The stuff of screams.
Need help getting into the Halloween spirit? Heather Langenkamp, ’86, has been here for you since 1984. She played teenager Nancy Thompson in the original A Nightmare on Elm Street, defeating Freddy Krueger as a new and empowered kind of heroine. A “scream queen” role may have been seen as a kiss of death for actresses in the early ’80s, but Langenkamp loved the script. And anyway, she told Stanford magazine, “I thought, ‘Oh, no one will ever see it.’” Forty years later, the film is still heralded as one of the all-time classic horror flicks and Nancy Thompson representative of a new kind of Final Girl—one who fights back. These days, Langenkamp is back to auditioning after a stint on the Netflix series The Midnight Club. And she embraces her horrific roots. “I love to scream,” she says. “It’s great for stress relief.”
Diagnosing physician burnout.
For something truly scary, look no further than the state of burnout among physicians. Clinician burnout is thought to affect nearly half of all U.S. doctors and cost billions in turnover and reduced work. Researchers used machine learning to analyze electronic medical records, looking for factors that could help predict burnout. The best predictor of burnout, they found, was inbox burden (an overwhelming number of messages that required a response or action). The next-best predictor was having medical notes written by team members rather than by the physician. (Many physicians later edit them and feel it would be faster to write their notes themselves.) The research provides a real-time peek behind the hospital curtain. “You can use evidence from the electronic records to go to higher-risk clinics, identify the largest pain points, and try to generate interventions to prevent burnout,” says Daniel Tawfik, an assistant professor of pediatrics.
New on campus.
Photo: Andrew Brodhead
Goodbye, “churro”; hello, Amulets. Overlooking Meyer Green is the latest installment of Stanford’s Plinth Project, a rotating public art series. Amulets—the work of sculptor and filmmaker Alia Farid—was made from two predominant materials from Iraq: blue faience, a turquoise glaze invented more than 6,000 years ago, and polyester resin, a byproduct of modern-day oil extraction. (Check out images from the installation of the piece.) Now the only question is: What will students nickname this one?
Wild for fire (management).
Stanford has 8,180 acres to its name, including vast swaths of wildland susceptible to fires. With wildfires becoming increasingly frequent and severe in California, Stanford’s land has become a living laboratory for innovation in fire management. Some practices have been used for centuries, like enlisting goats and sheep to chomp away at Stanford’s grassy fire fuel. But others are on the cutting edge: The university recently installed more than two dozen AI-based environmental sensors across its lands to provide early wildfire detection. And earlier this year, a local start-up piloted its BurnBot machine at the Stanford Dish to create fuel breaks in the grasslands. (Watch BurnBot do its thing.) “Many other universities don’t have the land portfolio that we do,” said Cody Hill, associate director of the university’s Resilience and Emergency Response Program. “Stanford is harnessing this opportunity to be good stewards of the land, to be good neighbors, and to test out new technologies.”
But wait, there’s more.
Philip Zimbardo, a Stanford professor emeritus of psychology and a pioneer in the field of social psychology, has died. Best known for the 1971 Stanford Prison Experiment, Zimbardo examined topics including persuasion, shyness, cults, compassion, and heroism—and he lobbied for greater understanding of how evil systems subvert good people.
Justin Grimmer, a professor of political science and senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, and Hoover distinguished visiting fellow Benjamin Ginsberg describe their work to confront election disinformation—including debunking conspiracy theories and challenging falsehoods about voter turnout.
So, you want to be a civil engineer? CJ Porter, ’18, MS ’19, talks about the day-to-day of his job working with water systems.
As nano@Stanford prepared to open the doors to its four open-access facilities earlier this month, site director Debbie Senesky, an associate professor of aeronautics and astronautics and of electrical engineering, explained why very small tech matters.
Photographer George Steinmetz, ’79, spent the past 10 years getting a bird’s-eye view of the world’s food systems. Via drones and his motorized paraglider, he captures the beauty and challenge of feeding 8 billion people in his new book, Feed the Planet: A Photographic Journey to the World’s Food.
Dustin Schroeder, an associate professor of geophysics and of electrical engineering and a member of NASA’s Europa Clipper Mission science team, explains what could be learned from the first detailed investigation of Jupiter’s moon Europa.
Some buildings on campus are stylish (We see you, Lagunita), others are spunky, and still more are stoic. But they all share core family traits that trace back to the grandparents of the Farm, the buildings of the Inner Quad. Got a favorite building on campus? Let us know!
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