CM Seminar - "Revealing Hidden Stories: Co-Designing the Thámien Ohlone Augmented Reality Tour"
2026-01-26 12:30 - 13:30 (America/Los_Angeles) | 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.

Connect To Your Roots: BIPOC Herbalism
2026-02-01 12:00 - 15:00 | UCSC Farm, 152 Farm Rd, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064
The People of Color Sustainability Collective invites you to Connect To Your Roots!
We will be sharing and connecting with generational knowledge and empowering BIPOC to take control of their own food systems, particularly medicinal herbs, through a variety of educational hands-on activities. We aim for this event to enhance BIPOC visibility on campus, and cultural awareness and preservation. Light refreshments provided!

Salve making
DIY tea/scent bags
Recycled plant propagation
Native plant bundling

Join us Sunday, February 1st, 2026 from 12:00PM to 3:00PM at the Community Herb Garden within UCSC Farm.

For accommodations or questions: pocsc@ucsc.edu
RSVP at bit.ly/BIPOCHerbalism

ECE Seminar: Advanced Packaging as the Engine of the AI Systems Era
2026-02-02 10:40 - 11:45 | Engineering 2, Engineering 2 1156 High Street, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064
Presenter: Tolga Acikalin, System and Package Architect, Lumilens
Description: The rapid rise of artificial intelligence and machine learning—most notably recent breakthroughs in large language models—is reshaping the trajectory of the semiconductor industry and ushering in a new era of system innovation. As performance scaling at the device level slows, heterogeneous integration (HI) has emerged as a foundational technology to sustain advances in computing and communication. By integrating separately manufactured components with diverse functions into a single system, HI enables new levels of functionality, performance, and efficiency that are no longer achievable through traditional scaling alone.
Realizing the full potential of heterogeneous systems demands a shift toward holistic system-level co-design, with advanced packaging assuming a central and strategic role. This talk will briefly review the evolution of packaging technologies and then focus on advanced packaging architectures that enable heterogeneous integration.Topics will include advances in 2D and 3D interconnect technologies, the introduction of novel packaging materials such as glass substrates, and the growing role of photonic links, including co-packaged optics enabled by silicon photonics. The talk will conclude with a discussion of power delivery and thermal management as system-level challenges and opportunities that will shape the next generation of high-performance, energy-efficient systems.
Bio: Tolga Acikalin received his Bachelor of Science degree in Mechanical Engineering from Middle East Technical University in Ankara, Turkey, and his Master of Science and Ph.D. degrees from Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana.
He joined Intel in 2007 as a Research and Development Engineer, working on assembly and test pathfinding projects within the Technology and Manufacturing Group in Chandler, Arizona. From 2013 to 2025, he was a Principal Engineer at Intel Labs in Santa Clara, California, where he led and influenced innovative strategies for heterogeneous system integration, spanning package- to wafer-scale solutions, with a strong emphasis on next-generation interconnect technologies. Tolga is currently a System and Package Architect at Lumilens, where he focuses on next-generation photonic interconnect solutions, ranging from near-packaged optics to co-packaged optics.
His technical interests include co-packaged optics and silicon photonics, optical and sub-THz to THz RF high-speed interconnects and the associated advanced package architectures, novel advanced packaging solutions such as glass substrates, and optical computing. Tolga has authored or co-authored more than 15 peer-reviewed journal and conference publications in leading APS, ASME, and IEEE venues, including best paper awards at IEEE RFIC and JSCC. He holds nine issued patents and more than 27 additional patent filings.
Hosted by: Professor Soumya Bose, ECE Department
Zoom Link: https://ucsc.zoom.us/j/97975378707?pwd=[REDACTED]

