Stanford University
 
Sandy Pentland

Sandy Pentland

Visiting Scholar

Alex `Sandy’ Pentland directs MIT’s Human Dynamics Laboratory and the MIT Media Lab Entrepreneurship Program, co-leads the World Economic Forum Big Data and Personal Data initiatives, and is a founding member of the Advisory Boards for Nissan, Motorola Mobility, Telefonica, and a variety of start-up firms. He has previously helped create and direct MIT’s Media Laboratory, the Media Lab Asia laboratories at the Indian Institutes of Technology, and Strong Hospital’s Center for Future Health. 

In 2012 Forbes named Sandy one of the `seven most powerful data scientists in the world’, along with Google founders and the CTO of the United States, and in 2013 he won the McKinsey Award from Harvard Business Review.  He is among the most-cited computational scientists in the world, and a pioneer in computational social science, organizational engineering, wearable computing (Google Glass), image understanding, and modern biometrics. His research has been featured in Nature, Science, and Harvard Business Review, as well as being the focus of TV features on BBC World, Discover and Science channels.  His most recent book is `Honest Signals,’ published by MIT Press. 

Over the years Sandy has advised more than 50 PhD students. Almost half are now tenured faculty at leading institutions, with another one-quarter leading industry research groups and a final quarter founders of their own companies.

Sandy’s research group and entrepreneurship program have spun off more than 30 companies to date, three of which are publicly listed and several that serve millions of poor in Africa and South Asia. Recent spin-offs have been featured in publications such as the Economist and the New York Times, as well as winning a variety of prizes from international development organizations. 

 
Rob Reich

Rob Reich

Affiliated Faculty

Rob Reich is professor of political science and, by courtesy, professor of philosophy and at the Graduate School of Education, at Stanford University.

He is the director of the Center for Ethics in Society and co-director of the Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society (publisher of the Stanford Social Innovation Review), both at Stanford University. He is the author most recently of Just Giving: Why Philanthropy is Failing Democracy and How It Can Do Better (Princeton University Press, 2018) and Philanthropy in Democratic Societies: History, Institutions, Values (edited with Chiara Cordelli and Lucy Bernholz, University of Chicago Press, 2016). He is also the author of several books on education: Bridging Liberalism and Multiculturalism in American Education (University of Chicago Press, 2002) and Education, Justice, and Democracy (edited with Danielle Allen, University of Chicago Press, 2013).

Rob’s current work focuses on ethics, public policy, and technology, and he serves as associate director of the Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence initiative at Stanford. He is the recipient of multiple teaching awards, including the Walter J. Gores award, Stanford’s highest honor for teaching. Reich was a sixth grade teacher at Rusk Elementary School in Houston, Texas before attending graduate school. He is a board member of the magazine Boston Review, of Giving Tuesday, and at the Spencer Foundation.

Rob is a sought-after public speaker and writes frequently for a general audience in publications such as The New York TimesWashington Post, Wired, and Chronicle of Philanthropy. See more of his public appearances on the Just Giving page.

Affiliations

  • Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence, Stanford Graduate School of Education, Stanford Center for Ethics in Society, Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society
 
Gregory Rosston

Gregory Rosston

Affiliated Faculty

Gregory Rosston is director of the Public Policy program at Stanford University, the Gordon Cain Senior Fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research, and professor of economics (by courtesy).

He teaches economics and public policy courses on competition policy and strategy, economic policy analysis, and writing and rhetoric. 

Gregory served as deputy chief economist at the Federal Communications Commission working on the implementation of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 and helped to design and implement the first ever spectrum auctions in the United States. In 2011, he served as Senior Economist for Transactions for the Federal Communications Commission for the proposed AT&T-T-Mobile transaction. He co-chaired the Economy, Globalization and Trade committee for the 2008 Obama campaign and was a member of the Obama transition team on economic agency review and energy policy. He also served as a member and co-chair of the Department of Commerce Spectrum Management Advisory Committee from 2010 – 2014.

Gregory has written extensively on the application of economics to telecommunications issues. He has advised companies and governments regarding auctions in the United States and other countries and served as a consultant to various organizations including the World Bank and the Federal Communications Commission, and as a board member and advisor to high technology, financial, and startup companies in the areas of auctions, business strategy, antitrust and regulation. He serves as chairman of the board of the Stanford Federal Credit Union, as a board member of the Nepal Youth Foundation, and as an advisory board member of Sustainable Conservation and the Technology Policy Institute.

Gregory received his PhD in economics from Stanford University and his A.B. with honors in economics from University of California at Berkeley.

Affiliations

  • Gordon Cain Senior Fellow, SIEPR Director, Public Policy Program, and Professor of Economics (by courtesy)
 
Kathryn Shaw

Kathryn Shaw

Affiliated Faculty

Kathryn Shaw is the Ernest C. Arbuckle Professor of Economics at the Stanford Graduate School of Business and a senior fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research.

