A Summer of Social Impact Begins

Summer is here! And with it comes an opportunity for our team to support more solutions- and partnership-oriented research on campus and beyond. The Stanford Impact Labs PhD Fellowship, a summer quarter offering, brings together Stanford PhD students from a variety of disciplines who share a similar problem-solving approach: working in partnership with organizations in the public, private, and nonprofit sector. In addition to conducting research for 8 weeks, Fellows engage in a tailored line-up of workshops with Stanford Impact Labs designed to explore pathways to move their research from science to impact.

SIL PhD Fellows come from all sides of campus. This year, we're delighted to welcome students from PhD programs within five of Stanford's seven schools: the School of Humanities & Sciences, Doerr School of Sustainability, Graduate School of Education, School of Engineering, and School of Medicine. The Fellows in our 2025 cohort are pursuing solutions to a broad range of social problems with a diverse set of partners, and we look forward to supporting the progress they will make.

Improving health outcomes and enhancing well-being

Junjie Anderson Lu (faculty mentor Marvin Langston) will work with healthcare partners in the Bay Area to develop a cancer screening tool that improves diagnoses and care for sexual and gender minority populations. Serena Soh (faculty mentor Gabriella Harari) will partner with AI startup Flourish Science and Bay Area community colleges to develop tools to improve mental health services offerings for community college students. In partnership with Indigenous community stakeholders, Jasmyn Burdsall (faculty mentor Lisa Goldman Rosas) will co-create a culturally tailored meals pilot to improve diabetes management and food security. Priscilla Zhao (faculty mentor James Gross) will partner with a global steel production company to design workplace solutions to improve employee wellbeing.

Pursuing local and regional policy partnerships

Sarah-Eve Dill (faculty mentor Jackelyn Hwang) will work with the City of San Jose to identify features of the natural and built environment across its neighborhoods that can support solutions for the city’s unhoused population. Mavis Stone (faculty mentor Elliott White, Jr.) will partner with the San Mateo County Flood and Sea Level Rise Resiliency District (OneShorline), as well as startup ISeeChange and community organizations, to create a county-wide flood map and improve flood resilience. Olivia Martin (faculty mentor Mark Duggan) will partner with the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority to evaluate the effects of increases in seasonal shelter capacity. Paige Hill (faculty mentor David Laitin) will collaborate with refugee-serving agencies to evaluate the impact of integration policies in Southeast Michigan. 

Supporting diverse learners 

Cherrysse Ulsa (faculty mentor Bruce McCandliss) will partner with schools to identify and promote educational practices that support dyslexic students. Liliana Deonizio (faculty mentor Dora Demszky) will work with Bay Area math teachers to design solutions to support the learning of multilingual math students. Angelita Rivera (faculty mentor Shima Salehi) will work with STEM instructors across higher education institutions to develop teaching materials that center students’ cultural assets and promote inclusion.

Solving social problems across the globe

Sahana Subramanyam (faculty mentor Arun Chandrasekhar) will partner with a grassroots education initiative in India to test solutions to increase fathers’ participation in children’s early learning. Mateus Mazzaferro (faculty mentor Philip Fisher) will work in partnership with South African non-profit DataDrive2030 to support climate-resilience interventions that promote child health and development. Zhengyang Wei (faculty mentor Jenny Suckale) will work in partnership with the World Bank to build a road network map in order to improve post-disaster healthcare accessibility in sub-Saharan Africa. Anirudh Sankar (faculty mentor Arun Chandrasekhar), with Ugandan NGO Agriworks, is testing innovative farmer education outreach programs to improve agricultural yields and profits.

Curious to learn what students gain from the fellowship? Hear what 2023 PhD Fellow Hannah Melville-Rea describes at our 2024 storytelling show about collaborating with OneShoreline (the San Mateo County Flood and Sea Level Rise Resiliency District) to evaluate flood risk and explore the potential for community-based flood insurance programs.