Events

[HSI Equity Talk] Beyond Invisibility: Reimagining Servingness to Support Undocumented Transfer Students
2026-03-12 15:30 - 17:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | https://events.ucsc.edu/event/hsi-equity-talk-beyond-invisibility-reimagining-servingness-to-support-undocumented-transfer-students/
Presenters: Valeria Alonso Blanco, Dr. Saskias Casanova, and Jesus Morales
This interactive talk draws on a qualitative study conducted with undocumented Latinx transfer students at a California four-year HSI. Using focus groups and reflexive thematic analysis, we examined how these students perceive and experience institutional support, belonging, and barriers related to their intersectional identities. This session is designed around three goals: (1) assessing what staff and administrators currently know about undocumented students on campus, particularly undocumented transfer students; (2) building shared knowledge through our research findings and student voices; and (3) connecting participants to existing campus resources and identifying concrete opportunities for cross-departmental collaboration. We will share key resources and actionable strategies for holistically serving undocumented transfer students.
Please register online. The Zoom information and a calendar invitation will be sent to those who RSVP.
You Belong Here: The programs and services described here are open to all, consistent with state and federal law, as well as the University of California’s nondiscrimination policies. Every initiative—whether a student service, faculty program, or community event—is designed to be accessible, inclusive, and respectful of all identities.
To learn more, please visit UC Nondiscrimination Statement or Nondiscrimination Policy for UC Publications.

Your path to medical school starts here.
2026-03-12 18:00 - 19:00 | Silicon Valley Campus, 3175 Bowers Avenue, Santa Clara, CA, 95054, United States
Are you considering medical school and seeking a clear, supportive path forward?
Join the University of California, Santa Cruz, for a free online informational session to learn more about our Summer 2026 Premed Postbacc Cohort Programs. This session is designed for students and graduates who are serious about pursuing a career in health care and want expert guidance through the medical school preparation and application process.
During this session, you’ll learn how the UCSC Premed Postbacc Program provides a structured, cohort-based experience—offered in Silicon Valley and Marina on the Central Coast—to help students strengthen their academic foundation, prepare for medical school, and apply with confidence.
Claim your seat.

Fan, Y. (CSE) - Building Human-Centered Multimodal AI Agents
2026-03-13 09:30 - 11:00
As multimodal artificial intelligence systems become increasingly embedded in everyday technology, there is a growing need to design human-centered AI agents that support and amplify human capabilities rather than replace them. This dissertation investigates how to build human-centered multimodal AI agents, framing human-centeredness as an agent-level objective that requires both accessible, assistive interaction and reliable, trustworthy behavior across physical and digital environments. This dissertation explores two complementary dimensions of human-centered agent design. The first focuses on enhancing accessibility through conversational and interactive agents that assist users in everyday tasks. We study both embodied and digital settings in which agents reduce physical and cognitive burdens via natural language interaction, including hands-free drone control, navigation assistance in unfamiliar environments, and interactive access to complex graphical user interfaces. The second dimension focuses on strengthening agent capability to improve reliability and trust. We investigate how agents can acquire environment-specific knowledge through autonomous exploration and how they can reason about visual information in a grounded and transparent manner, drawing inspiration from human learning and reasoning behaviors.
Event Host: Yue Fan, Ph.D. Candidate, Computer Science and Engineering
Advisor: Xin Eric Wang
Zoom- https://ucsc.zoom.us/j/99619642071?pwd=[REDACTED]
Passcode- 467959

