Events

Ritual Drinking in the Ancient World
2026-04-15 17:00 - 19:30 (America/Los_Angeles) | Stockwell Cellars, 1100 Fair Ave., Santa Cruz, CA, 95060
Wednesday, April 15, 5:00-7 p.m.
Stockwell Cellars
1100 Fair Avenue, Santa Cruz
Space is limited. Please let us know if you are able to attend via this registration link.
“Drink and make a happy day!” (New Kingdom Theben tomb)
“Wine gladdens the heart of man…” (Psalm 104:15)
At this ‘symposium’ event, three UCSC professors in Classical, Biblical, and Egyptian antiquity will tell stories about how various ancient cultures drank wine to commune with their gods, suspend the normal social rules, and prepare for the end of days.
Elaine Sullivan, “How to Get Drunk with a Goddess”
Martin Devecka, “Wine before Liquor”
Anne Kreps, “Drinking like the World is Going to End”
The Stockwell Cellars tasting room bar will be open for attendees to purchase individual wines-by-the-glass during the event. Come enjoy tasting local Santa Cruz wines while learning about the long history of drinking as a ritual event in the ancient Mediterranean world.
A Q&A will follow the short presentations.

Speakers & Bios:
Martin Devecka, Associate Professor, Ancient Studies & Literature
As a cultural historian, Devecka writes on topics in ancient literature and society that range from robots to ruins. He is currently finishing a book manuscript on animal citizenship in the Roman Empire.
Anne Kreps, Associate Professor, Ancient Studies & History
As a historian of the ancient Near East, Kreps studies heresies, Gnosticism, and the politics of sacred texts. Her current work examines the Dead Sea Scrolls within New Religious Movements in the United States.
Elaine Sullivan, Associate Professor, Ancient Studies & History
An Egyptogist, Sullivan’s field research has included excavation and survey at Karnak’s Mut Temple, the cemetery of Saqqara, and the Greco-Roman city of Karanis, all in Egypt. She is currently authoring a book on the sales of antiquities out of Egypt in the late 19th and early 20th century.
Image: Nebamun receiving wine

Kraw Lecture: At the Forefront of AI: Innovation and Discovery
2026-04-15 17:30 - 20:30 | The Quad Conference Center, 2400 Sand Hill Rd, Menlo Park, CA, 94025, United States
Artificial intelligence is transforming how we understand and solve the world’s most complex challenges—while at the same time causing new challenges and concerns. We invite you to join us for a special UC Santa Cruz Kraw Lecture showcasing the faculty whose groundbreaking research in artificial intelligence is transforming science, technology, and society. From advances in autonomous systems and natural language processing to the development of sustainable and responsible AI, this conversation will highlight the innovative work taking place across disciplines and the real-world impact it is poised to have.
Moderated by special guest Ahmad Thomas, CEO of the Silicon Valley Leadership Group (SVLG), this dynamic discussion will bring together leading researchers to explore how these technologies are shaping the future—accelerating discovery, addressing complex global challenges, and opening new frontiers for collaboration. Gain insight into the ideas, discoveries, and collaborations shaping the next generation of artificial intelligence research and hear from the leaders advancing this work.

In-Person Reception: 5:30 p.m.
Lecture: 6:15 p.m.

Register Now

Astrophysics: The Largest Unknowns and the Biggest Challenges
2026-04-15 19:00 - 20:30 | Rio Theater, 1205 Soquel Avenue, Santa Cruz, 95062, United States
UCSC Professor Alexie Leauthaud will discuss her groundbreaking work understanding the past and future of our universe.
In this exciting public lecture, Professor Alexie Leauthaud will discuss some of the largest challenges and unknowns in Astrophysics. She will present the latest results on the nature of our universe, including groundbreaking and prize-winning new results on the nature of dark energy. Leauthaud will discuss our current understanding of the basic ingredients of our Universe and will explain why recent results from the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument Collaboration (DESI) collaboration made international headline news earlier this year.
She will speculate on what this might mean for the future of our Universe. Professor Leauthaud will discuss other top challenges facing the profession, including political headwinds, recent attacks on science and funding, and will also explain why astronomers are increasingly becoming involved in the fight against climate change. She will discuss her own journey in recognizing the predicament of life on this blue planet will conclude with a big picture view of the challenges that lie ahead.
The Mandel Lecture is free and open to the public. Arrive early, seating is limited. Register at this link to reserve your seat; registration will be also available at the door.
This public talk is presented by the UCSC Department of Astronomy & Astrophysics and UC Observatories, and presented as part of the Mandel Lecture series, which promotes public awareness of and appreciate for astronomy. We seek your help and support in keeping these lecture going. For more information on giving, please visit https://astronomy.ucsc.edu/give/.
For more information or for disability-related needs, please email ccarreir@ucsc.edu.

