ECE Associate Teacher Info Session
2026-01-14 18:00 - 19:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | Silicon Valley Campus, 3175 Bowers Avenue, Santa Clara, CA, 95054, United States
Start a meaningful career shaping young minds.
With early learning programs in growing demand, educators who understand child development, curriculum design, and classroom dynamics are essential. The UCSC Silicon Valley Extension Early Childhood Education: Associate Teacher certificate builds foundational expertise in teaching infants through preschool‑age children, developing age‑appropriate curriculum, and collaborating with families and communities.
Speaker
Join Ninet Moradi, chair of the program, for an inside look at how our courses can help you qualify for associate‑teacher roles, meet California licensing requirements, and launch a rewarding career supporting children’s growth and learning.
Learn more.
Visit our program page to explore the courses and opportunities within the Early Childhood Education: Associate Teacher certificate program.
Register today.

Applied Microeconomics and Trade Seminar Series Presents: Olivia Bordeu
2026-01-15 01:40 | Engineering 2, Engineering 2 1156 High Street, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064
Applied Microeconomics and Trade Seminar
Date: Thursday, January 15, 2026
Time: 1:40 – 3:00 p.m.
Location: E2-499

Speaker: Olivia Bordeu
Title: Assistant Professor of Economics
Affiliation: University of California, Berkeley
Host: Jeremy West
Seminar title: Bank Branches and the Allocation of Capital across Cities

ABSTRACT: We study how banking market structure and branch networks shape the spatial mobility of capital. Using administrative loan-level data from Chile, we show that bank-level deposit shocks lead receiving banks to increase lending and lower interest rates relative to other banks. Interest rate reductions are concentrated in cities where the bank has a small market share, consistent with local market power. We develop and estimate a quantitative spatial model with multi-city banks, oligopolistic local credit markets, and frictions in interbank lending. These channels lead to spatial dispersion in interest rates and the marginal productivity of physical capital, reducing GDP. Interbank frictions reduce steady-state GDP by 0.04%, while spatial variation in loan markups reduces GDP by 0.5%. Bank mergers improve financial integration between cities but reduce competition, generating heterogeneous welfare effects that depend on the merging banks’ geographic overlap.

The art of interviewing: From good to great.
2026-01-15 18:00 - 19:00 | Silicon Valley Campus, 3175 Bowers Avenue, Santa Clara, CA, 95054, United States
Interviews are no longer just about resumes. In this section with PK Agarwal, dean of UCSC Silicon Valley Extension, we will dive into behavioral questions, storytelling techniques, virtual interview etiquette, and ways to stand out with authenticity and confidence.

Learn to craft memorable responses to behavioral interview questions using proven storytelling frameworks.
Understand what sets standout candidates apart in both in-person and virtual interviews—including etiquette, presence, and tone.
Gain tips for showcasing your unique strengths with clarity and confidence while staying true to yourself.

This is a casual discussion with Dean Agarwal. Be sure to bring your questions and share your experience.
This event is part of the Dean Conversations: Pathways to professional success series.
Claim your seat!

OLLI at UCSC Sunday Speaker Meeting
2026-01-19 10:00 - 12:00 | Colleges Nine and John R. Lewis College Multi-purpose Room, 615 College Nine Road, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064
OLLI at UCSC Hosts Chris Murphy, President of the Santa Cruz Warriors
The Osher Lifelong Learning Institute (OLLI) at UCSC invites the public to an in-person presentation on Sunday, January 18th, at Colleges Nine/ John R. Lewis Multipurpose Room on the UCSC campus. Join us for a social hour and presentation titled, “A Local Success Story: Inside the Santa Cruz Warriors.” Chris Murphy, President of the Santa Cruz Warriors and an active participant in several local organizations, will talk about the inner workings of the basketball and business operations of our local team. This event is free and open to the public. Bring a friend. Coffee and nibbles will be served. OLLI at UCSC is a community of adults from diverse educational, occupational and geographic backgrounds who are devoted to the pursuit of learning. For directions and free parking information visit https://olli.ucsc.edu/monthly-gatherings/location-directions-and-parking/

How Long is Long Enough: Screening and Conversation
2026-01-19 17:30 - 19:30 | Santa Cruz Barrios Unidos, 1817 Soquel Ave, Santa Cruz, 95062, United States
Join us for a screening of How Long is Long Enough: The Excessive Sentencing of Quntos & Layla, a short documentary created by Natalie Decena, Sarina Bozorgnia, Veler Brown, and Aiden Olivier from UC Santa Cruz with support from Michael Ademaro from Georgetown Law School as part of the Making an Exoneree initiative.
Quntos Wilson and Layla Roberts were sentenced to life without parole in 1995 at the ages of 18 and 19 for a robbery in which no one was physically harmed and a mere $301 was stolen. Now approaching 50, they have each become remarkable artists and mentors behind the prison bars of Louisiana State Penitentiary (Angola).
In addition to the documentary screening, the event will include a conversation with Quntos Wilson and Layla Roberts, letter-writing, and collaborative art making.