Moghadam, M. (CE) - Constraint-Aware Scene Understanding and Trajectory Generation Using Deep Reinforcement Learning for Autonomous Vehicles
2026-03-13 10:00 - 12:00 | Engineering 2, Engineering 2 1156 High Street, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064
Advanced driver-assistance systems (ADAS) are commonly organized as modular pipelines that transform raw sensor measurements into low-level actuation commands through perception, planning, and control. While learning-based methods have achieved state-of-the-art performance in perception and environment modeling, the planning layer remains a key bottleneck for reliable autonomy. Highway driving in particular requires long-horizon reasoning and socially aware interaction with multiple actors, while also producing smooth and dynamically feasible motion that can be tracked by classical controllers.
This thesis focuses on scene understanding and planning for highway driving. We study the problem through two complementary simulation environments: the high-fidelity CARLA simulator for motion planning and continuous trajectory generation under realistic vehicle dynamics and road geometry, and the lightweight HighwayEnv simulator for interaction-rich behavior planning at high episode throughput.
We present three planning contributions that increase autonomy. First, we introduce a modular hierarchical planning framework in Frenet space that combines long-term decision-making with short-term trajectory optimization. The approach includes a corridor-based dynamic obstacle avoidance strategy that generates spatiotemporal polynomial trajectories and supports diverse driving styles through interpretable parameter tuning. Second, we propose an end-to-end continuous deep reinforcement learning approach that unifies decision-making and motion planning into a single policy that outputs continuous polynomial trajectories in the Frenet frame. A spatiotemporal observation tensor and a temporal convolutional backbone enable the learned planner to exploit interaction history and outperform optimization-based and discrete RL baselines in CARLA. Third, we develop an interaction-aware behavior planning neural network architecture that couples trajectory prediction with high-level decision-making via a social pooling scene encoder built on actor histories and an ego-centered BEV representation. This unified design improves RL social awareness, safety, and overall driving performance in multi-agent highway scenarios in HighwayEnv.
Across extensive simulation studies, the results show that constraint-aware representations and learning-based policies can improve planning quality beyond hand-crafted objectives, especially when the policy is equipped with spatiotemporal social context while retaining classical feedback control for stable trajectory tracking. Finally, we provide supporting simulation and evaluation infrastructure, including observation tensor and neural network designs, BEV utilities, and scalable training and testing pipelines, to enable reproducible research on learning-based planning in interactive traffic.
Event Host: Majid Moghadam, Ph.D. Candidate, Computer Engineering
Advisor: Gabriel Elkaim
Zoom- https://ucsc.zoom.us/j/95848602314?pwd=[REDACTED]
Passcode- 325939

Wang, H. (CSE) - Accelerating RTL Simulation with Specialized Graph Partitioners
2026-03-13 14:00 - 15:00 | Jack Baskin Engineering, Baskin Engineering 1156 High Street, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064
Register transfer level (RTL) simulation is an invaluable tool for developing, debugging, verifying, and validating hardware designs. However, the performance of RTL simulation has long been a limiting factor in industry. Despite the inherent parallelism of hardware, current RTL simulators have not achieved practical performance gains due to fundamental challenges in communication, synchronization, memory bandwidth, and architectural mapping.
This dissertation addresses the RTL simulation performance problem from three complementary perspectives: optimizing simulation latency through parallelism, improving aggregate throughput via deduplication, and enabling efficient GPU acceleration with RTL-native semantics.
First, we present RepCut, a parallel RTL simulation methodology that uses replication-aided partitioning to cut circuits into balanced partitions with minimal overlaps. By replicating the overlaps, RepCut eliminates problematic data dependences between partitions and significantly reduces synchronization overhead. RepCut achieves superlinear speedups of up to 27.10x using 24 threads with only a 3.81% replication cost.
Second, we introduce Simulation Deduplication, a technique that exploits the extensive reuse of building blocks in modern hardware designs. By generating shared code for duplicated instances and carefully co-scheduling their execution, we reduce the instruction cache footprint and memory bandwidth pressure. This approach achieves up to 1.95x speedup for single simulations and 2.09x improvement in overall batch simulation throughput.
Third, we present Toucan, a GPU-accelerated RTL simulation framework that preserves RTL semantics rather than flattening designs to gate-level netlists. By leveraging native GPU arithmetic operations and introducing warp-level micro-partitioning with shuffle-based communication, Toucan achieves efficient mapping of irregular circuit topologies to GPU SIMT architectures while maintaining fast compilation times. Toucan achieves up to 4.73x speedup over the state-of-the-art GPU RTL simulator on large multi-core designs.
Together, these three approaches provide a comprehensive solution to RTL simulation performance optimization, demonstrating significant improvements over state-of-the-art commercial and open-source simulators across multiple hardware platforms and design scales.
Event Host: Haoyuan Wang, Ph.D. Candidate, Computer Science and Engineering
Advisor: Jose Renau
Zoom- https://ucsc.zoom.us/j/94044618343?pwd=[REDACTED]
Passcode- 574772

