­Kristin Stanford returns for her second season with the Harvard women’s water polo coaching staff in 2010-11 as a volunteer assistant. She is working with the Crimson while serving as a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Joslin Diabetes Center at Harvard Medical School.

Stanford was a three-time American Water Polo Coaches Association (AWPCA) All-American while playing at Indiana. She won the Big Ten Conference Medal of Honor in 2003 and was named to the NCAA All-Tournament second team the same year. Stanford was also named an AWPCA Academic All-American three times from 2001-03 and won Indiana University’s Scholastic Achievement Award in 2002.

For the past three years, Stanford has served as a head coach for three different programs at the same time. While serving as the water polo head coach at Carlsbad High School in Carlsbad, Calif., from 2008-10, she was also the head coach of the Southwest Zone Olympic Development Program and the NCSD water polo club team. Stanford’s coaching accolades include being selected as coach for the United States Water Polo Top-40 tournament in 2008 and being named USWP Southwest Zone Volunteer Coach of the Year in 2007.

Stanford completed her Ph.D. in biomedical science from the UC San Diego in 2009. She earned her master’s of science in exercise physiology in 2004 and completed her bachelor’s of science in exercise physiology in 2002 from Indiana.