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ne day," remembers Brad Parkinson, "Bob Cannon [Stanford Professor Emeritus] came into my office, sat down, and said, 'Brad, I've discovered why everything happens.' My God, I thought, what's he going to say? As I leaned forward, Bob looked at me and said, 'Everything happens because... One Thing Leads to Another.'" Cannon's Law. At Stanford, the path from "One Thing" to "Another" is worn smooth. While this path always seems obvious in hindsight, fostering an environment for the discovery of such novel connections is hard work. Within the Stanford School of Engineering, we begin by recruiting the best and most multi-talented faculty and students. Then we help these faculty and students make the inventive leap by breaking down barriers between departments, by challenging students with real-world projects, by creating incentives for our talented faculty to take chances, and by encouraging — at all times — a complete and workable systems approach to solutions. The following examples of faculty teaching and research show how this concept plays out in the diverse space-related fields now being investigated at Stanford.

Edward C. Wells Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics

"When I look to the future, I see precision Global Positioning System (GPS) allowing aircraft to land safely in poor weather and enabling cargo planes to fly without pilots. These applications are symptomatic of how Stanford is oriented to real-world problems. Abstract things don't work for us."

viation is just one practical area of application for the newest precision forms of GPS, a satellite navigation technology originally developed by Brad Parkinson. Other potential GPS applications now being developed by Parkinson and the 35 Stanford graduate students working in this area are far-ranging — from automating tractors in fields, to guiding complex military operations, to equipping cars and golf carts with computer maps.


Assistant Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics

"Our greatest challenge today is in tightly integrating the latest information technology throughout aeronautical engineering. Take just one example: the new, automated air traffic control system. This will demand fast, efficient, and reliable information storage, retrieval, and transfer. In such a project, skills in communications and software engineering will be paramount."

orking at the intersection of several fast-changing fields — aeronautical engineering, electrical engineering, and computer science — Claire Tomlin and her students are developing an entirely new way of modeling extremely complex systems. Called hybrid system theory, their novel approach seeks to capture the dynamics of systems such as air traffic control, in which thousands of aircraft each day compete for airspace and runway space, communicate with each other and with the controllers, and respond to disturbances such as bad weather and uncertainties in navigation and surveillance equipment.


Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics

"Since I can remember, I've been entranced with the idea of flight. It's a certain combination of aesthetic appeal and tech- nical challenge. It's watching birds soar over the Stanford foothills, then using supercomputers to design wings. Advances in aerodynamics research have always led to the new designs that revolutionize global transportation, and they will continue to do so in the future."

lan Kroo and the multidisciplinary Aircraft Design Group are developing new concepts for aerospace design that promise to revolutionize aerospace engineering in the 21st century. Exploiting technologies in computers, communications, and micro-electromechanical systems, Kroo's team is crafting a variety of vehicles from autonomous aircraft, such as tiny (palm-size) helicopters that might be used for atmospheric sampling, to very large 800-passenger airplanes and "green" airplanes with dramatically reduced noise and emissions.