Campus to Career: Job Talk with Chief of Staff Mikaila Kruse
2026-01-20 13:00 - 14:00 | https://events.ucsc.edu/event/campus-to-career-job-talk-with-chief-of-staff-mikaila-kruse/
Are you curious about careers in government, leadership, or public service? Join us for a job talk with UCSC alumna Mikaila Kruse, the Chief of Staff for the Riverside city mayor. Mikaila will tell us her professional story and share how her education has informed her trajectory. You’ll learn about entering the field of politics, what government work looks like, and how to apply your skills for public service.
Attendees will enter raffles for a Humanities tumbler and tote!
Register here
Learn more about Mikaila:
Mikaila Kruse is Chief of Staff to Mayor Lock Dawson of Riverside. Having worked for elected officials at the federal, state, and local level, she has a range of experience in government relations that includes serving on political campaigns, delivering constituent services, and developing legislation in Sacramento. Previously, she worked on voter registration efforts and as a substitute teacher. She graduated from UC Santa Cruz in 2015 with a BA in History and Politics and received a Master of Public Policy degree from UC Riverside in 2020.
Find more Humanities Division career events and other resources at Humanities Career Engagement

Behavioral, Econometrics and Theory Seminar Series Presents: Roberto Corrao
2026-01-20 13:40 - 15:00 | Engineering 2, Engineering 2 1156 High Street, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064
Economics Behavioral, Econometrics, & Theory Seminar
Date: Tuesday, January 20, 2026
Time: 1:40-3:00 p.m.
Location: E2-499

Speaker: Roberto Corrao
Title: Assistant Professor of Economics
Affiliation: Stanford University
Host: Gerelt Tserenjigmid

Seminar title: Contractibility Design

ABSTRACT:
We introduce a model of incentive contracting in which the principal, in addition to
writing contracts, must engage in contractibility design: creating an evidence structure
that allows them to prove when the agent has breached the contract. Designing an
evidence structure entails both (i) front-end costs borne ex ante, such as those of
drafting contracts, and (ii) back-end costs borne ex post, such as those of generating
evidence. We find that, under even small front-end costs, optimal contracts are coarse,
specifying finitely many contingencies out of a continuum of possibilities. In contrast,
under even large back-end costs, optimal contracts are complete. Applied to the design
of procurement contracts, our results rationalize: (i) the discreteness of contracts, (ii)
the presence of similarly vague contracts in low-stakes and high-stakes settings, and
(iii) the discontinuous adjustment of contracts to changes in the economic environment.

AI Business Practices Info Session
2026-01-20 18:00 - 19:00 | CA
Transform your workplace with practical AI skills.
In an era of rapid digital change, non‑technical professionals need to know how to deploy AI tools and strategies efficiently—without needing to code. This specialization shows how you can streamline tasks like document and presentation creation, reporting, and project coordination using generative AI, intelligent agents, and automation.
Speaker
Join Hien Luu, Program Chair and Head of Machine Learning Infrastructure at Zoox, for an inside look at how our courses help you build prompt‑engineering know‑how, ethical AI awareness, and productivity‑boosting workflows—so you can lead AI‑driven change in your organization.
Sponsor
This winter info session is sponsored by the AI Business Practices specialization.
Claim your seat.

CSE Colloquium - Constraining Chaos: Toward Faithful and Semantic Decoding in Language Models
2026-01-21 11:00 - 12:30 | Engineering 2, Engineering 2 1156 High Street, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064
Presenter: Loris D’Antoni, UC San Diego
Abstract:
Language models excel at producing fluent text, but in domains like code and math, fluency isn’t enough — outputs must obey strict syntactic and semantic rules. A new wave of research is rethinking decoding itself: not as a process of sampling words, but as a negotiation between probability, structure, and meaning. In this talk, I’ll explore how grammar and semantics can be embedded into the decoding loop, how we can sample from the true model conditional distribution under constraints, and how programmable abstractions make it possible to enforce properties like type safety or program invariants. The result is a vision of decoding that is faithful to the model yet governed by rules, pointing toward a future where LLMs generate not just plausible text, but reliably correct output.
Bio:
Loris D’Antoni is a Jacobs Faculty Scholar and Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of California San Diego. His research helps people build trustworthy software. His work has introduced new frameworks for verifying and synthesizing programs—ranging from resilient network configurations to robust decision-making systems—and, more recently, methods for aligning language models with user intent.
He is the recipient of an NSF CAREER Award and a Microsoft Research Faculty Fellowship, and was selected as a Vilas Associate at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He has also received Google, Amazon, and Meta Faculty Awards, and the Morris and Dorothy Rubinoff Dissertation Award. His papers have earned several best paper awards and nominations, including at TACAS, ESOP, ICDCN, and SBES.
Loris received his B.S. and M.S. in Computer Science from the University of Torino, and his Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Pennsylvania. Before joining UC San Diego, he was a faculty member at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.
Hosted by: Professor Nikos Tziavelis
Location: Engineering 2, Room E2-180
*Light refreshments such as coffee, pastries, and fruit will be available.
Zoom: https://ucsc.zoom.us/j/93445911992?pwd=[REDACTED]

Kraw Lecture: Sensing the Unseen: How Drones and Ground Sensors Reveal the Hidden Air Quality Impact
2026-01-21 17:30 - 19:30 | Silicon Valley Campus, 3175 Bowers Avenue, Santa Clara, CA, 95054, United States
How can flying robots help us track the air we breathe and the pollutants we can’t see? In this talk, Assistant Professor Javier González-Rocha will share how his team uses drones to measure wind patterns and detect airborne pollutants in hard-to-reach places..
These systems help us understand how toxic pollutants and climate emissions move through the atmosphere and affect human health and the environment. From wildfire smoke to methane leaks from dairy farms and oil fields, these emissions are often poorly monitored—especially in rural or overburdened communities.
Low-cost, adaptable drone and ground sensor systems fill this gap. By combining real-time flight data, environmental measurements, and advanced modeling, González-Rocha and his team generate targeted observations that inform air quality assessments and improve emissions tracking.
This work sits at the intersection of engineering, environmental science, and community collaboration—building tools that empower people and support climate resilience from the ground up.
In-Person Reception: 5:30 p.m.
Lecture: 6–7 p.m.