Statistics Seminar: Mathematical Foundations for Machine Learning from a Nonlinear Time Series Perspective
2026-02-02 12:00 - 13:00 | https://ucsc.zoom.us/j/96647674332?pwd=[REDACTED]
Presenter: Jiaqi Li, William H. Kruskal Instructor, University of Chicago
Description:Modern machine learning (ML) algorithms achieve remarkable empirical success, yet providing rigorous statistical guarantees remains a major challenge, particularly in distributional theory and online inference methods. In this talk, we will introduce a novel framework to provide mathematical foundations for ML by bringing powerful tools in nonlinear time series. First, we focus on the stochastic gradient descent (SGD) with constant learning rates. By interpreting the SGD sequence as a nonlinear AR(1) process, we can establish the geometric moment contraction (GMC) for SGD regardless of initializations. By this GMC property, we can derive refined asymptotic theory of SGD and its averaging variant, including general moment convergence, quenched central limit theorems, quenched invariance principles, and sharp Berry- Esseen bounds. Then, we extend this theoretical framework to SGD with dropout regularization, a widely used but theoretically underexplored technique in deep learning. By establishing GMC under explicit learning-rate and dimensional scaling regimes, we obtain asymptotic normality and invariance principles for dropout SGD and its averaged version. These results enable online inference, for which we introduce a fully recursive estimator of the long-run covariance matrix appearing in the limiting distributions. The proposed online confidence intervals with asymptotically correct coverage can be generalized to many other ML algorithms. Overall, viewing online learning algorithms as nonlinear time series provides a powerful toolkit for deriving statistical guarantees in modern ML, with implications for high-dimensional stochastic optimization and real-time uncertainty quantification.
Bio:Jiaqi Li is a William H. Kruskal Instructor in the Department of Statistics at the University of Chicago. She obtained her PhD in Statistics from Washington University in St. Louis in 2024. Her research focuses on developing theoretical guarantees and statistical inference methods for machine learning algorithms. She also works on time series data, especially in the high- dimensional settings with complex temporal and cross-sectional dependency structures. She also
collaborates with neuroscientists on applications in fMRI and EEG data.
Hosted by: Statistics Department
Zoom link: https://ucsc.zoom.us/j/96647674332?pwd=[REDACTED]

AM Seminar: Are Graph Learning Methods Actually Learning?
2026-02-02 16:00 - 17:00 | CA
Presenter: Seshadhri Comandur, Professor of Computer Science, UCSC
Description: There has been a lot of literature on graph machine learning over the past few years, and a bewildering array of new methods. This talk is based on a series of results making a provocative argument. Maybe many graph machine learning methods are not really that effective, and the progress we are seeing is an artifact of experimental design and measurement. I will talk about some results showing that low-dimensional embeddings with dot product similarity (arguably the most common graph ML technique) cannot capture salient aspects of real-world graphs. Follow-up work demonstrates that simple benchmarks seem to outperform fancier methods, and that there are significant shortcomings in existing accuracy measurement.
Bio: C. Seshadhri (Sesh) is a professor of Computer Science at the University of California, Santa Cruz and an Amazon scholar. Prior to joining UCSC, he was a researcher at Sandia National Labs, Livermore in the Information Security Sciences department, during 2010-2014. His primary interest is the theoretical study of algorithms, especially those with a mix of graphs and randomization. By and large, Sesh works at the boundary of theoretical computer science (TCS) and data mining. His work spans many areas: sublinear algorithms, graph algorithms, graph modeling, scalable computation, and data mining. In the theory world, his work has resolved numerous open problems in monotonicity testing and graph property testing. A number of his papers in the interface of TCS and applied algorithms have received paper awards at KDD, WWW, ICDM, SDM, and WSDM. He received the 2019 SDM/IBM Early Career Award for Excellence in Data Analytics. Sesh got his Ph.D from Princeton University and spent two years as a postdoc in IBM Almaden Labs.
Hosted by: Ashesh Chattopadhyay, Applied Mathematics Department

