RICHARD POWERS, author of ten novels, including The Echo Maker, which won the National Book Award in 2006, will give a reading Wednesday, Feb. 10, at 8 p.m. in Cubberley Auditorium. He’ll also participate in a colloquium Tuesday, Feb. 16,  at 11 a.m. in the Terrace Room of Margaret Jacks Hall. Powers has received numerous honors including a MacArthur Fellowship, a Lannan Literary Award and the James Fenimore Cooper Prize for Historical Fiction. The events, which are sponsored by the Creative Writing Program, are free and open to the public. See the poster at left for more information.

Sikic, right, receives the award from Croatian President Stjepan Mesic at a ceremony in Zagreb last month. Photo courtesy of Branimir Sikic

BRANIMIR SIKIC, professor of medicine in the Division of Oncology, has been awarded the Presidential Medal for Science and Medicine from Croatia’s President Stjepan Mesic. The award recognizes his achievements in cancer research and his contributions to medical education and cancer care and prevention in Croatia.
Sikic also is associate director of the Stanford Cancer Center and is a leading expert in the pharmacology of anticancer drugs. His lab studies mechanisms of drug resistance and predictive therapeutic biomarkers; his clinical research team develops new cancer therapies. Sikic, who called the award “unexpected and wonderful,” has strong ties to Croatia. His family emigrated from the country to the United States when he was 8 years old, and many family members still live and practice medicine there. (He counts 16 physicians in his extended family.) He received the award during a Jan. 19 ceremony in Zagreb. The full announcement is on the School of  Medicine’s news website.

- Michelle Brandt, Stanford School of Medicine

Last year's cake

For some, “survival of the fittest” refers to the question of who will prevail in Sunday’s Super Bowl. But for others, the phrase will be part of the discussions taking place that very afternoon during the Darwin Day celebration on campus Sunday, Feb. 7, from 1 to 5:30 p.m. in the Geology Corner, Building 320, Room 105. Anthropology Professor WILLIAM DURHAM and ROBERT SIEGEL, associate professor (teaching) of microbiology and immunology, will serve as hosts and moderators for the event, which will feature short talks and “evolutionary birthday cake.”

STEPHEN SCHNEIDER, senior fellow at the Woods Institute for the Environment; ARMIN ROSENCRANZ, consulting professor of international relations; MICHAEL MASTRANDREA, assistant consulting professor  at the Woods Institute;  and KRISTIN KUNTZ-DURISETI, a university affiliate in the Biology Department, will be on hand Feb. 9 from 4 to 6 p.m. to sign copies of Climate Change Science and Policy, which they edited.  The event will take place in the Yang and Yamazaki Environment & Energy Building, 473 Via Ortega, Room 101. Books will be available for purchase at a discount. Refreshments will be served.

.

Israel’s Ambassador to the United States, Michael B. Oren, will address the Stanford community on the topic of “The U.S.-Israel Relationship Today: Historical and Personal Perspectives,” at 5:30 pm on Thursday, Feb. 11, at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies Bechtel Conference Center, Encina Hall, 616 Serra Street.  The talk, sponsored by FSI’s Forum on Contemporary Europe and the Consulate General of Israel in San Francisco, is free and open to the community, but attendees must register online by February 7.

Jim Harbaugh

Head Coach JIM HARBAUGH announced Wednesday that 22 high school seniors have signed official letters of intent to play football at Stanford next fall.

The athletes attended high school in 12 states — California (4), Texas (4), Alabama (2), Arizona (2), Colorado (2) and Georgia (2), along with Indiana, Utah, New Jersey, Minnesota, Nevada and Virginia.

By position, the Cardinal added to its roster four linebackers, four offensive lineman, three defensive linemen, three defensive backs, three quarterbacks, two running backs, one tight end, one wide receiver and one kicker. Read their bios.

Staying true to its academic origins, Google has awarded grants to Stanford researchers who work in areas that also are of key interest to the search giant.

Two of the new Google Focused Research Awards have gone to Stanford scientists working in energy efficiency in computing and in online privacy.

Google, which attempts to reduce power consumption in the server farms that handle all those Internet  searches, has awarded the efficiency grant to a group that includes CHRISTOS KOZYRAKIS, associate professor of electrical engineering and of computer science; MARK HOROWITZ, the Yahoo! Founders Professor in the School of Engineering; BENJAMIN LEE, postdoctoral scholar in electrical engineering; NICK MCKEOWN, associate professor of electrical engineering and of computer science; and MENDEL ROSENBLUM, associate professor of computer science and of electrical engineering.

RYAN CALO, a residential fellow at the Center for Internet and Society, has received a grant in the area of privacy.

Students in Associate Professor ERIC BETTINGER’s Economics of Higher Education class were treated on Tuesday to a guest lecture on higher education in Lithuania by ANDRIUS KUBILIUS, prime minister of the Republic of Lithuania.

Andrius Kubilius

Kubilius’ talk, “Innovating Lithuania,” highlighted the economic, geographic and educational assets of the country, the largest and most populous of the Baltic states. Since joining the European Union (EU) in 2004, Lithuania has been one of the fastest growing economies in the EU, but also one of the hardest hit by the recent global recession. About 40 percent of its people have some degree of higher education, says Kubilius, double the EU-15 average.

Students asked Kubilius questions about issues that ranged from the growing challenges Lithuania faces in subsidizing higher education to the effects of globalization to issues of equity and access to higher education institutions.

Kubilius’ stop at Stanford was part of a week-long visit to the Bay Area, New York and Washington to promote Lithuanian business and investment opportunities among leaders of U.S. high-tech and IT companies.

—Amy Yuen, School of Education

Two coeds discussing dating at lunch in the CoHo last week:
“My mom’s so happy. From now on, everybody I bring home will be from Stanford.”

PETER A. STURROCK, professor emeritus of applied physics, has written an autobiographical account of his life as a “conventional scientist” with an unconventional interest in the paranormal.

In A Tale of Two Sciences: Memoirs of a Dissident Scientist, Sturrock recounts the watershed event that propelled him to spend a lifetime studying unorthodox phenomena. On an ordinary autumn day in 1947, Sturrock, then a student studying mathematics at Cambridge University, spied a mysterious round bright-white object moving south along the horizon near the Gog Magog Hills of England. The sighting occurred not long after the Roswell incident had ignited a firestorm in the United States, and Sturrock secretly began to wonder if there was some truth to the idea of UFOs – calling his experience “a profound disturbance to my scientific well-being.”

Sturrock went on to lead a distinguished career as an astrophysicist at Stanford, where he served as director of the Institute for Plasma Research and deputy director of the Center for Space Science and Astrophysics. His book, which examines subjects ranging from extraterrestrial life to reincarnation, attempts to challenge the prevailing attitudes of modern scientists and academics by engaging questions ordinarily dismissed as outlandish or illegitimate – reminding readers that current scientific models of reality are ever fluctuating.

“I have noticed that, when confronted with a new phenomenon … scientists tend to bypass discussion of the evidence in favor of theoretical considerations,” Sturrock writes. “Anomalies should be the life blood of science.”

—Aimee Miles, Stanford News Service intern