Wildlife Photography from Hummingbirds to Elephants - a photo presentation by Kevin Lohman
2026-03-14 13:00 - 14:30 | CA
Join Kevin for “Wildlife Photography from Hummingbirds to Elephants” at the UC Santa Cruz Arboretum & Botanic Garden in the Horticulture 2 Meeting Hall. He will offer tips for photographing hummingbirds, share beautiful images taken at the arboretum, and present highlights from his wildlife photography across Monterey Bay and from his travels around the globe.
Kevin Lohman is an award-winning wildlife photographer based in Santa Cruz, California. One of his hummingbird photographs taken at the UC Santa Cruz Arboretum & Botanic Garden is among several of his images featured locally on a Santa Cruz METRO wildlife bus as part of the “One Ride at a Time” conservation campaign. His work has been published by National Geographic (online) and Outdoor Photographer, and recognized in major competitions including the Audubon Photography Awards and Nature’s Best International Photography Awards. Lohman actively supports conservation organizations through the donation and use of his photography.
The event is free with paid admission. UCSC students and faculty receive free admission to the Arboretum. Public admission costs are: Adults $10, Seniors $8, and Youth (4-17) $5.

OLLI at UCSC Sunday Speaker Meeting
2026-03-15 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 Bruce Lyon, Professor, Ecology & Evolutionary Biology
The Osher Lifelong Learning Institute (OLLI) at UC Santa Cruz invites the public to an in-person presentation from 10:00 to noon on Sunday, March 15th, in the Colleges Nine/Lewis Multipurpose Room at UCSC.
Join us for a social hour and a presentation titled, Sparrows in the Mist: Complex Winter Social Behavior in a Little Brown Bird.
Ornithologists often study breeding birds, and as a result, the winter ecology and social behavior of migratory birds is relatively understudied. A 22-year study of a population of golden-crowned sparrows that winter in the Arboretum of the University of California, Santa Cruz was conducted. Each sparrow was given a unique combination of color bands, which allowed us to identify individual birds in the wild and monitor their behavior and survival. Given that they survive migration and breeding, individual sparrows return winter after winter to the arboretum and flock together with the same individuals as in previous years. We used innovative social network methods to understand the patterns of social organization and discovered remarkable social complexity in these birds that is similar in some ways to the societies of mammals, including primates.
Professor Lyon seeks to understand the ecological and evolutionary basis of reproductive strategies and social behavior in animals, particularly reproductive parasitism, parental care, and mating systems. One focus is to understand patterns of cooperation and reproductive parasitism in birds and insects. His passion for photography has also been very useful in his research.
OLLI at UCSC is a community of adults from diverse educational, occupational, and geographic backgrounds who are devoted to the pursuit of learning. This event is free and open to the public. Bring a friend. Coffee and nibbles will be served.
For directions and free parking information, visit: https://olli.ucsc.edu/monthly-gatherings/location-directions-and-parking/
Free and open to the public

Presented by the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute (OLLI) at UC Santa Cruz.

Teng, Z. (CM) - Visualizing Player Processes: Towards Design Guidelines for Interactive Process Visualization Tools in Game Analytics
2026-03-16 08:00 - 10:00
Game analysts face a significant challenge in understanding problem-solving and decision-making processes from the vast and complex sequential data generated by modern video games. Existing visualization tools often fail to adequately support the exploration, suffering from issues of visual clutter, inflexible cohort construction, and a lack of interactive depth. To address this gap, this dissertation adopts a Research through Design (RtD) methodology to investigate how an interactive process visualization system can be designed and developed to better support the needs of game analysts.
The research was conducted in three phases. First, an initial set of five design guidelines was identified through a breakdown analysis of existing tools and semi-structured interviews with professional game analysts. Second, these guidelines were iteratively refined through long-term, collaborative case studies with analysts working on diverse commercial games. This process not only validated the initial guidelines and surfaced one additional guideline concerning interactive inspection, but also resulted in INSPECT, an interactive process visualization prototyping system that embodies the refined guidelines. Third, the guidelines were empirically validated through two complementary user studies of the INSPECT system. A controlled experiment demonstrated that features designed according to the guidelines enabled participants to identify player strategies more efficiently than with a baseline system, while a qualitative study with professional Dota 2 coaches and players demonstrated the system’s practical value for strategic analysis and strong usability.
The primary contributions of this dissertation to the fields of game analytics and information visualization is a set of validated design guidelines for process visualization tools. This contribution provides a durable and transferable framework for the design and development of more effective, analyst-centered tools for understanding player problem-solving and decision-making processes.
Event Host: Zhaoqing Teng, Ph.D. Candidate, Computational Media
Advsior: Magy Seif El-Nasr
Zoom- https://ucsc.zoom.us/j/97624383966?pwd=[REDACTED]
Passcode-595285