In recent work, Shaw evaluates the importance of bosses in improving the productivity of their subordinates. She (and her co-authors) show that a good boss can markedly improve his subordinate’s productivity now and into the future as the worker moves on. Shaw has also developed an interest in entrepreneurship, showing that serial entrepreneurs develop intangible capital that they take with them as they move from their first firm to a new more productive firm. In earlier work that has been published in the American Economic Review and Management Science, she and her colleagues evaluate the effectiveness of complementary teamwork practices in the steel industry. She has also focused on the performance gains from new information technologies and the changes in management strategy towards product customization that enhance returns to investment. In related work on incentives in franchising, she shows how the optimal use of franchise contracts can increase brand value for franchise companies. Her research has been extensively funded by the National Science Foundation, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the Russell Sage and Rockefeller Foundations, and the Department of Labor.

In 2001, Shaw received the Columbia University award for the best paper on international business, and in 1998, she was honored as the recipient of the Minnesota Award for Employment Research for the best paper in 1997-98 on the topic of employment issues. She held a Stanford Graduate School of Business Trust Faculty Fellow in 2005-2006. She has been the recipient of the Xerox Research Chair, has served on a Research Panel of the NSF, and was an Editor of the Review of Economics and Statistics. At Carnegie Mellon University, Shaw received the Award for Sustained Teaching Excellence, the Economics Department Teaching Award, was Chair of the Faculty Senate and was Head of the Department of Industrial Management.

Affiliations

  • Professor of Economics at the Graduate School of Business, Stanford University.

 
Melissa Valentine

Melissa Valentine

Affiliated Faculty

Melissa (Mav) Valentine is an associate professor at Stanford University in the Management Science and Engineering Department. Recently tenured, Melissa is spending her Sabbatical year as the inaugural Sabbatical Scholar at Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence, studying how ML is changing work and organizations. She and collaborators have received several best paper awards for research in both management and HCI conferences. Her work has been covered in the New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Harvard Business Review, Sloan Management Review, Wired, Fast Company, and The Financial Times. Prof Valentine holds a bachelor’s degree from Stanford University, a master’s degree from NYU, and a Ph.D. from Harvard University. She was recognized with an NSF CAREER award in 2019.

 
Shoshana Vasserman

Shoshana Vasserman

Affiliated Faculty

Assistant Professor of Economics, Stanford Graduate School of Business

Shoshana Vasserman’s work leverages theory, empirics, and modern computation to better understand the equilibrium implications of policies and proposals that involve information revelation, risk sharing, and commitment. Recent projects span a number of policy settings, including public procurement, pharmaceutical pricing, and auto-insurance.

 
Robb Willer

Robb Willer

Affiliated Faculty

Robb Willer’s teaching and research focus on social forces that bring people together (e.g., morality, altruism), forces that divide them (e.g., fear, prejudice), and domains of social life that feature the complex interplay of the two (e.g., hierarchies, politics).

The primary area of his research looks at the social and psychological forces shaping Americans’ political attitudes. He has a particular interest in techniques for overcoming polarization to build political consensus. He studies how political psychology findings can be applied to construct persuasive political messages.

Much of his political research suggests that attitudes and ideology are, in part, products of individuals’ efforts to manage the threats they face in everyday life. For example, he has found that masculinity threats can influence men’s attitudes towards war and gay rights. In other research, he finds a link between white Americans’ views of welfare programs and the Tea Party and their perception that white advantage in the U.S. is declining.

​The other main area of his research looks at how altruism, morality, and reputation systems promote cooperation and generosity. In this research, he finds that many aspects of social life that are often seen as antisocial or malicious – such as gossip, moral judgments, and status hierarchies – are fundamental to social order. He also studies the dynamics of status and prestige, with a focus on the social psychological forces that stabilize hierarchies of rank. Recently, he has studied the role that emotions play in the moral judgments people form about one another, and how those judgments can promote cooperation and solidarity in groups.

In his work, he employs whatever research method offers the most leverage on a given research question. As a result, he has used a variety of methods, including laboratory and field experiments, surveys, archival research, social network analysis, physiological measurement, agent-based modeling, and direct observation of behavior.

His research has appeared primarily in general science, sociology, psychology, and organizations journals, including the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Nature Human Behaviour, American Sociological Review, American Journal of Sociology, Annual Review of Sociology, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Psychological Science, Administrative Science Quarterly, and Proceedings of the Royal Society of London: Biological Sciences.

His research has also received widespread media coverage, including from the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, the Washington Post, Science, Nature, Time, U.S. News and World Report, Scientific American, Harper’s, Slate, CNN, NBC Nightly News, The Today Show, and National Public Radio.

Willer was the 2009 recipient of the Golden Apple Teaching award, the only teaching award given by UC-Berkeley’s student body.

 
Gabriel Weintraub

Gabriel Weintraub

Affiliated Faculty

Gabriel Weintraub is an associate professor of operations, information, and technology at Stanford Graduate School of Business.

He holds a PhD in management science and engineering and a MA in economics, both from Stanford University. His research is in the areas of data science, operations, management science, industrial organization, and market design. Gabriel is particularly interested in developing mathematical, computational, and econometric models to study the economics and the optimization of online platforms. After his PhD, he spent 10 years as faculty at Columbia Business School.

Gabriel is a recipient of the IFORS Prize for Operations Research in Development 2002, given every three years to the best application of operations research/management science in a developing country. He also received the MSOM Young Scholar Prize 2015 that recognizes exceptional young researchers who have made outstanding contributions to scholarship in operations management. Gabriel has advised and worked with several online platforms.

Affiliations

  • Associate Professor, Stanford Graduate School of Business
Stanford University