BEGIN:VCALENDAR
VERSION:2.0
PRODID:-//Events - ECPv6.15.20//NONSGML v1.0//EN
CALSCALE:GREGORIAN
METHOD:PUBLISH
X-WR-CALNAME:Events
X-ORIGINAL-URL:https://events.ucsc.edu
X-WR-CALDESC:Events for Events
REFRESH-INTERVAL;VALUE=DURATION:PT1H
X-Robots-Tag:noindex
X-PUBLISHED-TTL:PT1H
BEGIN:VTIMEZONE
TZID:America/Los_Angeles
BEGIN:DAYLIGHT
TZOFFSETFROM:-0800
TZOFFSETTO:-0700
TZNAME:PDT
DTSTART:20250309T100000
END:DAYLIGHT
BEGIN:STANDARD
TZOFFSETFROM:-0700
TZOFFSETTO:-0800
TZNAME:PST
DTSTART:20251102T090000
END:STANDARD
BEGIN:DAYLIGHT
TZOFFSETFROM:-0800
TZOFFSETTO:-0700
TZNAME:PDT
DTSTART:20260308T100000
END:DAYLIGHT
BEGIN:STANDARD
TZOFFSETFROM:-0700
TZOFFSETTO:-0800
TZNAME:PST
DTSTART:20261101T090000
END:STANDARD
BEGIN:DAYLIGHT
TZOFFSETFROM:-0800
TZOFFSETTO:-0700
TZNAME:PDT
DTSTART:20270314T100000
END:DAYLIGHT
BEGIN:STANDARD
TZOFFSETFROM:-0700
TZOFFSETTO:-0800
TZNAME:PST
DTSTART:20271107T090000
END:STANDARD
END:VTIMEZONE
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20260209T104000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20260209T234500
DTSTAMP:20260421T163815
CREATED:20260202T233432Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20260202T233432Z
UID:10009148-1770633600-1770680700@events.ucsc.edu
SUMMARY:ECE Seminar: Integrated Micro- and Nanosystems for Biosensing\, Neural Therapy\, and Nanotoxicity
DESCRIPTION:Presenter: Dr. Ke Du\, Associate Professor of Chemical and Environmental Engineering\, University of California\, Riverside \nDescription: Miniaturized micro- and nanofluidic systems\, integrated with biochemistry\, microscopy\, nanomaterials\, and computer vision algorithms\, provide powerful platforms for diverse biomedical applications\, including molecular diagnostics\, biophysics\, and optogenetics. In this presentation\, we introduce a pneumatically controlled nano-sieve device with nanolithography-defined microstructures designed to enhance target capture efficiency in bodily fluids. This system incorporates sheath flow configurations\, surface-enhanced Raman probes\, and CRISPR reactions for the sensitive and multiplexed detection of drug-resistant bacteria in nanoconfined environments. We also highlight our recent advancements in implantable devices for adeno-associated virus (AAV) delivery and the treatment of neurological disorders in mouse models. These devices\, fabricated via high-resolution 3D printing\, utilize total internal reflection at the liquid–air–microstructure interface to efficiently stimulate neurons. Finally\, we integrate experimental approaches with molecular dynamics simulations to study the interactions between arbitrary nanoparticles and living cells—advancing our understanding of nanotoxicity and guiding the design of next-generation drug delivery systems. \nBio: Dr. Ke Du is an Associate Professor of Chemical and Environmental Engineering at the University of California\, Riverside. He established his independent research lab in 2018 following postdoctoral training with Richard Mathies at the University of California\, Berkeley\, and Holger Schmidt at the University of California\, Santa Cruz. His research team focuses on molecular diagnostics for infectious diseases such as sepsis\, in vivo bioimaging\, and nanotoxicology. Dr. Du has received numerous honors\, including the EIPBN Inaugural Early Career Award (2024) and the NIH Maximizing Investigators’ Research Award (2021). He was recognized as an Emerging Investigator by Lab on a Chip (2024) and Nanoscale (2025)\, and named a Global Rising Star in Sensing by ACS Sensors. His research is supported by federal agencies and industry partners\, including NIH NIGMS\, NIH NIAID\, NSF CBET\, NSF CMMI\, USDA\, DOE\, the Burroughs Wellcome Fund\, Mammoth Biosciences\, and Biological Mimetics. Beyond his research activities\, Dr. Du serves as an Early Career Editorial Advisory Board member for Biomicrofluidics (AIP Publishing) and Sensors and Actuators Reports (Elsevier). \nHosted by: Professor Soumya Bose\, ECE Department \nZoom Link: https://ucsc.zoom.us/j/97975378707?pwd=ljcgaCfhMmhZ88Vt5dqQUBVQRjehOx.1