AI-Enhanced Project Management Workshop
2026-03-21 09:00 - 15:00 | Silicon Valley Campus, 3175 Bowers Avenue, Santa Clara, CA, 95054, United States
Transform the way you manage projects
Join Sri Srinivasa, program management leader at Tesla, for a one-day workshop focused on leveraging generative AI tools for project management.
Workshop goals

Describe and discuss AI technology available to Project Managers
Explain the transformative potential of Generative AI in improving project planning, resource allocation, and stakeholder communication
Demonstrate an ability to properly and effectively use generative AI for project management tasks and processes, reducing errors, optimizing workflows, and saving time and resources

Topics

Benefits of adopting generative AI for project management
Effective prompt engineering to optimize generative ai usage along with case examples
Identify use cases for generative AI in project management
AI-driven insights for KPI & project performance measurement

Here’s the workshop syllabus.
Students are required to bring laptops for class exercises.
About the AI Technology Workshop Series
The UCSC Silicon Valley Extension AI Technology Workshop Series provides an immersive AI experience. Students are introduced to new and established AI tools create and manipulate content in new and powerful ways. Each session is led by an industry expert who will guide you through the material and share its real-world implications.

Explore lots of AI courses
Project management courses
Workshops

Enroll today.

Santa Cruz Pickwick Club presents: Bleak House
2026-03-22 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.

Community Conversation with author Randy Ribay
2026-03-23 16:30 - 18:00 | CA
Please join us on Monday, March 23, 2026 for a community conversation with Randy Ribay, young adult fiction writer and National Book Award Finalist. During the event, Randy will discuss his recent novel, Everything We Never Had (2024), about four-generations of Filipino American men grappling with identity, masculinity, and father-son relationships. The characters’ stories traverse histories of Filipino America, including those of Watsonville and the Pajaro Valley. Randy conducted archival research using the Watsonville is in the Heart Community Digital Archive and other repositories to create intergenerational narratives of Filipino American migration, labor, and family.
Our conversation will take place in the Community Room located on the Fourth Floor of the Watsonville Civic Plaza. This event is free and open to the public. It is co-sponsored by Watsonville Public Library, UCSC’s Center for Labor and Community, Watsonville is in the Heart, The Tobera Project, and Pajaro Valley for Ethnic Studies and Justice.

The Future of Work in the Age of AI: March Slugs and Steins with Dean PK Agarwal
2026-03-23 18:30 - 20:00
The Future of Work in the Age of AI: Chaos, Adaptation, or Growth?
Artificial intelligence has reignited an old debate: are we approaching mass technological unemployment, or simply the next phase of economic evolution? Public discourse swings between dystopian predictions of human obsolescence and confident assurances that “new jobs will replace old ones.” This lecture steps back from speculation and examines evidence. Drawing on economic history and disruptive change, going back to the wheel and the printing press to electrification, computers, and the internet—we explore how societies have repeatedly confronted disruptive change: moments when existing skills, institutions, and expectations no longer matched the pace of innovation. The goal is not to predict the future, but to provide a framework for thinking about it—what AI may automate, what it may amplify, and why the real disruption may be the speed of adaptation rather than the disappearance of work itself. The talk concludes with implications for higher education, workforce development, and how individuals can remain resilient in an age where intelligence is no longer exclusively human.
REGISTER

Bioinformatics: Lead the next wave of innovation
2026-03-23 19:00 - 20:00 | Silicon Valley Campus, 3175 Bowers Avenue, Santa Clara, CA, 95054, United States
Lead the next wave of innovation in life sciences and data.
As biotechnology and data analytics converge, the demand for professionals who can interpret complex biological data and drive discovery continues to grow. Learn how experts in bioinformatics use computational tools, programming, and molecular biology to transform raw data into scientific and medical insights.
Join Darryl A. León, Ph.D., chair of the UCSC Silicon Valley Extension Bioinformatics program, for an inside look at how our courses can help you strengthen your skills in data analysis, genomics, and software tools—preparing you to contribute to advances in biotech, pharmaceuticals, and healthcare.
This info session is sponsored by the Bioinformatics certificate program.
Special offer
New students get a 10% discount. Use code: FIRSTTIME10%
Claim your seat today.

