About

Persis S. Drell is the James and Anna Marie Spilker Professor in the School of Engineering, a professor of materials science and engineering, and a professor of physics at Stanford University. She served as the provost of Stanford University from February 1, 2017, to September 30, 2023. Prior to her appointment as provost, she was the dean of the Stanford School of Engineering from 2014 to 2017 and the director of the U.S. Department of Energy SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory from 2007 to 2012. She earned her bachelor’s degree in mathematics and physics from Wellesley College and her PhD in atomic physics from UC Berkeley. Before joining Stanford's faculty in 2002, she was a faculty member in the physics department at Cornell University for 14 years. Her research interests include experimental and observational astrophysics and cosmology, as well as experimental particle physics.

Research topics

• Physics
• Astrophysics
• Astronomy
• Particle physics
• Nuclear physics

Selected publications

• Energy Frontier Research Centers: A View from Senior EFRC Representatives (2011 EFRC Summit, panel session)

  OSTI OAI (U.S. Department of Energy Office of Scientific and Technical Information) · 2019-12-10

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  A distinguished panel of scientists from the EFRC community provide their perspective on the importance of EFRCs for addressing critical energy needs at the 2011 EFRC Summit. Persis Drell, Director at SLAC, served as moderator. Panel members are Neal Armstrong (Director of the Center for Interface Science: Solar Electric Materials, led by the University of Arizona), Emily Carter (Co-Director of the Combustion EFRC, led by Princeton University. She is also Team Leader of the Heterogeneous Functional Materials Center, led by the University of South Caroline), Don DePaolo (Director of the Center for Nanoscale Control of Geologic CO2, led by LBNL), and Brent Gunnoe (Director of the Center for Catalytic Hydrocarbon Functionalization, led by the University of Virginia). The 2011 EFRC Summit and Forum brought together the EFRC community and science and policy leaders from universities, national laboratories, industry and government to discuss "Science for our Nation's Energy Future." In August 2009, the Office of Science established 46 Energy Frontier Research Centers. The EFRCs are collaborative research efforts intended to accelerate high-risk, high-reward fundamental research, the scientific basis for transformative energy technologies of the future. These Centers involve universities, national laboratories, nonprofit organizations, and for-profit firms, singly or in partnerships, selected by scientific peer review. They are funded at $2 to $5 million per year for a total planned DOE commitment of $777 million over the initial five-year award period, pending Congressional appropriations. These integrated, multi-investigator Centers are conducting fundamental research focusing on one or more of several “grand challenges” and use-inspired “basic research needs” recently identified in major strategic planning efforts by the scientific community. The purpose of the EFRCs is to integrate the talents and expertise of leading scientists in a setting designed to accelerate research that transforms the future of energy and the environment.

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• A Remarkable Return On Investment In Fundamental Research: 40 Years of Basic Energy Sciences at the Department of Energy

  2018-06-01 · 3 citations

  reportOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  In 1977, the Department of Energy established an office of Basic Energy Sciences (BES) to support fundamental research in areas pertinent to DOE missions. In the 40 years since its founding, BES has grown substantially, supporting both individual researchers and interdisciplinary teams of researchers at universities and national laboratories. It engages with the scientific community through an extensive network of advisory committees that help BES to identify high priority problems or areas of opportunity. BES has also created unique shared research facilities, open to all scientists, which have become a distinctive feature of the U.S. research effort and have greatly increased the productivity of university, federal, and industrial research efforts. BES collaborates closely with other federal research agencies, including other DOE offices focused on applied research. Such research often builds on new scientific knowledge generated by BES and advances it toward commercial technologies. In all, BES represents a bet on the future—a significant federal investment in new knowledge.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• VizieR Online Data Catalog: Flaring gamma-ray sources; LAT 7.4yr (2FAV) (Abdollahi+, 2017)

  yCat · 2018-04-01

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• Erratum: “Search for Gamma-Ray Emission from the Coma Cluster with Six Years of Fermi-LAT Data” (2016, ApJ, 819, 149)

  The Astrophysical Journal · 2018-06-10 · 3 citations

  erratumOpen access

  The naming of the sources in Tables 3 and 4 in the Appendix of the published paper did not follow IAU conventions; the corrected nomenclature will enter the NASA Extragalactic Database. Tables 3 and 4 should thus read as follows. (Table Presented).

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• VizieR Online Data Catalog: First Fermi-LAT Inner Galaxy point source catalog (Ajello+, 2016)

  VizieR Online Data Catalog · 2018-01-01

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• VizieR Online Data Catalog: The third Fermi-LAT >10GeV catalog (3FHL) (Ajello+, 2017)

  yCat · 2017-11-01

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• Fermi-LAT Observations of High-energy Behind-the-limb Solar Flares

