Dr. Persis S. Drell is the Provost of Stanford University, the James and Anna Marie Spilker Professor in the School of Engineering and a professor of Materials Science and Engineering and Physics at Stanford University. Her research interests are in technology development for free electron lasers and particle astrophysics. She is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and is a fellow of the American Physical Society. Dean Drell has been the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and a National Science Foundation Presidential Young Investigator Award. She received her bachelor's degree in mathematics and physics from Wellesley College and her doctorate in atomic physics from the University of California, Berkeley.