URL:https://events.ucsc.edu/event/ece-seminar-integrated-micro-and-nanosystems-for-biosensing-neural-therapy-and-nanotoxicity/
LOCATION:Engineering 2\, Engineering 2 1156 High Street\, Santa Cruz\, CA\, 95064
CATEGORIES:Lectures & Presentations,Seminars
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/png:https://events.ucsc.edu/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/BElogoWHITE.png
GEO:37.0009723;-122.0632371
X-APPLE-STRUCTURED-LOCATION;VALUE=URI;X-ADDRESS=Engineering 2 Engineering 2 1156 High Street Santa Cruz CA 95064;X-APPLE-RADIUS=500;X-TITLE=Engineering 2 1156 High Street:geo:-122.0632371,37.0009723
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20260209T123000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20260209T133000
DTSTAMP:20260421T163815
CREATED:20260126T235923Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20260204T204343Z
UID:10009118-1770640200-1770643800@events.ucsc.edu
SUMMARY:CM Seminar - “The ‘Social’ Side of Social Virtual Reality”
DESCRIPTION:Presented by: Bree McEwan \nDescription: One of the potential use cases of virtual reality is to create spaces where humans can interact with each other or virtual agents across distances. However\, despite many of the technological challenges of social VR being solved\, social VR does not see poised for widespread adoption. Multi-user social VR needs to be perceived not just as a technology to be solved but an emerging communication channel. Social science approaches\, particularly from communication scholars\, are needed to truly understand the way that humans engage with VR and each other in these new environments. McEwan’s talk will outline a program of research using qualitative and quantitative approaches to understand communication processes\, effects\, and user perceptions of VR design to deepen our understanding of how people engage with environments and each other in social VR. \nBio: Bree McEwan is a Professor in the Institute of Communication\, Culture\, Information and Technology\, an associate director of the Data Sciences Institute\, and a faculty affiliate of the Schwartz Reisman Institute for Technology and Society at the University of Toronto. She is a co- organizer and founder of the Questioning Reality conference\, a social VR research incubator. McEwan authored Navigating New Media Networks and co-authored Interpersonal Encounters. She directs the McEwan Mediated Communication Lab which researches the intersection of technology and social interaction. McEwan has published on relational maintenance on social network sites\, perceived social affordances of communication channels\, linguistic patterns in online communities\, and the diffusion of information through social media. In addition\, McEwan has metascience interests focused on transparency and replication in the social sciences. Current studies of the McMC Lab focus on affordances of social virtual environments\, cognition and heuristics related to learning in VR spaces\, and nonverbal communication patterns of avatars and agents. \nHosted by: Professor Katherine Isbister \nWhen: Monday\, February 9\, 2026 from 12:30PM to 1:30PM \nLocation:  \nIN-PERSON @ UCSC Main Campus\, E2-280. \nViewing room @ SVC 3212.   \nLUNCH WILL BE PROVIDED AT BOTH LOCATIONS! Faculty and students are highly encouraged to attend. \nZoom info: \nhttps://ucsc.zoom.us/j/91469785121?pwd=F0jplMgh4eTjy6qNZI0lEhlljs0XhG.1 \nMeeting ID: 914 6978 5121\nPasscode: 183098
URL:https://events.ucsc.edu/event/cm-seminar-the-social-side-of-social-virtual-reality/
LOCATION:Engineering 2\, Engineering 2 1156 High Street\, Santa Cruz\, CA\, 95064
CATEGORIES:Seminars
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://events.ucsc.edu/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/Bree-McEwan-Headshot.jpg
GEO:37.0009723;-122.0632371
X-APPLE-STRUCTURED-LOCATION;VALUE=URI;X-ADDRESS=Engineering 2 Engineering 2 1156 High Street Santa Cruz CA 95064;X-APPLE-RADIUS=500;X-TITLE=Engineering 2 1156 High Street:geo:-122.0632371,37.0009723
