100 Years of Stanford Engineering

Look back at any given year in the Stanford School of Engineering’s history, and you’ll find a remarkable story of innovation – a new idea taking shape, a technology breaking through, a problem being reimagined. Look back over 100 of those years, and you see something bigger: a sweeping story of continuous progress, relentless curiosity, and global impact. As the school celebrates its 100th anniversary on May 15, it’s a moment to reflect on a century shaped by bold research, inspired teaching, and collaborations that have helped transform technology and society around the world.

“The Stanford School of Engineering is a truly unique and distinctive institution, unlike any other – not just within Stanford, but anywhere in the world,” said Jonathan Levin, president of Stanford University.

Those foundations include work at Stanford Engineering in the 1920s to advance the long-distance transmission of electricity and the science of flight. In the 1930s, electrical engineering professor Fred Terman encouraged William Hewlett and David Packard to start their namesake company – planting the seeds of Silicon Valley. Terman collaborated with Physics Professor William Hansen and Professor of Electrical Engineering and Applied Physics Edward Ginzton, along with the brothers Russell and Sigurd Varian, who introduced the klystron tube, a breakthrough that proved critical to WWII-era radar and paved the way for satellite communications. In the decades that followed, Stanford Engineering led advances across chemical engineering, materials science, and robotics. After coining the term “artificial intelligence,” professor John McCarthy helped launch a new era in computing in the 1960s. By the 1990s, engineering graduate students were creating companies like Yahoo!, Google, and Nvidia, broadening the school’s entrepreneurial spirit that began in the ’30s. In the 2000s, bioengineering professor Karl Deisseroth pioneered optogenetics, revolutionizing the way we study the brain by enabling scientists to turn living brain cells on and off with light, and chemical engineering professor Zhenan Bao developed artificial skin sensitive enough to detect the weight of a butterfly.

Today, Stanford Engineering faculty continue to push the boundaries of what’s possible – harnessing the power of AI to accelerate drug discovery, optimizing energy systems, and designing sustainable materials – continuing a century-long tradition of shaping the future. These few examples are only a glimpse of so many more remarkable stories from Stanford Engineering’s past, and the promise of its future.

“For 100 years, Stanford Engineering has been a place where discovery leads to innovation, and where bold ideas become real-world impact,” said Jennifer Widom, the Frederick Emmons Terman Dean of the School of Engineering. “Our centennial is more than a celebration – it’s a reflection on the school’s pivotal role in the evolution of technology in the U.S. and around the world. This milestone also underscores the essential role universities play in advancing knowledge and transforming breakthroughs into solutions that shape society.”

Celebrating a Century

The education of engineers has been a significant part of Stanford’s mission since the university opened in 1891. On May 15, 1925, the Board of Trustees approved a plan to bring together the four engineering departments of the time – civil, mechanical, electrical, and mining & metallurgy – into a single school. On May 15 this year, the Stanford School of Engineering will host the Centennial Celebration and Showcase, an afternoon party on the newly named Robert Rosenkranz Science and Engineering Quad, complete with a showcase of more than 50 projects highlighting the school’s extraordinary breadth of research and education. Later, two distinguished speaker events will feature discussions with faculty and alumni, including Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang in late May, and another to be announced for the fall.

A new, centennial-dedicated website – engineering100.stanford.edu– provides an opportunity to dive into the school’s history with in-depth stories on each decade released every few weeks through the end of July, photos from the archives, videos, a timeline of notable events, and more. For alumni, faculty, students, and staff with their own stories of the school’s history, there’s a submission form to share memories.

Past as Prologue

The School of Engineering was founded with the aim to educate not just highly capable engineers – the university was already doing that – but leaders in engineering. Those leaders would need the core traditional skills of mathematics, physics, chemistry, and metallurgy, of course, but also the creativity, compassion, and humanity that only a strong liberal arts education could impart. Stanford University was uniquely positioned to meet that aim.

“Stanford Engineering is unique as a world-class engineering school embedded in a world-class liberal arts university with all four professional schools on the same campus. There is nowhere else like it,” said Widom. “We collaborate across every corner of the university, with the schools of Medicine and Humanities & Sciences, with the Hoover Institution, with athletics, to name a few. That’s not something that you can find at our peer institutions.”

As the school evolved and developed its reputation for shaping the landscape of modern technology, it continued to ensure students in any field were prepared to lead the way. That included pioneering approaches to education that ranged from the Honors Cooperative Program launched by Fred Terman in 1954 to help local professionals stay current with emerging technical knowledge to modern programs that educate learners anywhere in the world like the Stanford Engineering Center for Global and Online Education and Code in Place. On campus, through introductory computer science courses, design programs, makerspaces, and more, the School of Engineering touches the education of nearly every student at Stanford.

“There are a lot of engineering majors at Stanford, but we also pride ourselves in bringing engineering to students across the entire campus,” said Widom.

Across the decades, Stanford Engineering’s scope has grown to include everything from the challenges of bridge and dam building to space flight, human health, and planetary sustainability. Faculty and students have tackled complex problems across disciplines, advancing bioengineering, data science, robotics, and clean energy technologies. Today, their work continues to shape the future – designing resilient infrastructure, developing life-saving medical devices, and creating tools to mitigate climate change on a global scale.

“Our past tells us a lot about what we’re capable of and inspires us to chart an even more ambitious and optimistic future,” said Widom. “Our community of faculty, staff, students, alumni, and supporters are the people who make that possible, and I’m incredibly proud to celebrate our centennial with all of them, and to thank them for being the collaborators, educators, visionaries, and risk-takers who make Stanford Engineering the extraordinary, one-of-a-kind place it is.”