Statistics Seminar: Statistical Inference for Multi-Modality Data in the AI Era
2026-02-04 12:00 - 13:00 | https://ucsc.zoom.us/j/91740050783?pwd=[REDACTED]
Presenter: Qi Xu, Postdoctoral Researcher, Department of Statistics & Data Science, Carnegie Mellon University
Description: Multi-modality data are increasingly common across science medicine and technology, such as imaging, text, sensors, and genomics. These modalities are often high dimensional or unstructured and naturally exhibit blockwise (nonmonotone) missingness where different samples observe different subsets of modalities. Such missingness creates a major obstacle for statistical analyses since classical methods either discard large portions of data or rely on strong modeling assumptions. Recent advances in AI make it possible to generate or predict unobserved modalities from observed ones, opening new opportunities for data integration. In this talk, I will focus on statistical inference for blockwise-missing multi-modality data, while rigorously incorporating modern AI tools. Rooted in semiparametric theory, there is a long-term open problem that theoretically optimal estimating function under non-monotone missingness is computationally intractable, even under the missing completely at random mechanism. I introduce a tractable approximation to the optimal estimating equation through a novel Restricted ANOVA hierarchY or RAY decomposition and its almost-eigen-operator property. This leads to a new class of estimators that leverage predictive or generative AI models to borrow information across datasets while remaining unbiased and asymptotically normal. Motivated by the property of the RAY estimator, we extend the RAY estimator to a class of unbiased, consistent, and computationally tractable estimators. The most efficient estimator in this class is then derived, named as Adaptive RAY estimator, which optimally integrating all available data and prediction from AI. Simulation studies and a single cell multi-omics application demonstrate that the proposed framework enables stable and efficient inference for complex multi modality data in the AI era. This is a joint work with Lorenzo Testa, Jing Lei and Kathryn Roeder, and the paper is available on arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.24158
Bio: Qi Xu is a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Statistics & Data Science at Carnegie Mellon University. His research interests lie broadly in statistics and machine learning, especially in data integration and AI for statistics, with their applications in genomics and mobile health. He received his Ph.D. from the Department of Statistics at University of California, Irvine, and the Master degree from University of Illinois Urbana Champaign, and the Bachelor degree (with honors) from Tongji University.
Hosted by: Statistics Department
Zoom link: https://ucsc.zoom.us/j/91740050783?pwd=[REDACTED]

VMCC Series: Yiman Wang
2026-02-04 16:00 - 17:30 | Porter College, D-Building, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064
In a lecture delivered by UC Santa Cruz Professor Yiman Wang, this talk delves into Mao-era moving image culture that featured experimentation with public health, horticulture, and animal husbandry to unpack what cinematic experiments were developed, how scientific experiments were conducted, and in what ways they were intended to intertwine with the nation-wide experiment with rebuilding the new socialist human’s psyche and a new socio-political world. The talk also explores why such conjoined experiments often fell apart, what one might gain by recentering the unruly human and more-than-human “raw material” that were experimented on, and ultimately, how the environmental turn in media studies could benefit from a study of socialist trifold cinematic-scientific-socio-political experimentations.
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ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Yiman Wang (Ph.D., Graduate Program in Literature, Duke University) is Professor and Chair of Film & Digital Media at University of California, Santa Cruz. She is author of Remaking Chinese Cinema: Through the Prism of Shanghai, Hong Kong and Hollywood (University of Hawaii Press 2013), and To Be an Actress: Labor and Performance in Anna May Wong’s Cross-Media World (University of California Press 2024). She has published numerous articles in journals and edited volumes on topics of socialist environmental media, feminist media histories, ethnic border-crossing stardom, eco-cinema, Chinese cinema, independent documentary, film remakes and adaptations. She is editor of a special issue of Feminist Media Histories on Asian Feminist Media (2019), co-editor of an InFocus Dossier on Queering Asian Media in Journal of Cinema and Media Studies (2023), co-editor of Chinese Animation: Multiplicities in Motion (2025), associate editor of Journal of Chinese Cinemas, and co-editor of the Global East Asian Screen Cultures book series published by Bloomsbury.
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ADMISSION
– FREE and open to the public
– Located in Porter College Rm. D245
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PARKING
– Lot 124 & 125 are the closest parking lots to the event.
– Parking is by permit or ParkMobile.
– Refer to TAPS for more parking information.
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This program is open to all members of the public consistent with state and federal law.

Kraw Lecture: Learning Earth's Biodiversity via Space and eDNA
2026-02-04 17:30 - 19:00 | 3175 Bowers Avenue Santa Clara, CA 95054, 3175 Bowers Avenue, Santa Clara, CA, 95054, United States
The California DNA Program (CALeDNA), launched from the University of California in 2017, has been tackling the massive disconnection in scales of measuring nature from satellite-based sensing down to DNA in a gram of soil or water. Through dozens of collaborative projects around the world, CALeDNA lab scientists have harmonized different ways of observing biodiversity from microbes to plants and mammals. UC Santa Cruz’s Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, where CALeDNA is headquartered, now houses over 50,000 CALeDNA environmental sample collections, a thriving startup partnership, and an eDNA service and R&D lab that serves most national and CA state agencies that monitor nature. In this presentation, Rachel Meyer will demonstrate the challenges of connecting the microscopic to regional scales across all kingdoms of life for two central purposes: monitoring sensitive habitat change and estimating habitat ‘health’.