Register Now

Applied Microeconomics and Trade Seminar Series Presents: Guo Xu
2026-01-22 01:40 | Engineering 2, Engineering 2 1156 High Street, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064
Applied Microeconomics and Trade Seminar
Date: Thursday, January 22, 2026
Time: 1:40 – 3:00 p.m.
Location: E2-499

Speaker: Guo Xu
Title: Associate Professor of Economics
Affiliation: University of California, Berkeley
Host: Ajay Shenoy

Seminar title: Personnel is Policy: Delegation and Political Misalignment in the Rulemaking Process

ABSTRACT: We combine comprehensive data on the U.S. federal rulemaking process with individuallevel personnel and voter registration records to study the consequences of partisan misalignment between regulators and the president. We present three main results. First, even important pieces of new regulation are frequently delegated to bureaucrats who are politically misaligned. Second, rules that are overseen by misaligned regulators take systematically longer to complete, are more verbose, generate more negative feedback from the public, and are more likely to be challenged in court. Third, in assigning regulators to rules, agency leaders often face a sharp tradeoff between political alignment and expertise. Agency frictions notwithstanding, they tend to resolve this tradeoff in favor of expertise.

HSI Equity Talk
2026-01-22 08:00 - 17:00 | CA
Title: Understanding the advising praxes central to student success at a four-year Hispanic-Serving Research Institution
Presenter: Dr. Lydia Iyeczohua Zendejas
Location: Via Zoom (link provided via RSVP)
Abstract: Higher education scholars increasingly recognize academic advising as a critical strategy for supporting the persistence of systemically marginalized students. Since the 1990s, UC Santa Cruz has undergone significant growth and demographic shifts—undergraduate enrollment grew from 10,269 in 1999 to 17,517 in 2019, with sharp increases in underrepresented, first-generation, and Hispanic students—creating both challenges and opportunities for advancing equitable outcomes.
Dr. Zendejas’s interview-based qualitative study examines how UCSC’s decentralized, dual shared advising model shapes advisors’ ability to provide holistic, culturally responsive advising. In this HSI equity talk, she will share how advising structures, practices, and policies impact advisors’ capacity to support students, how the current model can act as a structural barrier to collaboration, and the advising praxis advisors identify as essential to student success, persistence, and retention.
Please complete this RSVP form if you plan to attend. The Zoom information and a calendar invitation will be sent to those who RSVP.

BME Seminar: Rotation Talks
2026-01-22 11:40 - 13:15 | Physical Sciences Building, Physical Sciences Building, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064
Presenter: Grad Students
Description: Rotation Talks
Bio: N/A
Hosted by: Professor Rebecca DuBois, BME Department

Renowned climatologist Zeke Hausfather speaks on "Progress and Peril in a Warming World"
2026-01-22 15:30 - 17:00 | Center for Adaptive Optics, 7487 Red Hill Road, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064
Zeke Hausfather, noted climate scientist, is the climate lead at Stripe, writes for Carbon Brief, and is affiliated with Berkeley Earth and the Breakthrough Institute. He is a lead author on the IPCC AR7 report. His blog, The Climate Brink, is one of the most popular go-to spots for climate information on Substack.
Dr. Hausfather’s presentation abstract follows:
Recent progress on climate policy coupled with more rapid than expected declines in clean energy costs have bent down the curve of future emissions. Growing consensus is that 21st century warming will likely remain below 3˚C.
However it is difficult to fully preclude an eventual warming of 4˚C or more under a current policy world if there are continued positive emissions after 2100, or if carbon cycle feedbacks and climate sensitivity are on the high end of current estimates.
This talk will review our current climate trajectory and its impacts and assess measures needed to further reduce future warming and hedge against climate tail risks.
Please come in person to the Center for Adaptive Optics atrium, or zoom in to https://us02web.zoom.us/j/84461520550?pwd=[REDACTED]
A special Q&A session for undergraduates will be held at the CfAO atrium from 2-3!
CfAO is adjacent to Earth and Marine Sciences and Natural Sciences II.

