I M A G I N I N G T H E F U T U R E

I am pleased to introduce this inaugural issue of the Stanford Engineering Benefactor, a newsletter for alumni and friends of the School of Engineering. Modeled on a similar university-wide

publication, the Stanford Engineering Benefactor celebrates some of the inspiring

partnerships that have emerged here at the school during The Stanford

Challenge.

As President Hennessy noted at the start of The Stanford Challenge nearly two years ago, the university’s mission in

this endeavor is nothing short of extraordinary: to change the world.

Stanford Engineering’s part in the campaign is to seek solutions to important

global problems and to educate the leaders who will turn great ideas into real changes that will make the world a better place.

During the campaign, Stanford Engineering’s four areas of strategic focus continue to be: Bioengineering, Energy and Environment, Information Technology, and Nanoscience and Nanotechnology (see page 2, inside). Within these areas, our funding priorities are the people who will make a difference, and the facilities that will enable them to do so.

PlacesA major goal of The Stanford Challenge is to give faculty and students the facilities they need to make the next great breakthroughs. In the School of Engineering, this means finishing the process begun ten years ago with the Packard (EE) and Gates (CS) buildings. Within three to five years, after the completion of the Panama corridor renovations and the Science and Engineering Quad (SEQ), it really will be the case that all of our departments are housed in facilities enabling 21st-century research and teaching.

The SEQ is a sign of Stanford’s commitment to multidisciplinary problem solving. When completed, it will feature a remarkable community of more than 1,700 faculty, staff, and students, previously dispersed across campus, as well as the larger community that will gravitate to the quad’s shared spaces and labs. The SEQ will bring together people from engineering, medicine, and the natural and social sciences, enabling them to work together as never before.

Pictured above, the Jerry Yang and Akiko Yamazaki Environment and Energy Building (Y2E2) was the first building in the SEQ to be completed. Next up, the Jen-Hsun Huang School of Engineering Center, currently under construction, 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.

We have also broken ground on the Center for Nanoscale Science and Technology, which will be the new home of the Ginzton laboratory. Its laboratories will complement the nearby Nanocharacterization and Nanofabrication facilities. The fourth and final building in the SEQ, which will house Bioengineering and Chemical Engineering, is scheduled to commence construction in 2010.

PeopleTo make sure that our world-class facilities are occupied by equally outstanding personnel, the second area of our focus is on people, both graduate students and faculty. 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.

Our goal during The Stanford Challenge is to provide support for 50 more graduate fellowships and ten new faculty positions.

PartnershipAs you will read inside, enthusiasm and support for our endeavors have already come from a variety of sources, from non-alumni who are interested in bringing students from their home country to Stanford, to professors and their former students joining forces, to non-engineering grads who have embraced President Hennessy’s call to respond to the university’s highest priorities. This outpouring to date has been extraordinary, as have been all of the gifts that space does not permit us to feature in these pages.

Nearly halfway through The Stanford Challenge, we have made great strides towards our objectives. But there is still significant work to be done, requiring an equal share of dedication from all

The Stanford Challenge: Imagining the Future

The Jerry Yang & Akiko Yamazaki Environment & Energy Building (Y2E2), first of four buildings in the new Science and Engineering Quad (SEQ).

CONTINUED ON PAGE 3

Issue 1 n Volume 1 n Fall 2008

The STanford Challenge

SChool of engineering

STeering CommiTTee

During The Stanford Challenge, which runs

through 2011, a group of our dedicated

alumni and friends have committed their

time, expertise, and resources to assure

that Stanford Engineering will reach its

campaign goals. We are extremely grateful

for the efforts of the Steering Committee,

which includes:

Douglas J. Mackenzie, MS ’82, Chairman

Yogen K. Dalal, MS ’73, PhD ’77

Michael L. Goguen, MS ’91

Joseph W. Goodman, MS ’60, PhD ’63

Fredric W. Harman, BS ’82, MS ’83

Hong-Seh Lim, MS ’83, MS ’87, PhD ’87

Burton J. McMurtry, MS ’59, PhD ’62

Kenneth Oshman, MS ’65, PhD ’68

Ajay B. Shah, MS ’82

Harold A. Wagner, BS ’57

John L. Walecka, BS ’81, MS ’83

Faculty Mentor Continues to Advise Former StudentsA start-up sometimes turns to its “technical advisor” for much more than technical advice. Fabian Pease, the William Ayer Professor of Electrical Engineering, once found himself playing brand consultant.

