Kenneth Goodson

Ken Goodson is the Davies Family Provostial Professor at Stanford and was appointed Vice Provost for Graduate Education and Postdoctoral Affairs on April 1, 2025.  

Goodson served as Mechanical Engineering Chair and Senior Associate Dean in the Stanford School of Engineering, where he worked on a variety of initiatives for graduate students.  These included bringing more flexibility and broader access to students, improving student feedback to mentors, and balancing conflicts of interest and entrepreneurship considering the academic interests of students and postdocs.  

Goodson’s research group specializes in heat transfer and energy conversion with applications to electric vehicles and data centers.  He received the Aristotle Award for graduate student mentorship from the Semiconductor Research Corporation, and has mentored 55 graduate students to their doctoral degrees in Mechanical Engineering, Electrical Engineering, and Materials Science.  His alumni include dozens of faculty at institutions including MIT, Princeton, Stanford, and UC Berkeley, as well as leaders at ARPA-E, Sandia National Labs, and numerous companies. 

Goodson is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and is a Fellow with the National Academy of Inventors, AAAS, ASME, IEEE, and APS.  He has 35 patents and co-founded Cooligy, which built heat sinks for Apple, and received the ASME Kraus Medal, the IEEE Chu Award, and the AIChE Kern Award.

Goodson moonlights as a baritone oratorio soloist with appearances at the Bing Concert Hall and Davies Symphony Hall.  He studied voice in Germany and held voice fellowships at the Tanglewood Music Festival.  His wife, Laura Dahl, is a concert pianist with the Stanford music faculty. Goodson enjoys mountain biking and woodworking.