Background
The daughter of noted physicist Sidney Drell, Persis Drell grew up on the campus.
The daughter of noted physicist Sidney Drell, Persis Drell grew up on the campus.
University of California, Berkeley. Wellesley College.
She was the director of the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory from 2007 to 2012. In 2014, she was named dean of the School of Engineering. She earned a Bachelor of Arts in mathematics and physics from Wellesley College in 1977 and a Doctor of Philosophy in atomic physics from University of California, Berkeley in 1983, studying under Eugene Commins.
She completed her postdoctoral work in high-energy physics at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
She joined the physics faculty at Cornell University in 1988. In 2007, she was named the fourth director of SLAC, succeeding Jonathan M. Dorfan.
In November 2011, she announced her intention to step down as the head of SLAC and return to a position as a faculty member at Stanford. In September 2014, Drell became the ninth dean of the School of Engineering, the first woman to serve in that role.
National Academy of Sciences.