A former student, Jun Ye, PhD ’96, approached Pease with a product idea to improve semiconductor design and manufacturing, inspired by research the two had conducted at Stanford. He even had a company name: Bricore. Pease liked the idea but did not like the name “Bricore.”

“I said, ‘That’s not a catchy name,’” Pease recalls. “‘It sounds like detergent.’”

Ye and the founding team had a rethink. Ye, who is also a physicist, had given his newborn son the name Brion, a neologism that combines “bright” and “-on”. (In physics, “-on” is often used as the suffix for particle names, such as “electron”). The founders decided it would make a good name for the company, since it suggested “a shining and cheerful new being,” as Ye puts it. He adds that in Chinese culture newborn babies are considered an auspicious sign for launching a new business.

The name also seemed appropriate for a new company in a field that had found better ways to work with light in designing and printing silicon chips. The founders had devised clever technology to quickly identify and correct potential problems with incredibly complex designs — the chips had structures even smaller than the wavelength of light used to create them — before the chips were actually printed.

Exactly a month after Ye’s son was born, the company, with Pease on board, had its first meeting with investors. Brion Technologies officially launched in September 2002 with $8 million in venture funding. In December of 2006, the company was acquired by a Dutch firm, ASML Holding.

Brion’s founders from Stanford, Ye, Eric Chen (PhD ’99), Yenwen Lu (PhD ’96), and Pease, again at Pease’s suggestion, celebrated their success with a gift of $500,000 to the School of Engineering. The dean matched the gift one to one to establish the Brion Founders Fellowship Fund, which will support international graduate students. The company’s founders are from overseas, and Ye says they know from experience how crucial financial support can be to foreign graduate students.

“We all got financial support when we were at Stanford,” Ye says. “It’s great to be able to make some returns.”

Chen agrees. He was a student in Pease’s lab at the same time as Ye. After leaving Stanford, Chen had a successful career on Wall Street, which he gave up to become the CEO of Brion. But he knows how difficult it can be for foreign students to reach the first rung on the career ladder.

“The cost of living and education in the U.S. sometimes can be prohibitively expensive for people coming from an emerging economy,” he says. “Having fellowships is definitely helpful to those people.”

Pease says Chen and Ye were “two of my very best students.” That’s high praise coming from someone like Pease, whose distinguished career includes pioneering work on the scanning electron microscope and large-scale integrated circuits.

Pease also happens to be in charge of graduate admissions for the Department of Electrical Engineering. He says that demand to get into the School remains high — about 1,500 applications for 200 spots each year — but that competition for top students increases all the time. This is true, he adds, not just from Stanford’s traditional U.S. rivals but also from new contenders such as Chinese universities, which receive major support from the Chinese government and are determined to become world-class institutions. Pease notes that, even now, about half the grad students admitted to the School of Engineering choose to go elsewhere.

“We attract the very best, the very brightest people from abroad, but we shouldn’t take it as a given that we’re always going to do so,” he says. That’s why he thinks gifts such as the Brion Founders Fellowship are critical. “We’re very lucky to have all these overseas students eager to come, but if we can’t find the money, there’s no way they can afford to come to Stanford.”

Chen and Ye remain glad they themselves chose Stanford, not least because of the chance to work with Pease, whom they jokingly referred to as “the godfather” because of the guidance he gave them both as students and entrepreneurs.

“What I got from my grad school education was way more than the subject matter of my PhD thesis,” Chen says. “I’ve learned probably even more from Fabian on how to conduct myself, how to be a good citizen for the society, how to approach life in general. Those are the benefits we got from associating ourselves with someone like Fabian Pease.”

Ye agrees: “All of us former students came back to the Pease group feeling like we were coming back to our family where we grew up.”

Stanford School of Engineering Strategic PrioritiesDuring The Stanford Challenge, Stanford Engineering will continue to focus on four strategic priority areas identified by Dean Jim Plummer. Within these, the dean’s highest objective is raising support for buildings, professorships, and graduate fellowships.

