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Sciences (Social, Health, Biological, Physical)

AI is accelerating discovery in the sciences and fostering interdisciplinary breakthroughs.

AI Can’t Do Physics Well – And That’s a Roadblock to Autonomy
Andrew Myers
Jan 26, 2026
News
breaking of pool balls on a pool table

QuantiPhy is a new benchmark and training framework that evaluates whether AI can numerically reason about physical properties in video images. QuantiPhy reveals that today’s models struggle with basic estimates of size, speed, and distance but offers a way forward.

News
breaking of pool balls on a pool table

AI Can’t Do Physics Well – And That’s a Roadblock to Autonomy

Andrew Myers
Computer VisionRoboticsSciences (Social, Health, Biological, Physical)Jan 26

QuantiPhy is a new benchmark and training framework that evaluates whether AI can numerically reason about physical properties in video images. QuantiPhy reveals that today’s models struggle with basic estimates of size, speed, and distance but offers a way forward.

Sustainability and AI
Stanford HAI
Jan 31, 2023
Industry Brief
January 2023 Industry Brief

Environmental, social, and governance risks pose a threat to economies and human well-being around the world. However, we have the power to build a sustainable planet. Recent developments in AI are helping us see issues that were hard to identify before. As machine vision helps us see our world, we are able to detect issues, track them, and create targeted interventions. In this brief, we examine innovations by Stanford researchers that use AI and ML techniques to shift our world from one that depletes resources to one that preserves them for the future. For example, we can now track methane emissions across our energy and food systems, opening an avenue for policy formation and enforcement through near real-time tracing. AI enables knowledge-to-action and will play a key role in measuring and effectively achieving environmental, social, and governance goals.

Industry Brief
January 2023 Industry Brief

Sustainability and AI

Stanford HAI
Energy, EnvironmentSciences (Social, Health, Biological, Physical)Jan 31

Environmental, social, and governance risks pose a threat to economies and human well-being around the world. However, we have the power to build a sustainable planet. Recent developments in AI are helping us see issues that were hard to identify before. As machine vision helps us see our world, we are able to detect issues, track them, and create targeted interventions. In this brief, we examine innovations by Stanford researchers that use AI and ML techniques to shift our world from one that depletes resources to one that preserves them for the future. For example, we can now track methane emissions across our energy and food systems, opening an avenue for policy formation and enforcement through near real-time tracing. AI enables knowledge-to-action and will play a key role in measuring and effectively achieving environmental, social, and governance goals.

Stories for the Future 2024
Isabelle Levent
Deep DiveMar 31, 2025
Research

We invited 11 sci-fi filmmakers and AI researchers to Stanford for Stories for the Future, a day-and-a-half experiment in fostering new narratives about AI. Researchers shared perspectives on AI and filmmakers reflected on the challenges of writing AI narratives. Together researcher-writer pairs transformed a research paper into a written scene. The challenge? Each scene had to include an AI manifestation, but could not be about the personhood of AI or AI as a threat. Read the results of this project.

Research

Stories for the Future 2024

Isabelle Levent
Machine LearningGenerative AIArts, HumanitiesCommunications, MediaDesign, Human-Computer InteractionSciences (Social, Health, Biological, Physical)Deep DiveMar 31

We invited 11 sci-fi filmmakers and AI researchers to Stanford for Stories for the Future, a day-and-a-half experiment in fostering new narratives about AI. Researchers shared perspectives on AI and filmmakers reflected on the challenges of writing AI narratives. Together researcher-writer pairs transformed a research paper into a written scene. The challenge? Each scene had to include an AI manifestation, but could not be about the personhood of AI or AI as a threat. Read the results of this project.

Active
Hoffman-Yee Research Grants
Open. Letters of Intent due on January 28, 2026.

The Hoffman-Yee Research Grants are designed to address significant scientific, technical, or societal challenges requiring an interdisciplinary team and a bold approach.

These grants are made possible by a gift from philanthropists Reid Hoffman and Michelle Yee.

Active

Hoffman-Yee Research Grants

Open. Letters of Intent due on January 28, 2026.

The Hoffman-Yee Research Grants are designed to address significant scientific, technical, or societal challenges requiring an interdisciplinary team and a bold approach.

These grants are made possible by a gift from philanthropists Reid Hoffman and Michelle Yee.

Response to OSTP's Request for Information on Accelerating the American Scientific Enterprise
Rishi Bommasani, John Etchemendy, Surya Ganguli, Daniel E. Ho, Guido Imbens, James Landay, Fei-Fei Li, Russell Wald
Quick ReadDec 26, 2025
Response to Request

Stanford scholars respond to a federal RFI on scientific discovery, calling for the government to support a new “team science” academic research model for AI-enabled discovery.

Response to Request

Response to OSTP's Request for Information on Accelerating the American Scientific Enterprise

Rishi Bommasani, John Etchemendy, Surya Ganguli, Daniel E. Ho, Guido Imbens, James Landay, Fei-Fei Li, Russell Wald
Sciences (Social, Health, Biological, Physical)Regulation, Policy, GovernanceQuick ReadDec 26

Stanford scholars respond to a federal RFI on scientific discovery, calling for the government to support a new “team science” academic research model for AI-enabled discovery.