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20260209T130000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20260209T143000
DTSTAMP:20260421T163815
CREATED:20260127T195054Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20260127T195054Z
UID:10009120-1770642000-1770647400@events.ucsc.edu
SUMMARY:Li\, X. (CSE) - Compute-Efficient Scaling of Fully-Open Visual Encoders
DESCRIPTION:Vision encoders have demonstrated significant performance gains in visual generation and multimodal reasoning. These improvements are primarily attributed to the scaling of data\, model capacity\, and compute. However\, this progress is becoming less accessible due to a lack of transparency in data curation and training recipes. In combination with the high compute requirements of foundation-scale pre-training\, these factors hinder independent reproducibility. \nIn this dissertation\, we democratize large-scale visual encoder training by developing compute-efficient\, reproducible training recipes for video encoders\, vision-language models (VLMs)\, and multimodal large language models (MLLMs). First\, we challenge the common belief that scaling necessarily requires proportionally more resources. Specifically\, we show that decoupled pre-training separates key factors such as space/time and token length\, and learns strong priors first. This design yields dramatic efficiency gains across image\, video\, and generative modeling. Next\, we address the challenge of undisclosed or inaccessible training data by releasing and systematically studying the curation of high-quality\, large-scale datasets. We demonstrate that high-quality synthetic captions at scale enable vision-language models to learn stronger visual representations\, especially when paired with training frameworks that unify contrastive and generative objectives. Lastly\, building on these findings\, we develop fully open vision encoders with complete training data\, recipes\, and checkpoints\, and show that transparency can enable rather than hinder state-of-the-art performance as an MLLMs’ visual backbone. \nTogether\, these contributions establish that openness and efficiency are mutually reinforcing\, providing a reproducible foundation for the next generation of visual intelligence. \nEvent Host: Xianhang Li\, Ph.D. Candidate\, Computer Science and Engineering \nAdvisor: Cihang Xie  \nZoom- https://ucsc.zoom.us/j/95801462664?pwd=koENnyV65jyPnkJYTbiYr1jaNsV5BE.1 \nPasscode- 782017
URL:https://events.ucsc.edu/event/li-x-cse-compute-efficient-scaling-of-fully-open-visual-encoders/
LOCATION:
CATEGORIES:Ph.D. Presentations
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://events.ucsc.edu/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/ph.d.-presentation-graphic-option2-1.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20260209T160000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20260209T170000
DTSTAMP:20260421T163815
CREATED:20260114T182449Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20260114T182750Z
UID:10008393-1770652800-1770656400@events.ucsc.edu
SUMMARY:AM Seminar: Data Driven Modeling for Scientific Discovery and Digital Twins
DESCRIPTION:Presenter: Dongbin Xiu\, Professor\, Ohio State University \nDescription:We present a data-driven modeling framework for scientific discovery\, termed Flow Map Learning (FML). This framework enables the construction of accurate predictive models for complex systems that are not amenable to traditional modeling approaches. By leveraging data and the expressiveness of deep neural networks (DNNs)\, FML facilitates long-term system modeling and prediction even when governing equations are unavailable. FML is particularly powerful in the context of Digital Twins\, an emerging concept in digital transformation. With sufficient offline learning\, FML enables the construction of simulation models for key quantities of interest (QoIs) in complex Digital Twins\, when direct mathematical modeling of the QoIs is infeasible. During the