Sharma, R. (CSE) - Automatically Evolving GPU Libraries for Performance Portable AI Kernels
2026-01-23 09:30 - 11:00 | Engineering 2, Engineering 2 1156 High Street, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064
GPUs are the workhorses of modern AI, widely deployed and developed by many vendors including Apple, Qualcomm, Intel, AMD, and NVIDIA. While these GPUs all offer high compute potential, programming them effectively is difficult because they differ in performance-critical features like SIMT width, cache capacity, and memory bandwidth, demanding different optimization strategies. Tunable kernels address this by exposing parameters such as tiling dimensions and workgroup sizes, enabling per-device specialization. Yet this produces static libraries: tuned once, then frozen, degrading as new hardware emerges. We propose automatically evolving libraries that expand their tuning knowledge as new hardware emerges, with minimal impact on user experience.
To build such libraries, we first need to understand the tuning landscape. We address this through GPU Goldmines, a WebGPU-based framework for exhaustively collecting tuning data across diverse devices. Our tuned matrix multiplication kernels outperform an optimized baseline by 8.4x on average, while matrix-vector kernels achieve 93% of platform bandwidth. We find that hyper-tuning for a single GPU causes 50% performance degradation on other devices, whereas data-driven portability methods recover 88% of peak performance. These kernels are fundamental to the prefill and decode phases of LLM inference. We integrate them into llama.cpp as our evaluation platform, where they outperform CPU and Vulkan backends.
Building on this data, we are developing Living Libraries to improve performance continuously without disrupting users. This means choosing good parameters upfront, learning from real-world execution, and knowing when to keep searching versus when to stop, though hand-designed parameter spaces remain inherently bounded. To move beyond this, we extend toward LLM-based kernel evolution, where language models propose entirely new kernel variants, opening a less structured but higher potential search space.
Event Host: Rithik Sharma, Ph.D. Student, Computer Science and Engineering
Advisor: Tyler Sorensen & Yuanchao Xu

Zoom: https://ucsc.zoom.us/j/92739836317?pwd=[REDACTED]
Passcode: [REDACTED]

Statistics Seminar: Heterogeneous Statistical Transfer Learning
2026-01-23 12:00 - 13:00 | https://ucsc.zoom.us/j/94465292273?pwd=[REDACTED]
Presenter: Subhadeep Paul, Associate Professor, Ohio State University
Description: In the first part of the talk, we consider the problem of Transfer Learning (TL) under heterogeneity from a source to a new target domain for high-dimensional regression with differing feature sets. Most homogeneous TL methods assume that target and source domains share the same feature space, which limits their practical applicability. In applications, the target and source features are frequently different due to the inability to measure certain variables in data-poor target environments. Conversely, existing heterogeneous TL methods do not provide statistical error guarantees, limiting their utility for scientific discovery. Our method first learns a feature map between the missing and observed features, leveraging the vast source data, and then imputes the missing features in the target. Using the combined matched and imputed features, we then perform a two-step transfer learning for penalized regression. We develop upper bounds on estimation and prediction errors, assuming that the source and target parameters differ sparsely but without assuming sparsity in the target model. We obtain results for both when the feature map is linear and when it is nonparametrically specified as unknown functions. Our results elucidate how estimation and prediction errors of HTL depend on the model’s complexity, sample size, the quality and differences in feature maps, and differences in the models across domains. In the second part of the talk, going beyond linear models, I will discuss a transfer learning method for nonparametric regression using a random forest. The unknown source and target regression functions are assumed to differ for a small number of features. Our method obtains residuals from a source domain-trained Centered RF (CRF) in the target domain, then fits another CRF to these residuals with feature splitting probabilities proportional to feature-residual distance covariance. We derive an upper bound on the mean square error rate of the procedure that theoretically brings out the benefits of transfer learning in random forests. Our results explain why shallower trees in the residual random forest in the target domain provide implicit regularization.
Bio:Subhadeep Paul is an Associate Professor in the Department of Statistics at The Ohio State University. He is also a faculty fellow and previously served as a co-director of the foundations of data science and AI community at the Translational Data Analytics Institute at Ohio State. He received his PhD in Statistics from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2017. His research focuses on statistical analysis of complex network-linked data and transfer and federated statistical learning. His research has been funded by two NSF grants from the algorithms of threat detection and mathematics of digital twins programs.
Hosted by: Statistics Department
Zoom link: https://ucsc.zoom.us/j/94465292273?pwd=[REDACTED]

Santa Cruz Pickwick Club presents: Bleak House
2026-01-25 13:00 - 15:00 | CA
Spontaneous human combustion! Evil lawyers! Detectives! Family intrigue! These all come together in Charles Dickens’s masterwork, Bleak House. This year, we will spend the year reading the 2026 Dickens Universe novel. Join Dickens enthusiasts and Pickwick Club members on Zoom for a series of discussions about this beloved book.
Register via Zoom
Reading Schedule:

OCT 26: Chapters 8-13
NOV 23: Chapters 14-19
DEC 28: No meeting
JAN 25: Chapters 20-25
FEB 22: Chpaters 26-32
MAR 22: Chapters 33-38
APR 26: Chapters 39-46
MAY 24: Chapters 47-53
JUN 28: Chapters 54-67 (End)

Recommended Edition: We recommend the Penguin Classics edition of the novel for its appendices and notes, but other versions are fine. First-time readers should avoid the Introduction if they don’t want spoilers. Download the novel to read at Gutenburg.org or listen to it at LibriVox.org.
The Santa Cruz Pickwick (Book) Club, a branch of the Dickens Fellowship, is a community of local bookworms, students, and teachers who meet monthly to discuss a nineteenth-century novel. The Santa Cruz Public Libraries provide support for the reading group.

