I had surgery to repair it a couple of days later. The past four months have been filled with hours and hours of rehab, and it’s come a really long way in not that long of a time. Four months ago, I couldn’t move my arm, and yesterday in practice I sprinted all out, for the first time. So with about 10 weeks to go until Olympic trials, I am optimistic at t... More »

Jorge Cham

PhD 2003 ME

Solace in a strip: Alumnus’ comic gives voice to grad student woes

For more than 10 years, "Piled Higher and Deeper," a comic strip created by Jorge Cham (PhD 2003 ME), has helped graduate students to realize that they are not alone in the stresses and ironies of their lives. Anyone who has been up all night grading exams, or who has struggled to obtain publishable research results, or who has wondered how an adviser’s advice can sometimes be so unhelpful, can identify with the students who appear three times a week in the pages of the Daily and more than a dozen other college papers around the country.

Cham studied robotics at Stanford and taught for a couple of years at Caltech after graduation. But now he publishes the strip full-time. Not bad for an activity that started as a way to procrastinate.

Please tell us about how the strip got started back in 1997.

I started "Piled Higher and Deeper" my first full quarter at Stanford. I was pretty swamped, taking a load of classes and T.A-ing, I was also trying to impress my professor by doing a free, independent project in the lab so he would hire me as a research assistant for the rest of my PhD. Despite all this, I started the strip to procrastinate and also from having this sense that there were all these stories about the graduate experience — trying to find funding, being a T.A., being swamped with classes — that we... More »

Martha Mecartney

(PhD 1984 MSE)

Material success: Engineering professor inspires UC Irvine with energy, creativity to spare

Martha Mecartney (PhD 1984 MSE) is just about the most popular and visible professor at the University of California, Irvine. In fact, she is the current chair of the Academic Senate and last year was named the campus’ Professor of the Year for her superlative (and unorthodox) teaching approaches. Whether she is organizing a tolerance rally on campus or organizing students into a human crystal, she has seemingly limitless energy and shares it freely, enlivening the classroom and the university at large. Perhaps the source of that energy comes from her research work, which includes investigating better materials for fuel cells and creating novel ceramics for more efficient manufacturing. Mecartney is a portrait of an engineer as not only a technologist, but also as a creative thinker and a leader.

What is the philosophy behind your approach to teaching?

My teaching philosophy, to sum it up, is to create an environment where there is an interaction between the student and the professor. If I can create an interaction where I get feedback from the students, where the students are involved, then that’s where the energy starts flowing. They are engaged, they are interested, they are asking questions, they are doing things. I’m then starting to learn things and their questions are prompting me to think of new things that I might want to put in, or might want to change, or might want ... More »