Giving to Engineering

Imagining a brighter future

Engineers imagine a brighter future and create the path to get there: individually designed drugs tailored for one person’s genetic makeup, innovations that sustain our planet while meeting the needs of the world’s growing population, and information technologies that launch commercial success in communications, e-commerce, and artificial intelligence.

Without a doubt, the remarkable achievements that have emerged from the Stanford School of Engineering over the past 50 years testify to the fact that the recipe for turning scientific innovation into vital technologies is only as good as the talented faculty and students who have perfected it.

Yet technical expertise and invention are only half the answer. In order to realize the great promise of technology, we need creative and entrepreneurial individuals to lead the way. At Stanford these qualities infuse our culture, attracting both students and faculty who share these values. We nurture these skills along with a deep understanding of technology, recognizing that they give our students powerful insights into the people, issues, and systems their work will affect.

No one discipline or department can do it all. The great challenges before us today do not conform to tidy academic categories; indeed, their scale and complexity defy any single field of study. In response, the university has launched The Stanford Challenge, an immense undertaking that will marshal resources from every school. The School of Engineering, with its long history of multidisciplinary research and teaching, will help drive this vision, with a special focus on the two university-wide initiatives that inspire the problem-solving passion of our faculty and students: the Initiative on Human Health and the Initiative on the Environment and Sustainability.

Our traditional strength in information technology and our expertise in the burgeoning fields of nanoscience and nanotechnology will provide the foundation for our multidisciplinary research efforts in every field, giving us the means to apply the tremendous potential of technology to solving seemingly intractable problems.

Stanford’s new bioengineering department, jointly founded by the schools of engineering and medicine, provides the infrastructure for an emerging field that has the capacity to vastly improve health. In addition, the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering has embraced the theme of sustainability in a way that encompasses both natural and built environments. Furthermore, dozens of engineering faculty and students have developed novel research programs to explore alternative energy technologies.

A key factor moving forward will be 21st-century facilities, including a new School of Engineering Center in the Science and Engineering Quad. It will replace the Terman Engineering Center as the nexus of the school—housing classrooms, auditoriums, spaces where faculty and students can gather, and a new state-of-the-art engineering library designed to support our quickly evolving research programs.

Our goal? To tap into our creativity and passion for problem solving, pooling our talents and our training to help make a better world. It is a bold undertaking, but one that we are convinced we are ready and able to take on. Please join us. With your belief in our mission and your support for our efforts, we are sure to succeed.

James D. Plummer
The Frederick Emmons Terman Dean of The School of Engineering
The John M. Fluke Professor in Electrical Engineering