Screening: Queering Movement, Stories Embodied Film Shorts
2026-01-25 17:00 - 19:30 | Institute of the Arts and Sciences, 100 Panetta Ave, Santa Cruz, United States
The IAS, BBQueer Fest, and Motion Pacific invite you to attend “Queering Movement: Stories Embodied,” an evening celebrating short films by local Black, brown and queer artists and dancers. The screening and Q&A with filmmakers and participants showcases the interplay of activism, movement, and performance. Social hour to follow! Light snacks and (non-alcoholic) refreshments will be provided. Films are in English, with English subtitles. moss time, crip time includes audio description as voice over.
Films:
moss time, crip time (Cynthia Ling Lee.)
Taste her Fruit, Bless the Whore (Diana Mulan Zhu)
Liberating Movement: Black, Brown & Queer All Over (Helen Aldana & Megan Martinez Goltz)

ECE Seminar: Tactile sensing: At the boundary between mechanical and computational intelligence in robotic grippers
2026-01-26 10:40 - 11:45 | Engineering 2, Engineering 2 1156 High Street, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064
Presenter: Dr. Hannah Stuart, Associate Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of California at Berkeley
Description: Robot grippers typically include mechanical intelligence (e.g., underactuation, compliance) or computational intelligence (e.g., fully actuated with a wide array of sensors). Next generation grippers and hands will require both intelligences to work in concert across applications with resilience and dexterity. This talk will introduce the concept of mechanical and computational intelligence co-design through example case studies that focus on the particular importance of embodied sensitivity as a feature of the co-design process. For example, the most recent work on the Smart Suction Cup, conducted largely by Dr. Jungpyo Lee, demonstrates how design decisions like the number of sensitive chambers influences the resultant robot arm controller as well as physical compliance and manufacturing feasibility and cost.
Bio: Dr. Hannah Stuart is an Associate Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of California at Berkeley. She received her BS in Mechanical Engineering at the George Washington University in 2011, and her MS and PhD in Mechanical Engineering at Stanford University in 2013 and 2018, respectively. Her research focuses on understanding the mechanics of physical interaction in order to better design systems for dexterous manipulation. Applications range from remote robotics to assistive orthotics. Recent awards include the NSF CAREER grant, NASA Early Career Faculty grant, Hellman Fellows Fund grant, and Johnson & Johnson Women in STEM2D grant. She is a Senior Member of IEEE.
Hosted by: Professor Soumya Bose, ECE Department
Zoom Link: https://ucsc.zoom.us/j/97975378707?pwd=[REDACTED]

Statistics Seminar: Boosting Biomedical Imaging Analysis via Distributed Functional Regression and Synthetic Surrogates
2026-01-26 12:00 - 13:00 | https://ucsc.zoom.us/j/92479478035?pwd=[REDACTED]
Presenter: Guannan Wang, Associate Professor, The College of William & Mary
Description: Generative AI has emerged as a powerful tool for synthesizing biomedical images, offering new solutions to challenges such as data scarcity, privacy constraints, and modality imbalance. However, the reliable use of synthetic images in scientific analysis requires principled statistical frameworks that can assess fidelity and rigorously quantify uncertainty. In this talk, I present a distributed functional data analysis approach for comparing original and AI- generated biomedical images through their mean and covariance structures. Using spline-based representations on complex imaging domains, we construct simultaneous confidence regions, enabling formal inference on original-synthetic differences and providing statistical safeguards for downstream analyses. Building on this foundation, I demonstrate how synthetic images can
be safely incorporated into functional regression models to learn spatially varying covariate effects when key imaging modalities are partially observed. Applications to large-scale neuroimaging studies illustrate how integrating generative AI with rigorous statistical inference enhances the reliability, interpretability, and scientific value of modern biomedical imaging analyses.
Bio: Guannan Wang is a Diamond Term Distinguished Associate Professor in the Department of Mathematics at William & Mary. She received a Ph.D. in Statistics and an M.S. in Computer Science from the University of Georgia in 2015. Her research focuses on the statistical foundations of generative AI, distributed and federated learning, and spatial and functional data analysis, with applications to neuroimaging, public health, and environmental and social sciences. She has published over 30 peer-reviewed articles in leading statistical journals, including JASA, JCGS, Statistica Sinica, Biometrics, and JMLR, and her work has been supported by the NIH, NSF, and the Simons Foundation.
Hosted by: Statistics Department
Zoom link: https://ucsc.zoom.us/j/92479478035?pwd=[REDACTED]

CM Seminar - "Revealing Hidden Stories: Co-Designing the Thámien Ohlone Augmented Reality Tour"
2026-01-26 12:30 - 13:30 | Engineering 2, Engineering 2 1156 High Street, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064
Presented by: Kai Lukoff
Description:
The Santa Clara University campus is adorned with symbols and monuments, including a Spanish Mission Church, that highlight its Catholic heritage. However, the presence and history of the Ohlone Native Americans, who have inhabited this land for thousands of years and continue to live in the region, receive little to no recognition. How can we utilize augmented reality (AR) to share these hidden stories?
In collaboration with the Muwekma Ohlone Tribe, our interdisciplinary team developed the Thámien Ohlone AR tour. This tour reveals hidden stories, encourages visitors to engage in critical reflection, and inspires visions of a more just future and received the Best Movie Award at CHI 2024, the leading conference in the field of human-computer interaction. This talk will share insights on co-designing location-based AR experiences for social impact and explore the potential of AR in preserving cultural heritage.
Bio: Kai Lukoff is an assistant professor in the Department of Computer Science & Engineering at Santa Clara University. He leads the Human-Computer Interaction Lab, focusing on technologies with social impact. His recent work focuses on co-design methods for location-based augmented reality. His research has been featured in prominent conferences such as CHI, CSCW, IMWUT, and DIS, and he was honored with the 2023 Outstanding Dissertation Award from ACM SIGCHI.