In-Person Reception: 5:30 p.m.
Lecture: 6–7 p.m.

Register Now

Regulatory Affairs Info Session
2026-02-04 18:00 - 19:00 | Silicon Valley Campus, 3175 Bowers Avenue, Santa Clara, CA, 95054, United States
Lead regulatory strategy in the evolving medical device industry.
As global regulations become increasingly complex, professionals who can navigate FDA, EU, and international requirements are in high demand. Learn how to design and execute regulatory strategies, manage premarket submissions using tools like the FDA’s eSTAR, leverage AI-driven platforms for regulatory intelligence, and ensure compliance across device lifecycles.
Speaker
Join Kiran Gulati, chair of the UCSC Silicon Valley Extension Regulatory Affairs program, for a detailed overview of how our courses provide practical, hands-on training and industry-aligned skills to advance your career in regulatory affairs, quality assurance, and medical device compliance.
Start exploring
Check out our Regulatory Affairs certificate program page for a closer look at upcoming courses and offerings.
Claim your seat.

Pre-College Program Info Session
2026-02-04 18:00 - 19:00 | Silicon Valley Campus, 3175 Bowers Avenue, Santa Clara, CA, 95054, United States
Learn more about our Pre-College Programs
Discover what’s possible in Summer 2026! Join us for a one-hour info session to learn about our Pre-College programs, including courses, eligibility, and how students can get a head start on college and career pathways.
Special offer
Receive an application fee waiver when you enroll and attend the session.
Claim your seat.

Looking at School, Fear, and Possibilities: Imagining Futures Under Authoritarian Rule
2026-02-05 17:00 - 18:00 | CA
Please join us in a conversation around School, Fear, & Possibilities: Imagining Futures Under Authoritarian Rule, featuring two guest speakers: Manuel Espinoza Ph.D, Muhammad Khalifa!

Title: School, Fear, & Possibilities: Imagining Futures Under Authoritarian Rule Talk
Guest speakers: Manuel Espinoza & Muhammad Khalifa.
Date: Thursday, February 5th, 2026, 5-6PM
Location: McHenry 0266 or via Zoom (Meeting ID: 933 0685 4982; Passcode: [REDACTED]
Please complete this RSVP form if you plan to attend
Feb 5th guest speakers
Learn about Manuel Espinoza
Manuel is a child of desegregation and a Chicano ethnographer working in the scholarly tradition that emerged during the 20th-century struggle against racism in the U.S. As the Director and Co-founder of the Right2Learn Dignity Lab, now in its 15th year, Manuel works with an undergraduate and graduate research collective to develop two interconnected strands of research: 1) an inquiry into the historical and legal origins of educational rights and 2) a social interactional method for studying the manifestations of dignity in educational activity. Presently, the Dignity Lab is working to amend the “education clause” of the Colorado Constitution. Manuel has shared his expertise by contributing content on dignity in schools to the Cultivating Compassion for Ourselves and Others digital certificate.

Learn about Muhammad Khalifa
His research examines how urban school leaders enact culturally responsive leadership and anti-oppressive schooling practices. He is a leading expert on equity audits for school districts. He was previously a teacher and administrator in Detroit Public Schools, and he has also contributed to community-informed education projects in Africa, Latin America, and Asia in various capacities. He formerly held the endowed Beck Chair of Ideas in Education at the University of Minnesota. He has contributed to education, development, or research programs in several contexts.

We hope you can join us in this conversation with Manuel and Muhammad!

Carl Deppe Memorial Lecture with Dr. Kara Cooney
2026-02-05 17:30 - 19:30 | Hay Barn, 94 Ranch View Road, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064, United States
The UCSC Ancient Studies Program presents the Carl Deppe Memorial Lecture, taking place February 5th at the Cowell Ranch Hay Barn (reception to follow). Kara Cooney will present her lecture “When Women Ruled the World”. Doors open at 5:30pm, program begins at 5:45pm.