Mirchandani, C. (BMEB) - Population and Evolutionary Genomics Across Ecological Scales
2026-04-16 11:00 - 13:00 | Engineering 2, Engineering 2 1156 High Street, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064
Sequencing technologies have transformed population and evolutionary genetics, making it possible to ask questions at scales that were intractable a decade ago. Realizing that potential depends on tailored computational approaches, and on the tools and infrastructure those approaches are built on. My dissertation works across this spectrum. Using an in vitro Drosophila cell culture system, I show that mixed Wolbachia infections resolve rapidly and deterministically, with one strain competitively excluding the other across host species and starting frequencies, offering an explanation for why mixed infections are rarely observed in nature. In a deep-sea clam and its obligate bacterial symbiont, I use two ultra-accurate sequencing methods and demographic modeling to directly estimate the effective transmission bottleneck between host generations, finding it to be roughly eight symbionts, orders of magnitude below prior cell-count estimates. I also present two tools for population genomics at scale: snpArcher, a reproducible variant calling workflow developed for the California Conservation Genomics Project and now used across hundreds of species and tens of thousands of samples; and clam, a Rust-based tool that efficiently estimates population genetic statistics by leveraging callable loci, producing results identical to existing all-sites approaches at a fraction of the computational cost. Together, these projects demonstrate how tailored computational approaches can unlock biological insight across diverse systems and scales.
Event Host: Cade Mirchandani, Ph.D. Candidate, Biomolecular Engineering & Bioinformatics
Advisors: Russ Corbett-Detig & Shelbi Russell
Zoom- https://ucsc.zoom.us/j/98034081971?pwd=[REDACTED]

Find Your Path! 2026
2026-04-16 12:00 - 14:00, 2026-04-17 12:00 - 16:30 | Digital Arts Research Center, 407 McHenry Rd, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064
“Find Your Path!” is a two-day professional development event for UC Santa Cruz Arts Division students who are interested in careers in arts and entertainment. Students are invited to network with UC Santa Cruz colleagues, alumni, and creative professionals to find their path to success. Learn more about the speakers here.
SCHEDULE OF EVENTS
Day One
Thurs. April 16, noon–2:00 p.m, UCSC Digital Arts Research Center (DARC) 108 and online (hybrid event)
– Keynote address: Sarah Sanford, UC Santa Cruz Teaching Professor, On Building Careers in Arts Education
– UCSC Career Success presentation: developing a stand-out resume, cover letter, portfolio, and more
– Light refreshments served
Day Two
Fri. April 17, noon–4:30 p.m, UCSC Digital Arts Research Center (DARC) 108 and online (hybrid event)
– Lunch and introduction begin at noon.
– Career panel discussions with creative industry professionals
– Join any or all four panel sessions:
1. Working in the Entertainment Industry: 12:10 PM- 1:05 PM
2. Careers in Museums and Performance Spaces: 1:10 PM-2:05 PM
3. Careers in Games, Design, and Digital Media: 2:20 PM-3:15 PM
4. Arts, Organizing, and Social Impact: 3:20 PM- 4:15 PM
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ADMISSION
– UC Santa Cruz Arts Division students only
– Register here to attend in person or online (hybrid event)
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PARKING
– Parking by permit or ParkMobile
– Arts Lot #126 is the closest parking lot to the event
– Visitors with DMV placards or plates may park for free in DMV spaces, Medical spaces, or ParkMobile spaces without additional payment, or in timed zones for longer than the posted time.
– More information provided by UCSC Transportation & Parking Services (TAPS)

OLLI at UCSC Sunday Speaker Meeting
2026-04-19 10:00 - 12:00 | Colleges Nine and John R. Lewis College Multi-purpose Room, 615 College Nine Road, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064
OLLI Hosts Natalie Batalha, UC Santa Cruz Professor, Astronomy
and Astrophysics
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, April 19th, in the Colleges Nine/Lewis Multipurpose Room at UCSC.
Join us for a social hour and a presentation titled, Are We Alone? Thirty Years of Exoplanet Discovery.
Named among the 100 most influential people in the world by Time magazine in 2017 and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Dr. Batalha is an eminent planetary astronomer. She served many leadership roles for NASA’s Kepler mission, when she identified planets potentially able to sustain life and led the analysis that confirmed the first rocky planet outside our solar system.
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.

