Stanford

Stanford University is a private research university located in Stanford, California, on the edge of Palo Alto in the San Francisco Bay Area. It was founded in 1885 by Leland and Jane Stanford in memory of their son, Leland Stanford Jr., and opened in 1891. The campus covers about 8,000 acres, making it one of the largest university campuses in the United States.

Stanford comprises multiple degree-granting schools, including the School of Engineering, the School of Humanities and Sciences, the School of Medicine, the Law School, the Graduate School of Business, the School of Education, and the School of Earth, Energy & Environmental Sciences, along with numerous interdisciplinary programs. The university emphasizes research and cross-disciplinary collaboration across the sciences, engineering, arts, and humanities.

Research is a central component of Stanford's mission. The university operates SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory as a U.S. Department of Energy national laboratory, and it hosts a wide array of institutes and centers spanning STEM fields, bioscience, medicine, and the humanities. Its location in the Silicon Valley region supports partnerships with technology companies and a culture of startup activity.

Stanford has produced many notable alumni and faculty who have contributed to industry and academia. Notably, Stanford hosted the work that led to the founding of Google by Larry Page and Sergey Brin while they were PhD students at the university, and many other tech leaders have connections to Stanford. The university also maintains prominent libraries, museums, and archives as part of its research and public service missions.