Stanford University still the golden goose of valley tech. How do you build the next Yahoo or Google?

Perhaps the best way is to get admitted to the graduate program at Stanford University’s department of computer science, or be invited to join the department’s faculty.

Stanford has always been Silicon Valley’s secret sauce, drawing the brightest scientists, engineers and business minds from around the world.

These highly motivated people are surrounded by fellow students and faculty eager to start companies. Venture capitalists prowl the halls, looking for business plans worthy of funding.

On Tuesday, five billionaire or near-billionaire veterans of the computer science department were star attractions at a daylong conference to mark the department’s 40th anniversary: Andy Bechtolsheim, a former graduate student and co-founder of Sun Microsystems; Jim Clark, a former professor who founded Silicon Graphics and then Netscape; former graduate student David Shaw of the Wall Street investment fund D.E. Shaw; and Yahoo co-founders David Filo and Jerry Yang, both former graduate students.

By Mike Langberg
Mercury News

Full Story: http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/14157980.htm

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Stanford computer department turns 40

By Barbara Grady PALO ALTO, BUSINESS WRITER

IN 10 YEARS from now, we might get around in driverless robotic cars, use cell phones for all computing, find computers embedded in every tool and physical item we pick up, and live in a world awash — perhaps overwhelmed — by information. Also, unsolved biological and medical questions of today will have been answered by computer models of human cell activity.

In case these sound like pie-in-the-sky predictions, they come from the institution that brought us key parts of artificial intelligence, Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) — the first building block of the Internet — and the flash memory enabling cell phones and digital cameras. It’s Stanford University’s computer science department, whose students also invented Hewlett-Packard’s computers, the networked work stations of Sun Microsystems, the Cisco Systems routers that traffic the world’s information, the Yahoo Internet portal and the Google search engine.

Full Story: http://www.insidebayarea.com/business/ci_3627363