Hosted by: Professor Sri Kurniawan
When: Monday, January 26, 2026 from 12:30PM to 1:30PM
Location:
IN-PERSON @ UCSC Main Campus, E2-280.
Viewing room @ SVC 3212.
LUNCH WILL BE PROVIDED AT BOTH LOCATIONS! Faculty and students are highly encouraged to attend.
Zoom info:
https://ucsc.zoom.us/j/95105219890?pwd=[REDACTED]
Meeting ID: 951 0521 9890
Passcode: [REDACTED]

AM Seminar: Probing Forced Responses and Causality in Data-Driven Climate Emulators: Conceptual Limitations and the Role of Reduced-Order Models
2026-01-26 16:00 - 17:00 | https://ucsc.zoom.us/j/97450297092?pwd=[REDACTED]
Presenter: Fabrizio Falasca, New York University
Description: A central challenge in climate science and applied mathematics is developing data-driven models of multiscale systems that capture both stationary statistics and responses to external perturbations. Current neural climate emulators aim to resolve the atmosphere–ocean system in all its complexity but often struggle to reproduce forced responses, limiting their use in causal studies such as Green’s function experiments. To explore the origin of these limitations, we first examine a simplified dynamical system that retains key features of climate variability. We argue that the ability of emulators of multiscale systems to reproduce perturbed statistics depends critically on (i) the choice of an appropriate coarse-grained representation and (ii) careful parameterizations of unresolved processes. These insights highlight reduced-order models, tailored to specific goals, processes, and scales, as valid alternatives to general-purpose emulators. We next consider a real-world application, developing a neural model to investigate the joint variability of the surface temperature field and radiative fluxes. The model infers a multiplicative noise process directly from data, largely reproduces the system’s probability distribution, and enables causal studies through forced responses. We discuss its limitations and outline directions for future work. These results expose key challenges in data-driven modeling of multiscale physical systems and underscore the value of coarse-grained, stochastic approaches.Throughout, we propose linear response theory as a rigorous framework for evaluating neural models beyond stationary statistics, probing causal mechanisms, and guiding model design.
Bio: Fabrizio Falasca is physicist working at the intersection of statistical physics, applied mathematics and climate science. He acquired his master degree in Physics of Complex Systems in the University of Turin in Italy. He then moved to Atlanta to pursue a PhD in Climate Science under the supervision of Annalisa Bracco. In the last 5 years he has been working in the Courant Institute of Mathematical Science in the group of Laure Zanna. His work span response theory, causal inference, data-driven modeling, and their applications to climate dynamics and change.

Hosted by: Applied Mathematics
Zoom Link: https://ucsc.zoom.us/j/97450297092?pwd=[REDACTED]

CSE Colloquium - Towards Relational Foundation Models: Zero-Shot Forecasting over Relational Databases
2026-01-28 11:00 - 12:15 | Engineering 2, Engineering 2 1156 High Street, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064
Presenter: Charilaos I. Kanatsoulis, Stanford University
Abstract: Foundation models have transformed unstructured domains such as language and vision, yet relational datasets, where most enterprise knowledge lives, still rely on brittle, task-specific ML pipelines. I will begin by introducing Relational Deep Learning (RDL), a general framework for learning directly from heterogeneous multi-table data, capturing structure across entities, attributes, and relationships without handcrafted schemas or features.
Building on this paradigm, I will present the Relational Transformer (RT), a schema-invariant model pretrained across diverse relational databases that performs structural learning with in-context information and transfers zero-shot to new databases and predictive tasks. By modeling both inter- and intra-table dependencies and reframing prediction as pattern recognition inside a unified latent relational space, RT represents a concrete step toward relational foundation models that can be prompted, reused, and generalized for new problems.
Bio: Charilaos I. Kanatsoulis is a Research Scientist in the Department of Computer Science at Stanford University. He previously was a Postdoctoral Researcher in the Department of Electrical and Systems Engineering at the University of Pennsylvania and received his Ph.D. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. His research lies at the intersection of machine learning and signal processing, with a focus on Transformer and foundation model design for structured data, graph representation learning, tensor analysis, and explainable AI. His work has been recognized with the Best Paper Award at the KDD Temporal Graph Learning Workshop (2025) and the Best Student Paper Award at IEEE CAMSAP (2023). He co-instructs CS246 and CS224W at Stanford and previously taught ESE 5140 at Penn. He has organized several community events, including the Graph Signal Processing short course at IEEE ICASSP 2023, the Stanford Graph Learning Workshop (2024–2025), the Relational Deep Learning tutorial at ACM KDD 2025, and the New Perspectives in Advancing Graph Machine Learning Workshop at NeurIPS 2025.
Hosted by: Professor Nikos Tziavelis
Location: Engineering 2, Room E2-180 (Refreshments such as coffee, pastries, and fruit will be provided.)
Zoom: https://ucsc.zoom.us/j/93445911992?pwd=[REDACTED]