Bioengineering — A fusion of engineering and the life sciences promises new discoveries, technologies, and therapies to improve human health and the environment.

Environment and Energy — Meeting the needs of a growing world population in an environmentally sustainable way is a major challenge of the 21st century.

Information Technology — Hardware, software, and communications are the pillars of information technology. Continuing research in these fields ranges from basic science through materials and devices to systems and applications.

Nanoscience and Nanotechnology — Advancing the science and technology of very small structures holds vast opportunities for research and application development.

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From left: Eric Chen, PhD ’99, CEO, Brion Technologies; Fabian Pease, The William Ayer Professor of Electrical Engineering, Chairman of the Technical Advisory Board, Brion Technologies; Jun Ye, PhD ’96, President and CTO, Brion Technologies; and Yen-Wen Lu, MS ’93, PhD ’96, Senior Director of Engineering, Brion Technologies.

We attract the very best, the very

brightest people from abroad,

but we shouldn’t take it as a given that we’re always

going to do so.

Rising Faculty Stars Get Boost from Aerospace Veteran and WifeTo remain a top-flight institution, the School of Engineering has to do more than just attract the best faculty to the school: It also has to keep them. Ironically, nurturing the most promising young faculty members makes them that much more attractive to other universities, increasing the chances they could be lured away.

That’s why funding for faculty scholar chairs is so important, and why the school has made endowing these chairs a top priority during The Stanford Challenge. These chairs are awarded to key faculty to encourage research and teaching in areas critical to the school. Formerly awarded to up-and-coming faculty, they now go to faculty who’ve recently been awarded tenure. The honor supports the faculty member for up to three years, paying part of his or her salary as well as a $25,000 stipend.

Vance Coffman, MS ’69, PhD ’74, and his wife, Arlene, certainly recognize the value of faculty scholar chairs: They’ve endowed four of them.

“My belief is that most organizations function because of the people in them,” he says. Offering faculty scholar chairs is a way to “encourage bright younger people to take on the mantle of professorships, and [to encourage] those working toward full professorships. If they get interested early in life, I think you have a lot better chance of having great faculty members later.”

Nurturing young talent is something Coffman knows a thing or two about. He spent 37 years at Lockheed Martin, with responsibilities that included leading the divisions behind the successful launch of the Hubble Telescope, the MILSTAR satellite communication system for the U.S. military, and Lockheed’s work on the Iridium satellite communication network. He became CEO of Lockheed in 1997 and its chairman the year after. During his tenure, Lockheed won the Joint Strike Fighter contract, the largest Department of Defense contract ever awarded.

The Coffmans established their four faculty scholar chairs through a gift that was contributed in part by Lockheed Martin, in honor of their chairman. The School of Engineering matched the gift one to one.

“The idea of matching funds for gifts like the one Arlene and I gave is a real interesting way to get leverage out of donations,” says Coffman. “The focus tends then to go to where people who are giving want it to go. That’s exciting to me.”

The inaugural Vance D. and Arlene C. Coffman Faculty Scholars are Sanjay Lall, associate professor of aeronautics and astronautics;

Michael McGehee, associate professor of materials science and engineering; Sebastian Thrun, professor of computer science and electrical engineering; and Claire Tomlin, professor of aeronautics and astronautics. Their research interests include organic solar cells, control of air traffic and other complex systems, and robotics and artificial intelligence. The many awards their work has generated so far include Claire Tomlin’s 2006 receipt of a MacArthur Fellowship, the so-called “genius award.”

Coffman says he supports scholars such as these because he wants others to have

the benefit of the “wonderful education” he received at the School of Engineering. He adds that he admires the way the school constantly broadens its horizons to include whole new fields of study, going far beyond what the layperson might imagine in an engineering education.

“Look at our ability to supply water to major cities, to launch vehicles to the moon and Mars,” he says. “These are great accomplishments, and the human species benefits from them in untold ways. Sometimes we don’t know how they will contribute, but [they] eventually lead to a better life for us all.”