online execution of a Digital Twin\, the learned FML model can simulate the QoIs without reverting to the computationally intensive Digital Twin simulation model. As a result\, FML serves as an enabling methodology for real-time control and optimization for complex systems. \nBio: Dongbin Xiu received his Ph.D degree from the Division of Applied Mathematics of Brown University in 2004. He joined the Department of Mathematics of Purdue University in 2005 and moved to the University of Utah in 2013. In 2016\, He joined The Ohio State University as Professor of Mathematics and Ohio Eminent Scholar. He received NSF CAREER award in 2007 and was elected to SIAM Fellow in 2023. He is currently the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Computational Physics and the founding Editor-in-Chief of Journal of Machine Learning for Modeling and Computing (JMLMC). His current research focuses on developing efficient numerical methods for scientific machine learning\, data driven discovery and digital twins. \nHosted by: Daniele Venturi\, Applied Mathematics
URL:https://events.ucsc.edu/event/am-seminar-data-driven-modeling-for-scientific-discovery-and-digital-twins/
LOCATION:CA
CATEGORIES:Lectures & Presentations,Seminars
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/png:https://events.ucsc.edu/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/option-3.png
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20260209T183000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20260209T200000
DTSTAMP:20260421T163815
CREATED:20260123T193040Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20260123T193040Z
UID:10009096-1770661800-1770667200@events.ucsc.edu
SUMMARY:February Slugs and Steins with Distinguished Professor Emeritus John Brown Childs
DESCRIPTION:Kings of Infinite Space: Courageous Compassion Among Men in Soledad Prison\n \n“I could be bounded in a nutshell\, and count myself king of infinite space…”\n–Hamlet \nWhen I reflect on the expansively creative\, compassionate\, and transformational minds and actions of the incarcerated men with whom I have worked as a volunteer teacher of what I call “transcommunal peace and cooperation\,” for some twenty years first in DVI Prison\, and mostly Soledad Prison\, the central image that strikes me is the first part of Hamlet’s statement\, in the Shakespeare play\, wherein he says\, “I could be bounded in a nutshell and count myself king of infinite space….” The men with whom I work\, despite their incarceration in narrow\, constraining\, routinized circumstances\, are nonetheless able to reach out to\, and draw from a wide and deep universe of humane love for all. Their organizing group\, Cemanahuac (an Indigenous Nahuatl word meaning “One World”-all races\, cultures\, faiths\, regions\, and perspectives); is the foundation for the success of transcommunality. My book Transcommunality\, from the Politics of Conversion to the Ethics of Respect\, (Temple University Press\, 2003)\, that is the basis for my teaching in Soledad and elsewhere\, emphasizes ways of achieving mutual respect among diverse\, even opposing vantage points\, with an emphasis on being able to disagree over key matters while still working together. The concept of “transcommunality” is rooted in the brilliant\, ancient Indigenous philosophy of the Haudenosauunee (“Iroquois”) Peacemaker\, Deganawidah. Similarly\, rather than being simple stereotyped negatives; these Soledad men are positives\, who are providing important foundations for building bridges in a time of overall societal division\, and emphasizing\, in the midst of the national cauldron of hate\, the healing power of love. \nREGISTER \n 
URL:https://events.ucsc.edu/event/february-slugs-and-steins-with-distinguished-professor-emeritus-john-brown-childs/
LOCATION:
CATEGORIES:Lectures & Presentations
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/png:https://events.ucsc.edu/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/slugs-and-steins-blackthorn-banner.png
END:VEVENT
END:VCALENDAR