Statistics Seminar: Inferring Unobserved Trajectories from Multiple Temporal Snapshots
2026-01-28 12:00 - 13:00 | https://ucsc.zoom.us/j/93769232971?pwd=[REDACTED]
Presenter: Yunyi Shen, Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Description: Practitioners often aim to infer an unobserved population trajectory using sample snapshots at multiple time points. E.g. given single-cell sequencing data, scientists would like to learn how gene expression changes over a cell’s life cycle. But sequencing any cell destroys that cell. So we can access data for any particular cell only at a single time point, but we have data across many cells. The deep learning community has recently explored using Schrödinger bridges (SBs) and their extensions in similar settings. However, existing methods either (1) interpolate between just two time points or (2) require a single fixed reference dynamic (often set to Brownian motion within SBs). But learning piecewise from adjacent time points can fail to capture long-term dependencies. And practitioners are typically able to specify a model family for the reference dynamic but not the exact values of the parameters within it. So I propose a new method that (1) learns the unobserved trajectories from sample snapshots across multiple time points and (2) requires specification only of a family of reference dynamics, not a single fixed one. I demonstrate the advantages of my method on simulated and real data, across applications in biology and oceanography.
Bio: Yunyi Shen is currently a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at MIT. He works in probabilistic machine learning and statistics on problems where data are scarce or noisy, and as a result require adaptive data collection, incorporation of domain-specific structure, and careful downstream evaluation. Drawing on a background in the physical and life sciences, his work is shaped by close interdisciplinary collaborations and motivated by scientific problems in biology and physics, such as gene regulation, fluid dynamics in cells, wildlife monitoring, and time-domain astronomy.
Hosted by: Statistics Department
Zoom link: https://ucsc.zoom.us/j/93769232971?pwd=[REDACTED]

Ancestral Algorithms: Indigenous Virtual Realities & the Ethics of AI
2026-01-28 16:00 - 17:35 | CA
This talk explores how Indigenous analytic and ancestral technologies, rooted in technē as craft, knowledge, and skilled practice, inform contemporary digital forms such as Virtual Reality and AI. It traces how ancestral memory is transferred, adapted, and sustained across generations through decolonial and anti-colonial frameworks, while critically engaging both the generative possibilities and the structural pitfalls of digital technologies as they shape relational, technological futures.
This event is presented as part of the Creative Interventions (CI) series and is co-sponsored by the Arts Division’s Creative Technologies program and Porter College at UC Santa Cruz.
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ADMISSION
– Free and open to UCSC affiliates.
– This is an online event.
– Registration is required here.
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FULL SCHEDULE OF EVENTS
– Event dates to be announced throughout the 2025-26 academic year.
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ABOUT THE SERIES
Creative Interventions addresses the interconnected work of artists, designers, activists, and knowledge workers—and the intrinsic and transformative capacity of that work to cultivate a just society. More information about the Creative Technologies program.
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This program is open to all UC Santa Cruz affiliates consistent with state and federal law.

BME 280B Seminar: Satellite repeats encode megabase-scale transcription factor hubs
2026-01-29 11:40 - 13:15 | Physical Sciences Building, Physical Sciences Building, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064
Presenter: Matt Franklin, Postdoctoral Researcher, Stanford University
Description: Eukaryotic genomes contain large stretches of repetitive DNA called satellite DNA, often found near centromeres and ribosomal DNA regions. In humans, alpha satellite has well-established roles in centromere biology, however the functions of other human satellite DNAs remain largely unexplored.
We recently identified the Hippo pathway effector TEAD as a novel Human Satellite 3 (HSat3) binding TF. Because HSat3 is highly enriched near ribosomal DNA (rDNA) genes, we examined whether the Hippo pathway regulates rDNA via HSat3. Our work demonstrates that HSat3 localizes the Hippo factors YAP and TEAD inside the nucleolus, where YAP directly activates ribosomal RNA (rRNA) transcription. These findings present the first evidence that the Hippo pathway factor YAP directly regulates RNA Polymerase I activity.
Disparate studies have identified examples of transcription factors that bind repetitive DNA elements through motif recognition. However, a systematic search for such factors has not been conducted. Using Telomere-to-telomere genome assemblies, we predicted and validated dozens of new satellite-binding TFs, many of which are part of highly conserved signaling pathways. Beyond revealing a direct relationship between the Hippo pathway and ribosomal DNA regulation, this work demonstrates that satellite DNA can encode a broad range of functional motifs, hinting at new roles for these enormous genomic elements.
Bio: Following his undergraduate studies, Matt conducted a 1-year research fellowship at EMBL Hamburg, where he worked on X-ray scattering methods for structural biology. He then earned his PhD in chemical engineering at Stanford University, where he investigated mechanotransduction and Hippo pathway signaling. Matt continued this research as a postdoc under Kun-Liang Guan at UC San Diego, where he discovered that Hippo pathway effectors bind repetitive DNA elements. To expand on his newfound interest in repetitive DNA, Matt returned to Stanford as a postdoctoral researcher under Nicolas Altemose, where he is studying the functions of satellite repeats as hubs for transcription factor binding.
Hosted by: Professor Karen Miga, BME Department