Advance your career in medical device design and quality
2026-03-24 18:00 - 19:00 | Silicon Valley Campus, 3175 Bowers Avenue, Santa Clara, CA, 95054, United States
As healthcare technology evolves, professionals who understand global regulatory standards, risk management, and quality systems are in high demand. Learn how to design, document, and validate medical devices, digital health solutions, and AI/ML-based devices while ensuring compliance with FDA, ISO, and EU MDR requirements.
Join Kiran Gulati, chair of the UCSC Silicon Valley Extension Medical Device Quality and Design program, for an inside look at how our courses provide hands-on training, practical case studies, and industry-relevant skills that prepare you for roles in quality engineering, regulatory compliance, and design assurance.
This info session is sponsored by the Medical Device Quality and Design certificate program at UCSC Silicon Valley Extension.
Claim your seat.

Educational Therapy Program Info Session
2026-03-24 18:30 - 19:30 | Silicon Valley Campus, 3175 Bowers Avenue, Santa Clara, CA, 95054, United States
Transform learning
Join Diana Black Kennedy, chair of UCSC Silicon Valley’s Educational Therapy certificate program, to learn how this distinctive program prepares educators and professionals to create meaningful, lasting impact. As one of the few programs approved by the Association of Educational Therapists (AET), it equips you with the skills to assess learning differences and implement research-based, effective interventions with confidence.
Empower students and build your practice
Gain skills to support students with learning differences like dyslexia, ADHD, and autism using therapeutic and educational strategies. Whether you’re working in schools or starting a private practice, this program helps you create individualized plans that foster meaningful progress.
This spring info session is sponsored by the Educational Therapy Program.
Claim your seat.

Learn more about high school health pathways
2026-03-25 18:00 - 19:00 | Silicon Valley Campus, 3175 Bowers Avenue, Santa Clara, CA, 95054, United States
Introducing the new High School Health Pathways Summer Academy!
At this interactive info session about our new program for college-bound high schoolers, Dr. Deepthi Nair, senior director of the UC Santa Cruz Premed Postbacc Program, will talk about the UC Santa Cruz High School Health Pathways Summer Academy, a six-week session of transformative learning, in-person, at the Silicon Valley Campus of UC Santa Cruz.
Learn more about the summer academy, which offers hands-on learning in diverse topics such as:

Human biology
Microscopy
Public health advocacy
Expert mentorship
Field experiences
Capstone project

High school students, parents, and advisors are invited to join the discussion and bring questions.
Claim your seat today.

Design digital experiences people love
2026-03-25 18:00 - 19:00 | Silicon Valley Campus, 3175 Bowers Avenue, Santa Clara, CA, 95054, United States
In today’s rapidly evolving tech landscape, organizations need professionals who can combine empathy, usability, and aesthetics to create interfaces that engage and delight users.
Join Nicole Sharratt, instructor and chair of the UCSC Silicon Valley Extension User Experience and Web Design program, for an inside look at how design specialists are using AI and the latest tools to excel in design.

Research‑driven methods
Prototyping tools
Inclusive design principles
Seamless digital experiences across platforms

Be a design leader
We’ll share career trends and how our professional design courses give you the skills to lead user‑centered design projects—whether you’re shaping websites, apps, or digital products.
Speaker
Nicole Sharratt, M.S., head of User Experience at Leidos QTC Health Services, has more than 30 years of experience in the industry. She has worked as a UX leader with B2B and B2C organizations and is passionate about growing innovative UX teams and future design leaders.
Sponsor
This online discussion is sponsored by the User Experience and Web Design program.
Take 10%
Note: New students get 10% off their first course.
Claim your seat today.

The morphing of the human resources world: An HR info session
2026-03-25 19:00 - 20:00 | Silicon Valley Campus, 3175 Bowers Avenue, Santa Clara, CA, 95054, United States
Join Philip Ziman, former HR executive and chair of the Human Resource Management program at UCSC Silicon Valley Extension, in exploring how the world of work is transforming and what does it mean for the future of human resources?
We’ll discover the MORPH framework, a strategic planning tool that assesses, measures, and builds employee readiness for organizational change. We’ll also explore how AI, labor market shifts, compensation transparency, and evolving employee expectations are reshaping recruiting, performance management, culture, and career development.
This event is sponsored by the Human Resource Management certificate program at UCSC Silicon Valley Extension. We prepare aspiring and early-career professionals to lead in this new era of human capital strategy and build resilient, purpose-driven HR careers.
Register today.

