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Research

From Nobel Prize winners to undergraduates, all members of the Stanford community are engaged in the creation of knowledge and in developing solutions for a better future.

A researcher looks closely at a small device in her lab

Building Tomorrow

Stanford research has a distinctive track record of developing life-changing treatments for disease, inventing revolutionary technologies, and unlocking new ways of understanding the world around us.

More Stanford research making a better world

Driving Growth

6,699 Inventions created by federally funded Stanford research
3,029 U.S. patents based on federally funded Stanford research
400+ Start-up companies founded based on federally funded research at Stanford
350,000+ Jobs created by companies that started with federally funded Stanford research
$94 Billion Private investment in start-up companies that grew out of federally funded Stanford research
36 Nobel Prizes won by Stanford professors for medicine, physics, and more

Stanford-Grown Ventures

Many of the world’s most innovative and influential companies got their start here. Companies founded by Stanford alumni boost the U.S. economy, drive job growth, and help maintain national security and competitiveness. These are just some of them:

Cisco Systems Instagram PayPal
Gap Intuit Sun Microsystems
Genentech LinkedIn Tableau
Gilead Netflix WhatsApp
Google Nike Yahoo!
Hewlett-Packard Nvidia YouTube

World-Changing Discoveries

Stanford’s robust and pioneering research ecosystem is supported by a long-standing partnership between universities and the federal government. Thousands of projects across campus and around the world drive discoveries in areas vital to our world, our health, and our intellectual life.

Invented at Stanford:

  • Antibody therapies that made cancer and autoimmune disease treatments possible
  • Artificial organ prototypes and advancements in artificial hearts and other organ-support technologies
  • Recombinant DNA technology that laid the foundation for the biotech industry
  • Google’s page-rank algorithm that revolutionized searching the web
  • Internet protocols (TCP/IP) that formed the backbone of the modern internet
  • Microwave technology that made military radar detection, commercial air navigation, and satellite communications possible
  • Neural networks and reinforcement learning, which laid the groundwork for the AI revolution
Stanford physicist Felix Bloch co-authored the explanation of nuclear magnetic resonance, the fundamental science that allows MRI machines to identify disease and injury in the body. He shared the 1952 Nobel Prize in physics for the work.

An Infrastructure for Innovation

Vice Provost and Dean of Research

The Office of the Vice Provost and Dean of Research (VPDoR) advances Stanford’s research ecosystem, which includes independent labs, centers, and institutes to engage faculty and students across the university.

VPDoR

Stanford Universities Libraries

Stanford is home to 21 libraries, each with a world-class collection of books, journals, films, maps, and databases.

Stanford Universities Libraries

Office of Technology Licensing

The Office of Technology Licensing (OTL) manages intellectual property licensing and brings innovations that grow from Stanford research to the marketplace.

OTL

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