Stanford Radio

We grumble about paying taxes, but appreciate the roads, bridges, safety net, and more that they pay for. But is the U.S. tax system fair? Should the rich pay more, and the poor pay less?

Guest Glenn Kleiman outlines the main levers for changing school systems for the better.

The Future of Everything with Russ Altman:

E156 | Simona Onori: How ready are we for our electric future?

An expert in energy resources engineering says “battery biopsies” are key to a tomorrow filled with electric vehicles.`

It now seems more certain than ever that the world will make the all-important transition to electric vehicles, but that shift raises important questions about global preparedness.

The world is going to need a lot of batteries to make it happen and engineers are rightly concerned about everything from the availability of raw materials to how many miles can I drive before I run out of juice?

Simona Onori is an electrical engineer by training and a professor of energy resources engineering as well as an expert in creating computer models of what that electric future will look like. For instance, she is developing mathematical battery management systems that assess the internal chemistry of a battery to predict how much life is left in it, how safe it is and, yes, how long until that next charge is needed.

Onori likens her analyses to “battery biopsies” that can help engineers and everyday drivers get more life out of their batteries. Don’t fret, our electric future is in good hands, Onori reassures listeners in this episode of Stanford Engineering’s The Future of Everything podcast with host Russ Altman. Listen and subscribe here.

The Future of Everything with Russ Altman:

E155 | Irene Lo: How math makes markets fairer

An expert in algorithms discusses how the changing meaning of the word “market” is being leveraged to achieve important social goals.

Engineer Irene Lo studies markets, but not traditional marketplaces based in cash.

Instead, she studies markets for goods/resources that place a high value on social goods like diversity, fairness and equity.

Thus, Lo came to help San Francisco create an algorithm to assign kids more fairly to public schools across geographic, social, racial and economic boundaries. As it turns out, math is just the first step. The most challenging part was getting families to trust in the system, begetting a multi-year community engagement effort.

Lo is now turning her attention to other markets with social impact, like her work on the system that places medical students in residency programs across the country or one trying to make the palm oil supply chain fairer for farmers.

Listen in as Irene Lo explains the changing face of markets to host Russ Altman in this episode of Stanford Engineering’s The Future of Everything podcast. Listen and subscribe here.

The 2020 Election continues to have an unprecedented impact on the country, the “big lie” about fraud spread by some media outlets and used by at least 14 states as justification to undo key election laws. Yet since Trump was banned from popular social media platforms, his voice is less prevalent in mainstream America. In this episode, we hear from election law expert Nate Persily about Facebook’s oversight board and its decision to continue the ban on Trump for another two years. Nate also discusses efforts by state legislators to curtail voting laws and why he is sounding the alarm bells for a threatened American democracy.

The Future of Everything with Russ Altman:

E 154 | Joseph DeSimone: How 3D printing is changing medicine

With growing precision and new materials, 3D printing stands to reshape health care.

Oft-heralded 3-dimensional printers can build objects ranging from simple spoons to advanced running shoes.

While those objects are usually made very slowly, the latest printing technologies portend a new era of 3D printing in real-time for use in health care.

The possibilities are endless, says Joseph DeSimone, who is an expert in translational medicine – the field of transferring promising technological breakthroughs into real-world products. He says printers he developed have led to the first FDA-approved 3D printed dentures, ultra-thin microneedles that make it easier and more effective to deliver vaccines, and even implantable chemotherapy devices that kill tumors while reducing side effects for patients.

From dentistry to oncology, the promise of 3D printed medical devices is only just emerging, as DeSimone explains in this episode of Stanford Engineering’s The Future of Everything podcast with host Russ Altman. Listen and subscribe here.

Peri Hansen, Stanford alum, shares how executive search works and how best to position yourself for career success.

Strategic career planning for upper-level executive recruitment, retention, and leadership development.

Originally aired on SiriusXM on June 12.

The Future of Everything with Russ Altman:

E153 | Tina Hernandez-Boussard: How data improves the quality of health care

A specialist in bioinformatics explains that the tools of data science are delivering insights into health care outcomes and improving care as never before.

Tina Hernandez-Boussard is an expert in biomedical informatics who says a new era of understanding the real outcomes of our health care systems is on the horizon thanks to big data, artificial intelligence, and the growing availability of electronic health data. She says that the combination of these tools and data holds the promise of providing never-before-possible insights into whether health procedures truly improve patient quality of life and for which populations.

With these tools, she says, her field can peer into the “real-world” details hidden in the medical records, even going so far as to use natural language processing to analyze the freeform notes and emails to and from the provider. The examples are virtually limitless: matching health records against data from wearable devices to know when a knee patient is not getting enough physical exercise, cross-referencing prescriptions to learn whether a patient might be susceptible to adverse drug combinations, or even revealing undisclosed medical events such as past mild heart attacks.

It’s all there in the data, waiting for us to explore, as Tina Hernandez-Boussard tells bioengineer and host Russ Altman in this episode of Stanford Engineering’s The Future of Everything podcast. Listen and subscribe here.

The Future of Everything with Russ Altman:

E 152 | Nate Persily: How to restore faith in America’s elections

Our recent election focused attention on the mechanics of democracy as never before. An expert in election law sizes things up and suggests ways to regain trust in the institution.

Nate Persily is a professor at Stanford Law School and an expert in election law.

He sees the most recent presidential election as a fundamental change in the way Americans vote. For the first time ever, the majority of voters cast their ballot by mail, rather than at a polling place. It “was an earthquake,” Persily says, speaking metaphorically about the 2020 election’s profound implications for future elections.

But not all agree it was a success. Republicans and Democrats are further apart than ever in their beliefs as to whether the recent presidential election was free and fair. Addressing polarization in beliefs regarding the fairness of the election will be very difficult. Until leaders come together in a bipartisan fashion to affirm the legitimacy of an election winner, reform will not be able to do much to address this underlying problem.

Failing that, we need to bolster the institutional position of all nonpartisan election administrators who are placing the public interest over party, as Persily tells host Russ Altman in this episode of Stanford Engineering’s The Future of Everything podcast. Listen and subscribe here.

The Future of Everything with Russ Altman:

E151 | Krishna Shenoy: How brain-computer connections could end paralysis

By listening into the chatter among a handful of brain cells, an expert in brain-computer interfaces says a future in which people with paralysis control computers with their thoughts is within reach.

Whether by injury or disease, paralysis has afflicted humans through the ages.

Only now have science and technology converged to a point where scientists can contemplate a day when computers and the human mind can communicate directly to restore a certain degree of independence to people with debilitating spinal injuries and other physical conditions that impede or prevent movement.

Electrical engineer Krishna Shenoy is an expert in such brain-computer interfaces and has built machinery by which humans can control the movement of computer cursors with mere thoughts. Using small chips implanted in the brain itself, Shenoy “listens intelligently” to the electrical “chatter” among a hundred or so of the 100 billion neurons of the brain’s motor cortex and then translates the meaning into language a computer can understand. In this way, Shenoy has allowed a man with paralysis to “write” his thoughts at some 17 words per minute, a record more than double the previous standard.

Work remains, but the future of brain-computer interfaces is on the horizon as Krishna Shenoy tells us on this episode of Stanford Engineering’s The Future of Everything podcast with host Russ Altman. Listen and subscribe here.