Kara Cooney is a professor of ancient Egyptian art and architecture and chair of the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures at the University of California, Los Angeles. Specializing in social history, gender studies, and economies of the ancient world, she received her PhD in Egyptology from Johns Hopkins University. Her books include The Woman Who Would Be King: Hatshepsut’s Rise to Power in Ancient Egypt, When Women Ruled the World: Six Queens of Egypt, and The Good Kings: Absolute Power in Ancient Egypt and the Modern World. Her latest books include Recycling for Death: Coffin Reuse in Ancient Egypt and the Theban Royal Caches, Ancient Egyptian Society: Challenging Assumptions, Exploring Approaches, and Coffin Commerce.

Climate Justice and the Moss Landing Battery Fire Panel
2026-02-05 18:00 - 19:30 | Institute of the Arts and Sciences, 100 Panetta Ave, Santa Cruz, United States
As part of the Intersections of Climate Change Lecture series there will be a panel discussion including marine geologist Ivano Aiello and environmental studies scholars J. Mijin Cha and Dustin Mulvaney focused on the climate justice issues raised by the Moss Landing Battery Storage System fire.
The Intersections of Climate Change Series is organized with the Friedlaender Lab in conjunction with Weather and the Whale.
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ADDITIONAL SERIES EVENTS
– Thurs. Feb. 5, 6:00 p.m: Intersections of Climate Change Lecture: 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
– Thurs. Feb. 26, 6:00 p.m: Intersections of Climate Change Performance: Electroacoustic Performance and Artist Talk with the Whale Liberation Front
– 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
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PARKING
– The entrance to the Institute of the Arts and Sciences Galleries is on Delaware Street and has an accessibility ramp.
– Convenient and free self-parking is available on Panetta Avenue and High Road, immediately adjacent to the galleries.
– Accessible parking is on High Road.
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This program is open to all members of the public consistent with state and federal law.

Science in the Neighborhood: Innovations for building coastal resilience locally, nationally, and globally
2026-02-05 18:00 - 19:30 | Seymour Marine Discovery Center, 100 McAllister Way, Santa Cruz, CA, 95060
Science In the Neighborhood
A public lecture series hosted quarterly by the UC Santa Cruz Science Division
Innovations for building coastal resilience locally, nationally, and globally
Presentation by Mike Beck, Director, UC Santa Cruz Center for Coastal Climate Resilience
Q&A with Stefano Profumo, Professor, UC Santa Cruz
Coastal risks are growing from climate change, development, and habitat loss. The Center for Coastal Climate Resilience assesses coastal risks, promotes nature-based adaptations, and identifies innovative solutions to reduce risks to people, property, and the environment. Dr. Beck will describe recent successes in bridging ecology, engineering, and economics to develop solutions at the intersection of science, policy, and finance.
He will show some of the latest innovations, presenting examples from Santa Cruz, across the country, and internationally. These include new policies that open funding for nature as natural infrastructure; the development of nature-positive insurance; and the use of game-engine technology to communicate the cost effectiveness of nature-based solutions.
The event is in-person only. Register here.
Thursday, February 5, 2026 | 6-7:30 p.m.
Seymour Marine Discovery Center, La Feliz Room
100 McAllister Way
Santa Cruz 95060

Johnstone, J. (AM) - The Effects of Asymmetry on Overshooting and Magnetic Pumping from Compressible Convection Zones
2026-02-06 11:00 - 12:00 | Engineering 2, Engineering 2 1156 High Street, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064
We present a comprehensive numerical investigation examining how vertical asymmetry in compressible convection affects overshooting and the transport of large-scale magnetic fields from convective to stably stratified regions. Using three-dimensional direct numerical simulations, we systematically vary the superadiabaticity and stratification of a convective layer to control the vertical asymmetry of the flow and analyze its influence on overshooting depth and magnetic pumping efficiency. We extend previous work by Tobias et al. (2001) and draw guidance from the asymmetry regimes identified by John & Schumacher (2023), investigating whether similar asymmetric convecting regimes emerge in our overshooting model that incorporates a stably stratified region below. We find that vertical asymmetry increases significantly with stratification at a moderate, fixed Rayleigh number, while superadiabaticity contributes primarily through enhanced downflow velocities, with both combined leading to increasing overshooting depths reaching approximately 0.46 − 0.7 pressure scale heights. Magnetic pumping efficiency initially increases with stratification but unexpectedly decreases at higher stratification, despite increasing overshooting depths. We find that this behavior arises from the increasing thermal and magnetic diffusivities that result from increasing stratification at fixed Ra. When instead either holding these diffusivities constant or increasing Ra sufficiently, we find that then both overshooting and magnetic pumping depths both decrease with increasing stratification. This behavior is explained by a change of dynamical state from one of laminar downflows to one of turbulent downflowing plumes leading to a high degree of turbulent mixing and entrainment. We thus find two distinct regimes that might be described as a microscopically diffusive regime and a turbulently diffusive one. These results suggest that, in the highly turbulent regime expected in the Sun, magnetic pumping efficiency may decrease with increasing stratification due to enhanced turbulent entrainment, with important implications for solar dynamo theory and the transport of large-scale magnetic fields in the solar interior.

