School days.
A fresh crop of undergrads arrived on the Farm last week. The Class of 2029 includes 1,870 first-year students from all 50 states as well as 64 countries. At New Student Orientation, Stanford president Jonathan Levin, ’94, told families that open-mindedness is essential on a pluralistic campus. He urged students to create a “culture of dignity,” where people engage with others through dialogue. “In a culture of dignity, there is forgiveness for mistakes,” he said. “Differences of opinion and even of values are an opportunity to learn more about others and perhaps yourself.”
A few days earlier, Stanford welcomed new graduate students. They enjoyed dozens of campus events, including one that the Loop might be willing to take the GRE for: American Football 101. That is, current and former Stanford football players (including general manager Andrew Luck, ’12, MA ’23—and yes, there’s video) on the field, introducing grad students to the rules of the game and the “C-House” through cheers and drills.
In a letter yesterday, Levin and university provost Jenny Martinez welcomed the campus community to fall quarter, writing that Stanford is “a place where we look to the horizon,” and that it has “an enduring north star: to excel in the university’s fundamental mission of research and education.” Critical to that goal, they wrote, is an atmosphere of freedom, pluralism, and support for members of the campus community. In a video interview with undergraduate students yesterday, Levin talked about priorities for the upcoming academic year. And in Stanford magazine, he reflected on his first year as president.
A crisp new AI tool.
Stanford Medicine researchers have developed an artificial intelligence tool to help scientists better plan gene-editing experiments. CRISPR-GPT acts as a gene-editing “copilot” to help researchers generate designs, analyze data, and troubleshoot design flaws. CRISPR is a gene-editing technology used to edit genomes and develop therapies for genetic diseases. But learning to design an experiment with it is complicated and time-consuming. CRISPR-GPT aims to speed up that process, automating parts of an experiment’s design and refinement. “The hope is that CRISPR-GPT will help us develop new drugs in months instead of years,” said Le Cong, an assistant professor of pathology and of genetics, who led the technology’s development.
Class of 2029, now boarding.
Photo: Andrew BrodheadSunny skies, lots of luggage, and hopefully not much turbulence. West Flo Mo residential staff helped first-year undergrads move in with a warm “bon floyage.” Check out the video from frosh move-in day.
The secret lives of algae.
Stanford researchers studied 12 Arctic ice cores and found that single-celled arctic algae, called diatoms, are not dormant under the ice, as previously thought. They’re partying it up—gliding around at temperatures as low as -15 degrees Celsius (5 degrees Fahrenheit), the lowest-temperature movement ever recorded in complex, living cells. What’s more, the mechanism diatoms use to move is the same system that drives human muscle movements. Now, researchers want to find out how that system manages to work in frigid conditions.
Understanding these diatoms is no small matter. “The Arctic is white on top, but underneath, it’s green—absolute pitch green because of the presence of algae,” said Manu Prakash, an associate professor of bioengineering and the senior author on the paper. “This is a significant portion of the food chain and controls what’s happening under ice.” With budget cuts predicted to reduce polar research funding and experts saying the Arctic could be gone within 30 years, Prakash told Stanford Report he feels a sense of urgency to learn as much about the eukaryotic ice capades as possible. “When ecosystems are lost, we lose knowledge about entire branches in our tree of life.”
A school district’s promise.
Just a few miles from Stanford, in the Ravenswood City School District, turmoil has been the status quo for most of the past half century, and test scores are among the lowest in the state: Just 8.6 percent of students read at grade level, and only 6.1 percent perform at or above grade level in math. But when Gina Sudaria, ’98, became the district’s superintendent in 2019, she began laying stepping stones toward stability for the TK–8 district. She established a new strategic plan called the Ravenswood Promise and made literacy a priority for the district’s 1,449 students. At the final board meeting of the 2024-25 school year, Sudaria’s team celebrated internal metrics that showed a positive shift in student performance. “I’m very proud of where we are,” said board vice president Samuel Tavera at the meeting. “This isn’t the Ravenswood of the past, and even of last week.”
The trouble with treating ADHD in preschoolers.
Stanford researchers examined the medical records of nearly 10,000 preschoolers with ADHD and found that 42.2 percent were prescribed medication within 30 days of diagnosis. That goes against recommendations from the American Academy of Pediatrics, which recommends that 4- and 5-year-olds receive six months of behavior therapy prior to considering stimulant medication for ADHD. Therapy has been shown to help parents and their child build skills and establish habits that work better for the child’s brain. It’s prescribed before meds in part because it has a large positive benefit and in part because ADHD medications can cause more side effects in younger patients. Through informal conversations with physicians, researchers developed a theory explaining the break with guidelines. “One important point that always comes up is access to behavioral treatment,” said Yair Bannett, MS ’21, an assistant professor of pediatrics and the study’s lead author. In some cases, families live in regions with few or no therapists; in other cases, insurance fails to cover therapy. Bannett said doctors told researchers that they thought it was better to give medication than to not offer any treatment at all.
But wait, there’s more. . .
Black tie, Cardinal spirit. Alex Gregory, ’92, co-creator of The Studio, won Emmy awards for outstanding comedy series and outstanding writing for a comedy series. Ted Danson, ’70, accepted the Bob Hope Humanitarian Award with his wife, actress Mary Steenburgen.
No stranger to award season, Lucy Shapiro, a professor emerita of developmental biology, received the Lasker-Koshland Special Achievement Award in Medical Science, recognizing her work in establishing systems biology as a branch of science.
After 28 years of work from Stanford Law students in the Environmental Law Clinic, the Sáttítla Highlands National Monument was established earlier this year to protect sacred Indigenous land in Northern California.
Jimmy Kimmel Live! returns to ABC today, although not on all stations. In recent days, associate professor of law Evelyn Douek said the suspension of Kimmel’s program from ABC could amount to “jawboning”—when government officials or regulators pressure private actors to stifle speech. And constitutional law scholar Eugene Volokh, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, wrote last week that while the First Amendment doesn’t constrain private companies, “if the government coerced ABC into suspending the show . . . that would have likely violated the First Amendment.”
Fortunate Sons, a new PBS documentary directed by Peter Jones, ’78, looks at the wealth, vulnerability, and regrets of former students at an elite Los Angeles prep school as they reconnect for their 50th reunion.
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