Physicist and School of Engineering dean grew up on the Stanford campus
For me, this is about helping our students achieve their potential to lead fulfilling lives and have an impact on the world, supporting our faculty in doing the brilliant research and teaching that also have an impact on the world, and addressing issues important to our community, including moving toward a professoriate that reflects our student body.
–Persis Drell, university provost-designate
Persis Drell, dean of the Stanford School of Engineering and former director of the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, has been named Stanford University provost effective Feb. 1, 2017.
As Stanford’s chief academic officer and chief budgetary officer, Drell will work with university President Marc Tessier-Lavigne to provide overall leadership for the campus.
Drell has been a member of Stanford’s faculty since 2002, initially as professor of physics and SLAC’s director of research.
She literally grew up on campus – in an old wooden house on Alvarado Row acquired in 1956 by her father, physicist and Professor Emeritus Sidney Drell.
As SLAC’s director, Drell oversaw the opening in 2009 of the Linac Coherent Light Source, the world’s most powerful X-ray free-electron laser and a global destination for pharmaceutical research.
As dean of the Stanford School of Engineering, she catalyzed the SoE Future process to gear an already eminent school for tomorrow’s challenges in research, education and culture.
Diversity is not about checking a box.
–Persis Drell
In 2014, she led the Three Books program for Stanford’s incoming freshmen, choosing volumes that illustrate the reach of science in everyone’s lives.
Meanwhile, Drell has continued to teach undergraduates, most recently a companion course each winter in introductory physics.
Watch the launch of SLAC’s Linac Coherent Light Source.
Watch Drell speak on the Three Books she chose for freshmen.
Watch Drell inspire future science leaders at the 2015 Women in Data Science Conference.