  The Astrophysical Journal · 2017-01-31 · 73 citations

  articleOpen access

  Abstract We report on the Fermi -LAT detection of high-energy emission from the behind-the-limb (BTL) solar flares that occurred on 2013 October 11, and 2014 January 6 and September 1. The Fermi -LAT observations are associated with flares from active regions originating behind both the eastern and western limbs, as determined by STEREO . All three flares are associated with very fast coronal mass ejections (CMEs) and strong solar energetic particle events. We present updated localizations of the >100 MeV photon emission, hard X-ray (HXR) and EUV images, and broadband spectra from 10 keV to 10 GeV, as well as microwave spectra. We also provide a comparison of the BTL flares detected by Fermi -LAT with three on-disk flares and present a study of some of the significant quantities of these flares as an attempt to better understand the acceleration mechanisms at work during these occulted flares. We interpret the HXR emission to be due to electron bremsstrahlung from a coronal thin-target loop top with the accelerated electron spectra steepening at semirelativistic energies. The >100 MeV gamma-rays are best described by a pion-decay model resulting from the interaction of protons (and other ions) in a thick-target photospheric source. The protons are believed to have been accelerated (to energies >10 GeV) in the CME environment and precipitate down to the photosphere from the downstream side of the CME shock and landed on the front side of the Sun, away from the original flare site and the HXR emission.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• 3FHL: The Third Catalog of Hard Fermi-LAT Sources

  The Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series · 2017-09-27 · 368 citations

  articleOpen access

  Abstract We present a catalog of sources detected above 10 GeV by the Fermi Large Area Telescope (LAT) in the first 7 years of data using the Pass 8 event-level analysis. This is the Third Catalog of Hard Fermi -LAT Sources (3FHL), containing 1556 objects characterized in the 10 GeV–2 TeV energy range. The sensitivity and angular resolution are improved by factors of 3 and 2 relative to the previous LAT catalog at the same energies (1FHL). The vast majority of detected sources (79%) are associated with extragalactic counterparts at other wavelengths, including 16 sources located at very high redshift ( z > 2). Of the sources, 8% have Galactic counterparts and 13% are unassociated (or associated with a source of unknown nature). The high-latitude sky and the Galactic plane are observed with a flux sensitivity of 4.4 to 9.5 × 10 −11 ph cm −2 s −1 , respectively (this is approximately 0.5% and 1% of the Crab Nebula flux above 10 GeV). The catalog includes 214 new γ -ray sources. The substantial increase in the number of photons (more than 4 times relative to 1FHL and 10 times to 2FHL) also allows us to measure significant spectral curvature for 32 sources and find flux variability for 163 of them. Furthermore, we estimate that for the same flux limit of 10 −12 erg cm −2 s −1 , the energy range above 10 GeV has twice as many sources as the range above 50 GeV, highlighting the importance, for future Cherenkov telescopes, of lowering the energy threshold as much as possible.

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• SEARCHING THE GAMMA-RAY SKY FOR COUNTERPARTS TO GRAVITATIONAL WAVE SOURCES: FERMI GAMMA-RAY BURST MONITOR AND LARGE AREA TELESCOPE OBSERVATIONS OF LVT151012 AND GW151226

  The Astrophysical Journal · 2017-01-19 · 41 citations

  articleOpen access

  ABSTRACT We present the Fermi Gamma-ray Burst Monitor (GBM) and Large Area Telescope (LAT) observations of the LIGO binary black hole merger event GW151226 and candidate LVT151012. At the time of the LIGO triggers on LVT151012 and GW151226, GBM was observing 68% and 83% of the localization regions, and LAT was observing 47% and 32%, respectively. No candidate electromagnetic counterparts were detected by either the GBM or LAT. We present a detailed analysis of the GBM and LAT data over a range of timescales from seconds to years, using automated pipelines and new techniques for characterizing the flux upper bounds across large areas of the sky. Due to the partial GBM and LAT coverage of the large LIGO localization regions at the trigger times for both events, differences in source distances and masses, as well as the uncertain degree to which emission from these sources could be beamed, these non-detections cannot be used to constrain the variety of theoretical models recently applied to explain the candidate GBM counterpart to GW150914.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Cosmic-ray electron-positron spectrum from 7 GeV to 2 TeV with the Fermi Large Area Telescope

  Physical review. D/Physical review. D. · 2017-04-21 · 210 citations

  articleOpen access

  We present a measurement of the cosmic-ray $\mathrm{electron}+\mathrm{positron}$ spectrum between 7 GeV and 2 TeV performed with almost seven years of data collected with the Fermi Large Area Telescope. We find that the spectrum is well fit by a broken power law with a break energy at about 50 GeV. Above 50 GeV, the spectrum is well described by a single power law with a spectral index of $3.07\ifmmode\pm\else\textpm\fi{}0.02\phantom{\rule{0ex}{0ex}}(\mathrm{stat}+\mathrm{syst})\ifmmode\pm\else\textpm\fi{}0.04(\text{energy measurement})$. An exponential cutoff lower than 1.8 TeV is excluded at 95% CL.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Frequent coauthors

• I. A. Grenier

  Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique

  3013 shared

• L. Tibaldo

  Université de Toulouse

  2323 shared

• J. M. Casandjian

  Université Paris Cité

  2291 shared

• E. Nuss

  Laboratoire Univers et Particules de Montpellier

  2112 shared

• F. Piron

  Laboratoire Univers et Particules de Montpellier

  2090 shared

• J. Cohen-Tanugi

  Université Clermont Auvergne

  2040 shared

• O. Reimer

  2012 shared

• A. Reimer

  1977 shared