Stanford School of Engineering Strategic Priorities

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Coffman faCulTy SCholarS

Sanjay lall, Associate Professor, Aeronautics and Astronautics; Electrical Engineering by courtesy

Claire Tomlin, Professor, Aeronautics and Astronautics; Electrical Engineering by courtesy

michael mcgehee, Associate Professor, Materials Science and Engineering; Director, Center for Advanced Molecular Photovoltaics

Sebastian Thrun, Professor, Computer Science and Electrical Engineering; Director, Artificial Intelligence; Director, DARPA Grand Challenge

Vance, MS ’69, PhD ’74, and Arlene Coffman have endowed four faculty scholar chairs.

The idea of matching

funds for gifts...is a

real interesting way

to get leverage out of

donations.

IMAGINING THE FUTURE, CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1

who believe in the university’s obligation to help create a better world. As our faculty and students have a vital role to play, so do our alumni and friends, whose generosity and support have always made it possible for us to translate the promise of our dreams into practical solutions.

Please join us. With your belief in our mission and your partnership, we are sure to succeed. I look forward to sharing more good news with you in subsequent issues of the Stanford Engineering Benefactor and, as always, I thank you for your past and ongoing support of our efforts to do extraordinary things.

James D. PlummerThe Frederick Emmons Terman Dean of the School of EngineeringThe John M. Fluke Professor in Electrical EngineeringMS ’67, PhD ’71

Stanford Engineering

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Dean’s Circle Luncheon1 Stanford Engineering’s Dean’s Circle event was held on

May 27 in the Vidalakis Dining Room at the Schwab Center.

Dean Jim Plummer and computer science professor Ron Fedkiw

spoke at the event. The Dean’s Circle includes donors to the

school who have given $10,00 or more during a fiscal year.

Reunion 20072 More than 700 Stanford Engineering Alumni gathered last fall

for the first-ever all-school SoE reunion, which included a Friday

night reception between the Hewlett and Packard buildings.

Reunion 2008 is scheduled for October 10 and 11, and will

feature the Civil and Environmental Engineering Department.

Aeronautics and Astronautics 50th

Anniversary Celebration3 Held May 8 –10, this special Symposium and Reunion

celebrated the 50th anniversary of the department. The two-day

program featured lab tours, poster sessions, lectures by faculty

and AeroAstro alumni, and a special reception and dinner on

Friday night.

Eday4 Over 600 alumni and families came to Stanford for our ninth

annual EDAY event, held on July 12. This year’s program,

“Robots, Racers & Rockets,” featured faculty, students, and

alumni showcasing their engineering innovations in robotics,

astronautics, and transportation.

Powell Foundation Visit

5 The Powell Foundation’s bi-annual visit to campus in May

featured a full day of faculty speakers and a tour of the Hasso

Plattner Institute of Design (aka the d.school).

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Stanford Engineering

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Fellowship Reception6 The 2008 fellowship reception was held on April 10 in

the social entry of the Y2E2 building. This annual event is an

opportunity for donors and recipients to meet in an informal

setting. Dean Plummer and Russ Altman, bioengineering

professor, were the featured speakers.

Leading Matters7 At the Leading Matters Hong Kong event on April 19,

more than 250 alumni, parents, and friends turned out to hear

President Hennessy, deans, and faculty members share their bold

visions for Stanford in the 21st century. Pictured here is Stanford

Engineering Dean Jim Plummer, MS ’67, PhD ’71, along with

(from left) GSB Dean Robert Joss, MBA ’67, PhD ’70; Professor

Tom Byers; and Professor Stefanos A. Zenios. The panel’s topic:

The Stanford Way: Turning the Problems of the 21st Century

into Entrepreneurial Opportunities.

Tesla Motors Event8 A small but excited group of Stanford Engineering friends

was invited on June 13 for a sneak peak at the yet-to-be-released

Tesla Roadster. Guests mingled with Tesla representatives and

toured the Tesla showroom and factory. Two lucky guests were

treated to rides in the roadster.

Next Generation Lab Tours9 On June 27, a group of alumni and their high-school-aged

children participated in the inaugural Next Generation Lab Tours

event. Parents and high-schoolers were divided into groups, each

with its own student tour leader, who described undergraduate

life at Stanford. The groups toured six different labs, in rotation.