Allen van Gelder Memorial
2026-01-29 13:00 - 16:30 | University Center, University Center, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064
You are cordially invited to an event celebrating the life and research legacy of Allen van Gelder, who passed away in April 2025 after 37 years of dedicated service to the Computer Science and Engineering Department at UC Santa Cruz.
Thursday, January 29, 2025
Reception begins 1pm, Program begins 1:30pm
Alumni Room, University Center, UC Santa Cruz
Please RSVP via the following link:
https://forms.gle/iyFTL2aAxLMWdRMU9
The gathering will include three presentations reflecting on Allen’s contributions to computer science, followed by an opportunity for attendees to share remembrances and stories
On Allen’s contributions to databases and logic programming
Jeff Ullman, Stanford W. Ascherman Professor of Computer Science (Emeritus), Computer Science Department, Stanford University
On Allen’s contributions to computer graphics and visualization
Claudio Silva, Institute Professor of Computer Science and Engineering, NYU Tandon School of Engineering, New York University
On Allen’s contributions to satisfiability
Olaf Beyersdorff, Professor of Theoretical Computer Science, Institute of Computer Science, Friedrich Schiller University Jena
Whether you were a colleague, student, or friend, we hope you’ll join us in celebrating Allen’s career and its impact.

Unlock Your Career: 10 Essential Strategies for Success in an AI-Driven World
2026-01-29 17:30 - 18:30 | Silicon Valley Campus, 3175 Bowers Avenue, Santa Clara, CA, 95054, United States
Are you ready to thrive in today’s fast-moving professional world — especially in one shaped by innovation, technology, and AI? Success in today’s AI-driven economy requires more than technical skills—it demands the right mindset, habits, and career strategy. Whether you’re early in your career, navigating a transition, or pushing for your next breakthrough, this workshop will help you accelerate your professional impact with confidence and clarity.
In this Dean Series workshop, Dean PK Agarwal shares practical, real-world insights drawn from leadership roles across industry, academia, and government. Participants will learn how to create value in any role, stay relevant as careers evolve, and build professional resilience in times of change.

Identify the traits and mindsets that separate high performers from the rest
Learn how to add value and stand out in any organization
Explore strategies for continuous learning in an AI-enabled workplace
Pick up tips to build and leverage professional networks effectively
Gain insight into managing up and taking ownership of your career trajectory
Examine your brand, both in person and online

This event is part of the Dean Conversations: Pathways to professional success series.
Claim your seat!

Pesticide Impacts in and around Monterey Bay lecture
2026-01-29 18:00 - 19:30 | Institute of the Arts and Sciences, 100 Panetta Ave, Santa Cruz, United States
The short- and long-term health impacts of pesticide use for local communities on land as well as in the ocean are addressed in a conversation with Yanely Martinez, Katherine Gabriel-Cox, Adam Scow and Logan Pallin.
This event is presented as part of as part of the Intersections of Climate Change series, and is organized with the Friedlaender Lab, in conjunction with the Weather and the Whale exhibition, at the Institute of the Arts and Sciences.
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FULL SCHEDULE OF EVENTS
– Thu., Jan. 29, 6:00 p.m.: Pesticide Impacts in and around Monterey Bay
– Thu., Feb. 5, 6:00 p.m.: Climate Justice and the Moss Landing Battery Fire
– Wed., Feb. 11, 6:00 p.m.: The California Firefighter Cancer Research Study with Shehnaz Hussain and Fire Captain Jamie Gabriel
– Thu., Feb. 26, 6:00 p.m.: The Whale Liberation Front—An electroacoustic performance and artist talk
– Wed., March 4, 6:00 p.m.: Unexpected Returns: The Historic Entanglements of Fire, Settlement, and Stewardship in the Santa Cruz Mountains
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ADMISSION
– FREE and open to the public
– Attend in person at the UC Santa Cruz Institute of the Arts and Sciences on the Westside in Santa Cruz, Calif.
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PARKING
– The entrance to the Institute of the Arts and Sciences is on Delaware St. and has an accessibility ramp.
– Free self-parking is available on Panetta Ave. and High Rd., immediately adjacent to the building.
– Accessible parking is on High Rd.
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This program is open to all members of the public consistent with state and federal law.

AI Workshop Series: AI in the Semiconductor Industry
2026-01-30 10:00 - 16:00 | Silicon Valley Campus, 3175 Bowers Avenue, Santa Clara, CA, 95054, United States
Explore how artificial intelligence is transforming the semiconductor industry—from design to manufacturing.
In this AI workshop, students will examine how AI is being applied to chip design, Electronic Design Automation (EDA), and production workflows, with a focus on real-world use cases and emerging industry trends. Through expert insights and practical examples, this session highlights how generative AI and advanced analytics are improving efficiency, yield, and innovation across the semiconductor lifecycle.

Apply AI tools to modern semiconductor design and manufacturing
Identify high-impact generative AI use cases in chip development
Understand how AI is reshaping Electronic Design Automation (EDA)
Leverage AI for yield improvement, defect detection, and process optimization
Stay informed on key trends shaping the future of AI in semiconductors

Format:
This is a hybrid course, offered both in person and via Zoom. Participants are expected to attend and actively engage during the scheduled class time. Remote attendees are encouraged to keep cameras on to support an interactive learning experience. In-person participants should bring a laptop to each class session.
This course is part of the Winter 2026 AI Workshop series.
Enroll in this workshop.
