Stanford MS&E: Stories & Voices

Mike shares his decision making process after learning that his existing PhD advisor was a new hire at Stanford, and discusses the applied research which helps provide the 'why' in health outcome predictions. (Spoiler alert: It was also one of the deciding factors for his cross-country move). This episode is part of our series, MS&E graduating student profiles, that shares stories of o...

Zahra recounts her unexpected decision to pursue a PhD and shares the surprising results of her research, which blended her passion for education, excitement for AI, and interest in entrepreneurship to reveal results that could have a significant impact for the refugee community. This episode is part of our series, MS&E graduating student profiles, that shares stories of our students as they p...

Mark describes how a 7,500 mile bike ride exploring the full length of South America enhanced his understanding of MS&E concepts and helped him burn in and rack up epiphanies about the important things in a life already rich in international work and experiences. Mark's cycling blog: nothingbutmotion.com This episode is part of our series, MS&E graduating student profiles, that shares...

Poorva discusses how a lifetime spent dabbling in different areas of interest and a desire to not get comfortable being too comfortable led her to seek independence in a new country and position herself to pivot to a career spent discovering the best ways to solve problems. This episode is part of our series, MS&E graduating student profiles, that shares stories of our students as they prepare...

Lauryn discusses swapping her rural farm town for The Farm, and shares how she found a place for her passion for agriculture in the applicability of the MS&E skills and tools that she was able to put into practice alongside her first-place award winning team for Senior Project. This episode is part of our series, MS&E graduating student profiles, that shares stories of our students as they...

Ayotunde examines how his international family perspectives and insatiable intellectual curiosity led to his core values of autonomy and agency, how he took full advantage of the liberal arts breadth of the Stanford curriculum in his quest to find his academic home, and how and why he'll be pursuing 'finance for good' as he starts his career. This episode is part of our series, MS&E graduating...

Challenge and Impact.  Professor Hinds wanted to be asked tough questions, and that led her to find a home in academia after working in industry. She shares stories from her journey to Stanford, including how her research in management informs her leadership as the Fortinet Founders Chair of MS&E and how the department has increasingly emphasized social impact as it has grown and evolved.

Exploring and Foreshadowing. Yeganeh explains how her love of applied math brought her to the operations research area of MS&E and how multidisciplinary exploring sparked an interest in modeling epidemic infection spread a full year before the COVID-19 outbreak, as well as how her work helped schools in Los Angeles return to in-person teaching, and her future plans for continued research for s...

Curiosity and Conversation. Shreyas shares how his intellectual curiosity, love for getting to know people, and multicultural background led him to not just explore interdisciplinary academic work at the intersection of AI, health and society, but also create the Beagle Cafe, a salon for ideas and stories. Based out of his Stanford dorm room, the conversation project brought together hundreds of s...

Friendship and Involvement. Nathan talks about how his involvement in student organizations—especially since COVID-19 meant that it was his sophomore year before he arrived on campus—has been a key element of his time at Stanford and in MS&E, leading to enhanced leadership and entrepreneurial skills, lifelong friendships, and dream teams for group coursework, all culminating with their (ultima...

Inspiring and Teaching. Josh describes how his interest in criminal justice, data science, and statistics brought him to MS&E, where he's been able to tap into his teenage years’ tutoring background to fulfill his love of teaching and mentoring students, as well as how he embraces the challenge of making classes exciting and engaging by including real world data collection and showing the...

Networking and Empowerment. Daniela discusses the extensive benefits to her sense of empowerment, initiative, and productivity that came from a change in perspective around career-related networking and developing an understanding that it's about building relationships and friendships, as well as from being intentional about setting aside non-negotiable self-care time each day as she juggled w...

Confidence and Challenge. Belle (2024 PAC-12 student athlete of the year for women's rowing) discusses how multiple aspects of her rowing career, and embracing challenges and difficult situations, encouraged the emergence of her self confidence and strong leadership skills. She also describes why it's so important for young girls to maintain their involvement in sports and find mentors as...

Quantifying and Understanding. Brian discusses the value of multi-disciplinary work and how he has combined economics, computer science, and the natural sciences with MS&E to quantify the threats of extreme temperatures and flooding on the economic risks and prospects for companies in various industries, and how an understanding of these can inform mitigation efforts as well as create a compet...

Impact and Meaning. Isabelle shares how her work examining major healthcare issues such as equitable vaccine allocation and the opioid epidemic from an operations research lens has been able to have an impact in decision making and policy development, and how she takes meaning from knowing how many lives can be saved. She also discusses her journey from childhood hours spent in her dads office at...

Values and Principles. Shreya talks about how her exposure as a teen to the challenges faced by trafficking victims led her to co-found the Foundation for Girls with her sister, and how her values and principles continue to inform her work, decisions and future plans. Shreya shares how her personal ‘board of directors’ has guided, advised and mentored her as she’s explored a wealth of internships...

Community and Flexibility. Jeff shares how and why he became an advocate for building community amongst the Honors Cooperative Program (HCP) students, aided in part by the flexibility offered by varying structure options in the degree program. Jeff discusses the realities of juggling work and study while also raising a family, putting his studies and the range of feedback sources into immediate us...

Discovery and Blending. Kelly talks about her discovery that she could complete her degree while working, and discusses how invaluable this opportunity to study while managing projects with the Microsoft Azure Space team has been for her. She also explores how she is leaning into her imperfect perfectionism as she blends her passions for engineering and all things theatrical.

Initiative and Relationships. JC discusses how joining the Fleet Street acapella group and becoming a practice player and manager with the womens basketball team were two of the best decisions he made at Stanford, how his initiative in reaching out to people for informational conversations helped guide him into MS&E and onto his career path as he embarks on his next steps, and how building rel...

Quinn shares how his love for mathematics and teaching led him to pursue research at Stanford, and that he plans to pursue a career in academia after graduating. During the UDR program, Quinn worked with his mentor, MS&E PhD student Josh Grossman, on research in the Stanford Computational Policy Lab in MS&E.

Romuald shares how he gravitates toward fields in which there are a multitude of ways to solve one problem, and how that interest led him to his major in Computer Science. During the UDR program, Romuald worked with his mentor, MS&E professor Johan Ugander, to study the correlations between demographics and the effects of implementing ranked choice voting.

Bethelehem shares how, growing up in the Bay Area, technology and business were always at the front of her mind. Now, Bethelehem is a junior majoring in Symbolic Systems with a concentration in computational social science. She also plans to pursue an MS&E coterminal master’s degree with a concentration in technology and engineering management. During the UDR program, Bethelehem worked with MS...

Marco shares how his lifelong love for creation led him to pursue both music and MS&E at Stanford, and how he utilized skills from both disciplines to make the best out of the disruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. Marco describes how a desire for interdisciplinary studies led him to MS&E, and how he plans to utilize the skills he learned to innovate and enhance both his artistry and...

Hannah shares how her desire to create impact for large numbers of people led her to study operations research. She describes her research on eliminating bias in algorithms driven by artificial intelligence, how she blends the study of technical systems with the study of the people involved with those systems, and her plans to continue in academia as a professor at Columbia Business School.

Giovanni explains how his early experiences in computer science and math paved the way for his interest in engineering. That path led him to study infectious disease outbreaks as an undergraduate, which in turn positioned him to be at the forefront of COVID-19 research when the pandemic began. Giovanni also shares advice for current students and how he found work/life balance as a PhD student at S...