The tours were followed by a question and answer session.

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Nano Center Gift Honors Giant in the Study of the MinisculeThe Center for Nanoscale Science and Technology, slated to open in the fall of 2009 as part of the SEQ, promises Center for Nanoscale Science and Technology, slated to open in the fall of 2009, promises to keep Stanford a big name in the study of the very small.

Stanford has been a world leader in nanoscale research ever since Calvin Quate, the Leland T. Edwards Professor of Engineering and of Applied Physics (Emeritus), helped create the field as a co-inventor of the atomic force microscope two decades ago. Able to resolve objects the size of an atom, the device is now used around the world — and even beyond, as a tool in space exploration.

So when Don Caddes, MS ’62, PhD ’67, and his wife, Sheila, made a gift to the new Nano Center, it was perhaps only fitting they wanted part of it to go toward the construction of a conference facility in honor of Quate. Caddes had always been struck by Quate’s ability to bring people together to tackle problems.

“He’s an inspiring guy,” says Caddes. “He’s the antithesis of the lonely-scientist image that a lot of laypeople have. [Research] is about bouncing ideas off each other, inspiring each other. Quate is just a master of that.”

Caddes has known Quate since he was a graduate student in the latter’s lab four decades ago. Even then Quate was a well-known scientist, noted for his early work on microwave tubes, and Caddes was eager to work with him.

“I ended up being his first PhD student to graduate,” says Caddes with a laugh. “That’s my only claim to fame in the research arena.”

Since graduating, Caddes’s claims to fame in other arenas include executive positions in half a dozen medical-device start-ups, one of which developed a now-ubiquitous intravenous pump. He also spent eight years as president and chief operating officer of Accuray, manufacturers of the CyberKnife, a noninvasive radiosurgery robot invented by John R. Adler, Jr., a professor of neurosurgery at Stanford.

Caddes’s career has made him keenly aware of the importance of cutting-edge research of the kind conducted all around him when

he was a student at Stanford’s Edward L. Ginzton Laboratory. The Nano Center will be modeled after the Ginzton Lab, renowned over the last 50 years for a seemingly endless flood of innovations in microwave and radiation technology, lasers, superconductors, fiber optics, biomedical imaging, and much more. Caddes saw making a gift to the Nano Center as a way of perpetuating what he calls “the mystique of the Ginzton Lab.”

The Nano Center will enable science and technology research at the nanoscale — a billionth of

a meter. Some researchers are even working with and fabricating individual atoms. The center will be used by researchers throughout the university and has the potential to advance any number of disciplines. Potential applications for the research range from new drugs to new semiconductors, from faster DNA sequencing to better communication networks, from high-efficiency solar cells to super-strong fibers.

Professor Emeritus Cal Quate, MS ’47, PhD ’50 (left) has been honored through a gift from former student Don Caddes, MS ’62, PhD ’67.

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“He’s an inspiring guy…

the anthesis of the lonely

scientist.” Don Caddes on

Cal Quate, who is known

for sparking collaborations

among fellow scientists.

Enlight Foundation Sparks a Bright Future for Chinese Students Philanthropists Yongping Duan and Xin Liu were educated in China, and neither of them studied at Stanford. But both appreciate the value — and cost — of a Stanford education.

“We had free tuition when we went to college, but now these things have changed,” says Liu. “We understand financial aid, how critical it is. Stanford is doing a great job extending more and more financial aid to more and more students. It’s been a very positive

experience working with Stanford through the matching-fund program.”

Through their Enlight Foundation, in addition to an undergraduate scholarship, the couple has given the School of Engineering $500,000 to establish a graduate fellowship for Chinese students. The gift is being matched one to

one by Dean Jim Plummer. New graduate fellowships are a major priority for the School of Engineering during The Stanford Challenge.

Duan, now in his mid-40s, was an entrepreneur in southern China starting in the late 1980’s. He founded a pair of consumer-electronics companies, Subor and BBK, that have become two of the best-known brands in China. Liu, his wife, worked for a dozen years as a journalist, including three years in some of the poorer parts of rural China. The couple now lives in Palo Alto but is devoted to helping Chinese students with their education, both back home and in the United States, through scholarships and fellowships.