What's new in clinical research careers?
2026-03-26 17:00 - 18:00 | Silicon Valley Campus, 3175 Bowers Avenue, Santa Clara, CA, 95054, United States
Please note that this event has been moved to Thursday, March 26.
Advance your career in the global clinical research industry.
As the demand for safe, effective therapies grows, so does the need for professionals who can lead clinical trials with scientific precision and regulatory expertise. Learn how experts design and manage studies that bring medical innovations from the lab to the marketplace—applying biostatistics, good clinical practices, and international regulations to ensure safety and compliance.
Join Karim Sajwani, chair of the UCSC Silicon Valley Extension Clinical Trials Design and Management program, for an inside look at how our courses prepare you to coordinate cross-functional teams, oversee global trials, and navigate complex approval processes that shape the future of healthcare.
This event is sponsored by the Clinical Trials Design and Management certificate program.
Claim your seat.

AI at the Edge of Embedded Systems
2026-03-26 18:00 - 19:00 | Silicon Valley Campus, 3175 Bowers Avenue, Santa Clara, CA, 95054, United States
An info session about the growing field of embedded systems.
Join Juergen Kienhoefer, an instructor in the Embedded Systems program at UCSC Silicon Valley Extension, in exploring how Edge AI brings powerful machine learning to low-power embedded devices.
In his course, AI-Driven Embedded Systems, students prepare to build and deploy visual, audio, and lightweight language AI using TensorFlow Lite and Edge Impulse on OpenML hardware. Discover how this hands-on course fits within the UCSC Silicon Valley Extension Embedded Systems Certificate program and will help advance your career in embedded AI.
This info session is sponsored by the Embedded Systems certificate program at UCSC Silicon Valley Extension.
Claim your seat today.

Restoring Connections: Indigenous Environmental Governance and Eco-Cultural Revitalization along the Central California Coast
2026-03-30 13:25 - 14:30 | CA
Alexii Sigona from UC Davis
In Person Location: ISB 221
Zoom Link
This presentation examines how California Tribal nations enact their place-based responsibilities as stewards of their ancestral lands and waters. Using ethnographic research with the Amah Mutsun Tribal Band (AMTB) of central coastal California, I trace the processes of Tribal eco-cultural revitalization enacted through collaborative research and land stewardship at Quiroste Valley Cultural Preserve. I illuminate how a non-federally recognized and landless nation leverages research findings substantiating the ecological benefits of Tribal stewardship for co-management and land access opportunities. I argue that Indigenous nations strategically engage and transform environmental conservation spaces to maintain and revitalize their knowledge systems despite settler colonial laws and regulations that fail to acknowledge Tribal sovereignty or accommodate Indigenous epistemologies. Finally, I will discuss emerging international research collaborations that examine how Indigenous epistemologies are reflected in the environmental governance of protected areas.

AM Seminar: Flexible Filaments and Swimming Cups: Just Go with the Flow
2026-03-30 16:00 - 17:00 | CA
Presenter: Lisa Fauci, Professor, Tulane University
Description: The motion of waving or rotating filaments in a fluid environment is a common element in many biological and engineered systems. Examples at the microscale include chains of diatoms moving in the ocean, flagella of individual cells comprising multicellular colonies, as well as engineered nanorobots designed to deliver drugs to tumors. In this talk we will present mathematical and computational insights into these flows at the microscale. Our modeling approaches will vary from detailed models that capture flagellar material properties and wave geometry to minimal force-dipole models that represent a flagellum by a single point. We will investigate a few intriguing systems, including the journey of extremely long insect sperm flagella through tortuous female reproductive tracts, and the hydrodynamic performance of shape-shifting Choanoeca flexa colonies.
Bio: Lisa Fauci received her PhD from the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences at New York University, and directly after that joined the Department of Mathematics at Tulane University in New Orleans, Louisiana, USA. Her research focuses on biological fluid dynamics, with an emphasis on using modeling and simulation to study the basic biophysics of organismal locomotion and reproductive mechanics. Lisa served as president of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM) in 2019-2020. She is a fellow of SIAM, the American Mathematical Society, the Association for Women in Mathematics, and the American Physical Society. In 2023, she was elected to the US National Academy of Sciences.
Hosted by: Applied Mathematics Department