Event Host: Jason Johnstone, Ph.D. Student, Applied Mathematics
Advisor: Nic Brummell
Zoom- https://ucsc.zoom.us/j/5428987373?pwd=[REDACTED]
Passcode- 778899

GDAC Portfolio Workshop
2026-02-06 12:15 - 13:00 | Cultural Center – Merrill College, 641 Merrill Rd, Santa Cruz, 95064, United States
Workshop

Part of the GDA Conference on campus – come and learn best practices for creating a portfolio to use in the gaming industry!

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Yang, J. (CSE) - Towards Controllable and Compositional Generative Vision
2026-02-06 16:00 - 18:00
Diffusion-based text-to-image models can generate impressive images, but they largely treat an image as a single, flat output, which makes precise editing of individual elements difficult. This proposal studies layered generative representations that align with professional editing workflows, enabling users to manipulate foreground objects while preserving the rest of the scene. A central focus is visual effects such as shadows and reflections, which are essential for realistic composition yet are often missing or inconsistent in current generative pipelines. This proposal outlines a research program toward controllable, compositional image generation that supports practical, edit-ready content creation.
Event Host: Jinrui Yang, Ph.D. Student, Computer Science and Engineering
Advisor: Yuyin Zhou
Zoom- https://ucsc.zoom.us/j/91510964517?pwd=[REDACTED]
Passcode- 544143

First Saturday Tour at the Arboretum
2026-02-07 11:00 - 12:00 | Arboretum, 122 Arboretum Road, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064
First Saturday Tours are a wonderful way to introduce yourself to the Arboretum or to deepen your knowledge of the Arboretum’s plant collections. Each tour is a little different depending on the time of year, the interests of the tour guide, and the people who join in. For example, you might learn about the birds and mammals that make this land their home or about the amazing physical adaptations that plants have evolved to better deal with our extreme weather and climate conditions. Tours are free with paid admission.

ECE Seminar: Integrated Micro- and Nanosystems for Biosensing, Neural Therapy, and Nanotoxicity
2026-02-09 10:40 - 23:45 | Engineering 2, Engineering 2 1156 High Street, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064
Presenter: Dr. Ke Du, Associate Professor of Chemical and Environmental Engineering, University of California, Riverside
Description: 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.
Bio: 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).
Hosted by: Professor Soumya Bose, ECE Department
Zoom Link: https://ucsc.zoom.us/j/97975378707?pwd=[REDACTED]

CM Seminar - “The ‘Social’ Side of Social Virtual Reality”
2026-02-09 12:30 - 13:30 | Engineering 2, Engineering 2 1156 High Street, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064
Presented by: Bree McEwan
Description: 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.
Bio: 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.
Hosted by: Professor Katherine Isbister
When: Monday, February 9, 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/91469785121?pwd=[REDACTED]
Meeting ID: 914 6978 5121
Passcode: [REDACTED]

Li, X. (CSE) - Compute-Efficient Scaling of Fully-Open Visual Encoders
2026-02-09 13:00 - 14:30
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.
In 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.
Together, these contributions establish that openness and efficiency are mutually reinforcing, providing a reproducible foundation for the next generation of visual intelligence.
Event Host: Xianhang Li, Ph.D. Candidate, Computer Science and Engineering
Advisor: Cihang Xie
Zoom- https://ucsc.zoom.us/j/95801462664?pwd=[REDACTED]
Passcode- 782017