“The kids now in China, the talent is just amazing,” Liu says. “They have many more resources to learn English and get to know the world, so when they come here they obviously know much more than when we came. Even

without the help, I’m sure they’d come in some way. But we think our scholarship and fellowship will help make their experience in the United States more enjoyable. They can spend more time getting to know their colleagues instead of

having to work in restaurants.”Xin Liu and Yongping Duan

Al Macovski, PhD ’68, pictured with his wife, Addie, holds more than 150 patents. They have been loyal Stanford donors for years.

Seeing Problems in New Ways: the Macovski ProfessorshipAlbert Macovski, PhD ’68, has been called “the most inventive person at Stanford.”

That’s a pretty high standard to meet, but there’s certainly a convincing case to be made for Macovski, the Canon USA Professor of Engineering (Emeritus). A pioneer in medical imaging, Macovski holds more than 150 patents for inventions, most of which he developed during his nearly four decades at Stanford.

Macovski and his wife, Addie, have been loyal donors to Stanford for many years. And now they’ve chosen to endow a chair, the Addie and Al Macovski Professorship. Preference for chairholders will go to faculty in bioengineering or “bioengineering applications.” Macovski is, naturally, particularly interested in supporting the medical-imaging program, which he was instrumental in bringing to Stanford in 1971.

“Both Addie and I come from very humble surroundings,” Macovski says, but adds: “I’ve been fortunate enough to get some significant patent royalty money, and I couldn’t think of a better way to [make a gift to Stanford] than to endow a chair in the general area of bioengineering, in the hopes that the program would continue to flourish.”

The cutting-edge field of bioengineering is a key component of The Stanford Challenge. Medical-imaging research specifically is expected to lead the way to new treatments and even cures for many illnesses, including cancer.

Macovski has conducted imaging research since earning his undergraduate degree from the City College of New York in 1950. But at first his chosen field was seemingly far removed from medicine: He worked at RCA and SRI International on color television technology, and he holds a patent for the widely used single-tube color camera.

After completing his electrical engineering PhD at Stanford, he became increasingly interested in medical applications for imaging technology. In 1972 he was given a then highly unusual joint appointment in both the School of Engineering (in the electrical engineering department) and the School of Medicine (radiology).

“I guess I wanted to do something that would have a more significant impact on society in general, rather than consumer electronics,” he says.

Macovski has certainly made that impact. He has made important improvements to medical-imaging systems ranging from X-rays and ultrasound to computerized axial tomography and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). One invention, for instance, enables medical professionals to use ultrasound not just to see organs but to see inside them and analyze their functioning. Another allows MRIs to image the flow of blood in an area of the body based solely on the motion of the blood, not on foreign substances injected into the body.

Macovski’s inventions have also helped greatly reduce the cost of enormously expensive imaging systems, making them more accessible around the world. Even in retirement, he continues to conduct research at Stanford on lower-cost MRI machines as well as heart-imaging systems.

He literally wrote the book on the field, as the author of the textbook “Medical Imaging Systems.” He and his admirers agree his secret is his ability to take a step back from existing technology and rethink what can be done with it.

“That was always my way: to invent my way out of problems rather than engineer my way out of them,” he says, adding that in engineering “there’s more of a tendency to refine rather than to back away and see if there’s a better way to do it.”

This creative approach to problems is something he says he tried to pass on to his students over the years. His wife, Addie, says she was always impressed with his teaching style. Over the years, she and her husband have grown close to many of his students, some of whom are now professors at Stanford themselves. She says that has given them strong bonds with Stanford.

“He encouraged students and respected them a in a way that I didn’t see generally,” she says. “He was extremely loved because of his style of teaching. He gives them guidance and then — he makes a joke of it — tries to ‘get out of their way’.”

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Enlight Foundation Sparks a Bright Future for Chinese Students Making a gift to the School of Engineering felt right to them, says Duan, because Stanford “is a neighbor and a good university” and because the couple is excited about the innovative research being spurred by The Stanford Challenge, particularly the green-energy work that will be conducted in the new Jerry Yang and Akiko Yamazaki Environment and Energy Building.