A Sacred Witnessing: A Trans Day of Euphoria Event
2026-03-31 18:00 - 20:00 | Diversity Center, 1117 Soquel Ave, Santa Cruz, CA, 95062, United States
Join the Cantu Queer Center and the Diversity Center for an intergenerational Trans Day of Visibility gathering rooted in euphoria, joy, and sacred witnessing. Trans, nonbinary, Two-Spirit, and gender-expansive people of all ages are invited to share their stories, create art, and witness each other’s full humanity in a moment of dangerous hypervisibility and harm to our community. The event will include intergenerational story sharing, protest sign art, gentle restorative offerings, live performance, tabling with local organizations, and light refreshments.
This event is open to students, faculty, staff, alums, and the wider Santa Cruz community.
RSVP in advance.
You Belong Here: The programs and services described here are open to all, consistent with state and federal law, as well as the University of California’s nondiscrimination policies. Every initiative—whether a student service, faculty program, or community event—is designed to be accessible, inclusive, and respectful of all identities. To learn more, please visit UC Nondiscrimination Statement or Nondiscrimination Policy for UC Publications.

FINS: Fisheries Insights Narratives and Stories seminar series featuring Dr. Randi Solhjell
2026-04-01 10:30 - 12:00 | Ocean Health Building, McAllister Way, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064
Please join us for the first talk in the FINS: Fisheries Insights Narratives and Stories seminar series featuring Fulbright Fellow Dr. Randi Solhjell. Her talk, “Managing a Fishy Business: Norway’s foreign aid and its impact on global fisheries governance” will discuss how Norwegian actors shape global fisheries policy through diplomacy, regulatory innovation and engagement in international institutions such as the UN FAO. She will also discuss how she studies fisheries from a social/political science lens.
FINS: Fisheries Insights Narratives and Stories Seminar Series
Dr. Randi Solhjell, Fulbright fellow, University of Oslo
Title: Managing a Fishy Business: Norway’s foreign aid and its impact on global fisheries governance
When: Wednesday, April 1st from 11am-12pm
Where: Ocean Health Building Rm 118, 115 McAllister Way, Santa Cruz, CA 95060 and on Zoom
Agenda:

10:30 am – 11:00 am – Professional Networking Session (in person only – light snacks and refreshments provided)
11 am to 12 pm – presentation followed by Q & A
12 pm – 1pm – student lunch with the speaker in OHB courtyard → sign up here

Zoom Meeting Registration: https://ucsc.zoom.us/meeting/register/NwH0_qUbSeuIm3A76DY-Dg
Randi Solhjell is a postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Criminology and Sociology of Law, Faculty of Law, The University of Oslo, and visiting Fulbright scholar at the Science and Justice Research Center, the University of California, Santa Cruz. She holds a PhD in Political Science from the London School of Economics.

CSE Colloquium - Messages from across the event horizon: AI Agentic Design for Computer Architecture (and more generalizable learnings)
2026-04-01 11:00 - 12:15 | Engineering 2, Engineering 2 1156 High Street, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064
Presenter: Christopher Fletcher, UC Berkeley
Abstract:
It is difficult to escape the hype of agentic coding. Is the hype real? Are we still living in ~Summer 2025 — when AI coding would accomplish little more than upset its human supervisor? Or has a level shift in technology finally arrived?
In this talk I will argue the latter. I will describe a self-imposed experiment to discover modern AI coding tools’ capabilities (starting mid February 2026). I will try (my best) to communicate my utter and sheer surprise at where the state of the art actually is. Then I will do a deep dive and try to relay everything I have learned about this new engineering discipline—based on my attempts to push the technology as hard as I can for the past 1.5 months. I will conclude by pontificating about the future of computer architecture and academic research more generally.
Bio:
Christopher Fletcher is an Associate Professor of EECS at UC Berkeley. He is a computer architect whose research spans architecture, security, and domain-specific acceleration, especially at their intersections from cryptography and hardware attacks to algorithm-to-hardware co-design. His work has received 31 paper recognitions and several other honors, including the NSF CAREER Award, Intel and Google faculty awards, UIUC research and promotion awards, election to DARPA ISAT, and MIT’s George M. Sprowls Award, with related work also recognized by Scientific American as one of ten “World Changing Ideas.”
Hosted by: Professor Alvaro Cardenas
Location: Engineering 2, Room E2-180 (Refreshments such as fruit, pastries, coffee, and tea will be provided.)
Zoom Option: https://ucsc.zoom.us/j/93445911992?pwd=[REDACTED]