AM Seminar: Variational Inference and Density Estimation with Non-Negative Tensor Train
2026-04-20 16:00 - 17:00
Presenter: Dr. Xun Tang, Stanford University
Description: This talk covers an efficient numerical approach for compressing a high-dimensional discrete distribution function into a non-negative tensor train (NTT) format. The two settings we consider are variational inference and density estimation, whereby one has access to either the unnormalized analytic formula of the distribution or the samples generated from the distribution. In particular, the compression is done through a two-stage approach. In the first stage, we use existing subroutines to encode the distribution function in a tensor train format. In the second stage, we use an NTT ansatz to fit the obtained tensor train. For the NTT fitting procedure, we use a log barrier term to ensure the positivity of each tensor component, and then utilize a second-order alternating minimization scheme to accelerate convergence. In practice, we observe that the proposed NTT fitting procedure exhibits drastically faster convergence than an alternative multiplicative update method that has been previously proposed. Through challenging numerical experiments, we show that our approach can accurately compress target distribution functions.
Bio: Xun Tang is a postdoc in Stanford University, department of mathematics, hosted by Prof. Lexing Ying. Xun works on tensor network methods for scientific computing and data science, and Xun also works on optimal transport algorithms. Xun will join HKUST department of mathematics in August 2026 as an incoming assistant professor.
Hosted by: Applied Mathematics Department

Statistics Seminar: Hierarchical Clustering with Confidence
2026-04-20 16:00 - 17:00
Presenter: Snigdha Panigrahi, Associate Professor, Department of Statistics, University of Michigan
Description:Agglomerative hierarchical clustering is one of the most widely used approaches for exploring how observations in a dataset relate to each other. However, its greedy nature makes it highly sensitive to small perturbations in the data, often producing different clustering results and making it difficult to separate genuine structure from spurious patterns. In this talk, I will show how randomizing hierarchical clustering can be useful not just for measuring stability but also for designing valid hypothesis testing procedures based on the clustering results. We propose a simple randomization scheme to construct valid p-values at each node of a hierarchical clustering dendrogram, quantifying evidence against greedy merges while controlling the Type I error rate. Our method applies to any linkage without case-specific derivations, is substantially more powerful than existing selective inference approaches, and provides an estimate of the number of clusters with a probabilistic guarantee on overestimation.
Bio:Snigdha Panigrahi is an Associate Professor of Statistics at the University of Michigan, where she also holds a courtesy appointment in the Department of Biostatistics. She received her PhD in Statistics from Stanford University in 2018 and has been a faculty member at Michigan since then. Her research focuses on converting purely predictive machine learning algorithms into principled inferential methods. She is an elected member of the International Statistical Institute, and her work has been recognized with an NSF CAREER Award and the Bernoulli New Researcher’s Award. Her editorial service, past and present, includes Journal of Computational and Graphical Statistics, Bernoulli, and Journal of the Royal Statistical Society: Series B.
Hosted by: Statistics Department