Duan is well-known in China both for his business success at a young age, first as an entrepreneur and then as an investor, and, increasingly, for his philanthropy. He has even been called the “Chinese Warren Buffett,” a comparison he says is quite mistaken.

“I know something about investment, but my understanding of investment is still far from Warren Buffett’s,” he says. “So I don’t really like that name. It makes me nervous.”

Duan does say that Buffett, currently the world’s richest person, is one of his investment heroes. In 2006, Duan won a chance to meet with Buffett through a charity auction hosted by eBay. His winning bid was $620,100, which entitled Duan and his wife to have lunch with the stock-market guru and philanthropist, and to invite six others along.

Both Duan and Liu enjoyed the lunch and found Buffett a gracious host with valuable investment advice. But what impressed them most had nothing to do with business. It had to do with their common interest in helping the next generation.

“The most valuable advice he gave was about children,” says Liu. “He said the most important job in your life is to be a good parent. And we hope we can do that.”

The couple seems under no illusion that raising kids — theirs are ages 6 and 9 — can be as challenging and potentially thankless a job as any business career or philanthropic work.

“We’re trying to be their heroes,” Liu says with a laugh. “We don’t think it’s going to happen.”

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Malloys Make Gift with a View to the Future, LiterallyNeither George nor Marian Malloy holds a degree from the Stanford School of Engineering. That didn’t stop them, though, from making a significant contribution to the school and the new Science and Engineering Quad (SEQ), through a building gift to the Jerry Yang and Akiko Yamazaki Environment and Energy Building (Y2E2).

Marian Malloy graduated from Stanford in 1954 with a degree in social service, George in 1950 with a degree in biological sciences. After Marian’s graduation, they married and returned to Stockton, California, where they both had been raised. There, they raised their own family, built a life, and were very active in local philanthropy, including helping to fund an undergraduate Stanford scholarship for students from the area.

It was not until George’s last reunion, however, that the two started thinking about a more permanent legacy at Stanford. They were inspired by President John L. Hennessy’s description of the interdisciplinary thrust of The Stanford Challenge. Further discussions about Stanford’s needs during the campaign led to a decision to help fund a building.

“We wanted to support the university’s highest priorities,” says Marian.

Y2E2 made for a very appealing giving opportunity for the couple. Interdisciplinary by design, the building houses faculty and students from civil and environmental engineering, law, and public policy, among other disciplines. Building residents have the opportunity to interact with colleagues outside of their normal area of focus, resulting in collaborations that would otherwise be unlikely to occur.

The Malloys’ gift of $1,000,000 named a terrace on the third floor of Y2E2, on the south side of the building, near the office of Dick Luthy, chair of the civil and environmental engineering department. Luthy is a big fan of the space.

“Already,” he says, “the Malloy Terrace has become one of the favorite gathering places in the building, both for those of us who work there, as well as for the rest of the School of Engineering.

Luthy adds that, “The Malloy Terrace is also a great place to watch the construction of the new School of Engineering Center and Nano Center buildings.”

Once the rest of SEQ is completed, the Malloy Terrace will offer a grand view of the new east-west mall joining SEQ with the historic Main Quad, and will remain as a lasting tribute of the Malloys’ lifelong fondness for and relationship with Stanford.

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Message from the Dean

Stanford Engineering Gatherings

Editor: Dana Padden Thomas, ’80

Writer: William Friar, ’85, MA ’87

Design: Barbara McCain and Denise Gross

For additional information regarding The Stanford Challenge, please contact Laura Breyfogle, Senior Associate Dean of External Relations, at 650.725.1584, or laura.breyfogle@stanford.edu

engineering-thestanfordchallenge.stanford.edu

Looking towards the Main Quad from the Malloy Terrace on the third floor of the Y2E2 Building.

2 Engineering Priorities

© 2008 by the Board of Trustees of Leland Stanford Junior University. Reproduction in whole or in part without permission of the publisher is prohibited. The Stanford School of Engineering’s version of the Stanford Benefactor is a publication of the Stanford School of Engineering. Please direct inquiries to Dana Thomas at 650.724.6253 or dana.thomas@stanford.edu.