VMCC Talk with Maggie Cao—Sepia: Biotic Media and Ocean Worlds
2026-04-01 16:00 - 17:30 | Porter College, D-Building, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064
Sepia is a term used to describe inks of a rich, brown color, but few know that this artistic usage is taken from the animal world, where sepia refers to a genus of cuttlefish—a nod to the long history of extracting melanin fluid from cephalopods for drawing and writing. This talk uses cuttlefish ink as a vehicle for rethinking human-ocean relations in the mid nineteenth century, tracing flows between Victor Hugo’s maritime drawings made in the Channel Islands to paleontological discoveries and scientific illustrations on nearby coastlines. During the nineteenth century, the expansion of fisheries and the growth of marine biology fostered public interest in the strangeness of cephalopods, or “devil fish,” whose inkiness was associated with artistic creation. Experiments with biotic media, the talk argues, were efforts to conceptualize the nonhuman environment of the ocean.
This event is presented as part of the Visual & Media Cultures Colloquium (VMCC) Series.
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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.

Your AI Advantage: Tools, Skills, and Career Paths
2026-04-01 18:00 - 19:00 | Silicon Valley Campus, 3175 Bowers Avenue, Santa Clara, CA, 95054, United States
Transform your workplace with practical AI skills.
Explore how to lead with AI—whether you want to build it or apply it. In this information session, discover two dynamic pathways: AI Business Practices, for professionals seeking practical AI tools to boost productivity without coding, and AI Engineer, for those ready to design and deploy production-ready AI systems. Learn how generative AI, automation, and intelligent agents are transforming today’s workplace—and how you can be part of that change.
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.
Learn more
This spring info session is sponsored by the AI Business Practices and Engineering programs.

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BME 280B Seminar: Small changes, Big consequences: Modulators of Alphavirus Assembly
2026-04-02 11:40 - 13:15 | Biomedical Sciences Building, 575 McLaughlin Drive
Presenter: Dr. Suchetana (Tuli) Mukhopadhyay, Professor, Indiana University
Description: N/A
Bio: Suchetana “Tuli” Mukhopadhyay, Ph.D., is a professor in the Department of Biology at Indiana University, Bloomington. She received her B.A. in chemistry from DePauw University and her Ph.D. in chemistry from the University of Illinois at Chicago. Following her doctoral studies, Mukhopadhyay conducted postdoctoral research at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, focusing on G-protein mediated signaling. She continued her postdoctoral work at Purdue University in structural virology, where she developed a strong interest in arboviruses. Mukhopadhyay joined Indiana University in 2005, where she established her research program on the assembly and spread of alphaviruses.
Hosted by: Professor Rebecca Dubois, BME Department

Opening Celebration for EASP M.F.A. Exhibition—"Picking up Shells Amid a Tsunami"
2026-04-02 17:00 - 19:00 | Mary Porter Sesnon Art Gallery, Baskin Service Road, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064
The culminating exhibition of the Environmental Art and Social Practice (EASP) M.F.A. program at UC Santa Cruz presents new projects—Picking up Shells Amid a Tsunami 쓰나미가 밀려오는데, 조개나 줍고 있네—developed through concentrated inquiry over a two-year period and offers a window into the artists’ unique long-term research projects that expand beyond the gallery space.
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FULL SCHEDULE OF EVENTS
– Ongoing Exhibition: Thurs.., April 2–Sat., May 2, 2026
– Opening Celebration: Thurs., April 2, 5:00–7:00 p.m.
– Artist Roundtable: Thurs., April 23, 5:00–6:00 p.m.
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ADMISSION
– FREE and open to the public
– Gallery hours are Tues.–Sun.noon–5:00 p.m (closed Mondays)
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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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ABOUT THE EXHIBITION
– More exhibition information here.
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This program is open to all members of the public consistent with state and federal law.

The toughest challenges in advanced IC development
2026-04-02 18:00 - 19:00 | Silicon Valley Campus, 3175 Bowers Avenue, Santa Clara, CA, 95054, United States
Explore the expanding career opportunities in semiconductors
The modern economy is powered by silicon and the demand for skilled professionals in semiconductor design and engineering continues to grow.
In this live-online discussion with Jignesh Shah, principal STA & CAD engineer and UCSC Extension instructor, we’ll explore how Timing Closure in Silicon IC Design prepares engineers to meet one of the toughest challenges in advanced IC development.
Our expert instructors and carefully designed courses are here to help you achieve your career goals. Bring your questions about how AI is transforming the industry and gain insights into the essential skills needed to build a standout resume.
This info session is sponsored by the Silicon Chip Design & Semiconductor Engineering Certificate program at UCSC Silicon Valley Extension.
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