Joshua Salomon
Person
Person

Joshua Salomon

Machine LearningSciences (Social, Health, Biological, Physical)Oct 14

All Work Published on Sciences (Social, Health, Biological, Physical)

AI Reveals How Brain Activity Unfolds Over Time
Andrew Myers
Jan 21, 2026
News
Medical Brain Scans on Multiple Computer Screens. Advanced Neuroimaging Technology Reveals Complex Neural Pathways, Display Showing CT Scan in a Modern Medical Environment

Stanford researchers have developed a deep learning model that transforms overwhelming brain data into clear trajectories, opening new possibilities for understanding thought, emotion, and neurological disease.

AI Reveals How Brain Activity Unfolds Over Time

Andrew Myers
Jan 21, 2026

Stanford researchers have developed a deep learning model that transforms overwhelming brain data into clear trajectories, opening new possibilities for understanding thought, emotion, and neurological disease.

Healthcare
Sciences (Social, Health, Biological, Physical)
Medical Brain Scans on Multiple Computer Screens. Advanced Neuroimaging Technology Reveals Complex Neural Pathways, Display Showing CT Scan in a Modern Medical Environment
News
Healthcare, Life Sciences, and AI
Stanford HAI
Mar 01, 2021
Industry Brief

This industry brief focuses on AI research in healthcare and life sciences, with particular attention to its implications in a post COVID-19 world. Stanford HAI synthesize the latest from Stanford faculty across drug discovery, telehealth, ambient intelligence, operational excellence, medical imaging, augmented intelligence, and data and privacy. Read to learn more about how the adoption of AI may transform these applications.

Healthcare, Life Sciences, and AI

Stanford HAI
Mar 01, 2021

This industry brief focuses on AI research in healthcare and life sciences, with particular attention to its implications in a post COVID-19 world. Stanford HAI synthesize the latest from Stanford faculty across drug discovery, telehealth, ambient intelligence, operational excellence, medical imaging, augmented intelligence, and data and privacy. Read to learn more about how the adoption of AI may transform these applications.

Healthcare
Sciences (Social, Health, Biological, Physical)
Industry Brief
The Promise and Perils of Artificial Intelligence in Advancing Participatory Science and Health Equity in Public Health
Abby C King, Zakaria N Doueiri, Ankita Kaulberg, Lisa Goldman Rosas
Feb 14, 2025
Research
Your browser does not support the video tag.

Current societal trends reflect an increased mistrust in science and a lowered civic engagement that threaten to impair research that is foundational for ensuring public health and advancing health equity. One effective countermeasure to these trends lies in community-facing citizen science applications to increase public participation in scientific research, making this field an important target for artificial intelligence (AI) exploration. We highlight potentially promising citizen science AI applications that extend beyond individual use to the community level, including conversational large language models, text-to-image generative AI tools, descriptive analytics for analyzing integrated macro- and micro-level data, and predictive analytics. The novel adaptations of AI technologies for community-engaged participatory research also bring an array of potential risks. We highlight possible negative externalities and mitigations for some of the potential ethical and societal challenges in this field.

The Promise and Perils of Artificial Intelligence in Advancing Participatory Science and Health Equity in Public Health

Abby C King, Zakaria N Doueiri, Ankita Kaulberg, Lisa Goldman Rosas
Feb 14, 2025

Current societal trends reflect an increased mistrust in science and a lowered civic engagement that threaten to impair research that is foundational for ensuring public health and advancing health equity. One effective countermeasure to these trends lies in community-facing citizen science applications to increase public participation in scientific research, making this field an important target for artificial intelligence (AI) exploration. We highlight potentially promising citizen science AI applications that extend beyond individual use to the community level, including conversational large language models, text-to-image generative AI tools, descriptive analytics for analyzing integrated macro- and micro-level data, and predictive analytics. The novel adaptations of AI technologies for community-engaged participatory research also bring an array of potential risks. We highlight possible negative externalities and mitigations for some of the potential ethical and societal challenges in this field.

Foundation Models
Generative AI
Machine Learning
Natural Language Processing
Sciences (Social, Health, Biological, Physical)
Healthcare
Your browser does not support the video tag.
Research
Active
HAI and Wu Tsai Neuro Partnership Grant
Open. Applications due on January 16, 2026.

Stanford HAI and the Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute jointly seek proposals that transform our understanding of the human brain using AI and advance the development of intelligent technology.

HAI and Wu Tsai Neuro Partnership Grant

Active
Open. Applications due on January 16, 2026.

Stanford HAI and the Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute jointly seek proposals that transform our understanding of the human brain using AI and advance the development of intelligent technology.

Russ Altman’s Testimony Before the U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions
Russ Altman
Quick ReadOct 09, 2025
Testimony

In this testimony presented to the U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions hearing titled “AI’s Potential to Support Patients, Workers, Children, and Families,” Russ Altman highlights opportunities for congressional support to make AI applications for patient care and drug discovery stronger, safer, and human-centered.

Russ Altman’s Testimony Before the U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions

Russ Altman
Quick ReadOct 09, 2025

In this testimony presented to the U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions hearing titled “AI’s Potential to Support Patients, Workers, Children, and Families,” Russ Altman highlights opportunities for congressional support to make AI applications for patient care and drug discovery stronger, safer, and human-centered.

Healthcare
Regulation, Policy, Governance
Sciences (Social, Health, Biological, Physical)
Testimony
Justin Sonnenburg
Alex and Susie Algard Endowed Professor
Person

Justin Sonnenburg

Alex and Susie Algard Endowed Professor
Sciences (Social, Health, Biological, Physical)
Machine Learning
Person
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