The Tallest Dwarf—film screening and talk with Julie Wyman
2026-04-20 19:00 - 21:30 | Communications Building, 7487 Red Hill Road, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064
UC Santa Cruz affiliates are invited to a screening and discussion with filmmaker Julie Forrest Wyman. The Tallest Dwarf charts the filmmaker’s quest to find her place within the little people (LP) community at a moment when dwarf identity is poised to radically change. Wyman’s work engages issues of embodiment, body image, and the possibilities and problematics of media spectatorship—all informed by her experience of living with hypochondroplasia dwarfism. Julie Wyman will be in conversation after the screening with Pooja Rangan (Professor of English and Film and Media Studies at Amherst College and Visiting Scholar of Visualizing Abolition) and Cynthia Ling Lee (Associate Professor of Performance, Play & Design, UC Santa Cruz).
Co-organized/co-sponsored by the Arts Division’s Film & Digital Media Department, “Abolition Medicine and Disability Justice“—a collaborative initiative of five UC campuses, including Riverside, Irvine, Los Angeles, Santa Cruz, and San Francisco, to addresses health disparities in institutions and policy—and The Humanities Institute at UC Santa Cruz.
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ADMISSION
– Free and open to UC Santa Cruz affiliates only
– Attend in person at Communications Studio C
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PARKING
– Parking via UCSC permit or ParkMobile
– Core West is the lot closest to the event
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ABOUT THE FILM
As Wyman unpacks the rumors of “partial dwarfism” in her family, she finds that hers is the last of a body type she has inherited. She joins forces with a group of dwarf artists to confront the legacy of being fetishized and put on display. Together they create films that reclaim a complicated history and speak back to the echoes of eugenics in the newly emerging pharmaceutical interventions that make little people taller. Through its personal and expanding perspective, the film invites audiences to a new way of seeing.
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ABOUT THE FILMMAKER
Julie Forrest Wyman’s 2012 documentary STRONG! premiered at AFI Silverdocs and was broadcast nationally on PBS’s Emmy award-winning series, Independent Lens, where it won the series’ Audience Award. Wyman’s work has been awarded support from Sundance, Sandbox, IDA, SF Film Society, Points North, ITVS, the Creative Capital Foundation, The Princess Grace Foundation, California Humanities, and NEH. She has been a fellow at the UC Davis Feminist Research Institute and a resident of SF Film Society’s Filmhouse, Siena Art Institute, Logan Nonfiction and Points North. Her films, including FatMob (2016), Buoyant (2005), and A Boy Named Sue (2000), have aired on Showtime, MTV’s LOGO-TV, and have been exhibited on five continents. She serves as Associate Professor of Cinema and Digital Media at UC Davis.
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Download and share the event flyer here.
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photographer credit: Gabriella Garcia-Pardo; image description: A group of six LP (little people) performers regard their paper body cut outs on the wall.

Field Trip to ALBA
2026-04-21 08:00 - 14:00 | MJ Organic Farms, 1700 Old Stage Rd, Salinas, California, 93908
Join us for an opportunity to visit the Agriculture and Land-Based Training Association (ALBA) in Salinas!
ALBA is a non-profit whose mission is to create economic opportunity for aspiring organic farmers and ag professionals — many of whom are local field workers and first-generation college students — through land-based education in the heart of the Salinas Valley. On this field trip we will learn about their programs which cover: organic farm production, nutrient management and irrigation, farm business, and marketing. If time allows there may also be a harvesting activity.
Lunch will be provided after the tour (please see food order section to place your order)

OVERVIEW:
We will meet at the Hay Barn parking lot at 8:00am, departing at 8:10am. We’ll arrive at ALBA in Salinas at 9am. After our tour we will have lunch at 12pm (provided). At 1pm we’ll get back on the road and be back on campus by 2/2:30pm (depending on traffic)
DRIVING/TRANSPORTATION: (Two options)

Group ride in rental van
Driving yourself to ALBA (If you prefer to drive yourself to Salinas, please arrive at 1700 Old Stage Rd, Salinas, California 93908, by 9am; Google Map)

WHAT TO BRING:

Water/Snacks
Layers (the tour will be mostly outdoors)

Please contact Ximena Moura with any questions: xmoura@ucsc.edu.
Looking forward to exploring ALBA with you all!
We will provide captions for the presentation. If you have disability-related needs, please contact the Career Success office at csuccess@ucsc.edu or (831) 459-4420 as soon as possible.

YOU BELONG HERE
Programs and services 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.

Campus to Career: Job Talk with Communications Manager David Coy
2026-04-21 12:00 - 13:00 | https://ucsc.zoom.us/j/2614256373?pwd=[REDACTED]
Are you curious about the communications field, but not quite sure what it entails? Join our job talk with UCSC alumnus David Coy, a mission-driven communications professional. David will tell us about his journey into communications work and how he discovered his passion for helping impactful organizations craft compelling content. If you’re interested in careers in communications, development, marketing, or social impact, this event is for you!

All students are welcome. The interview will last approximately 30 minutes, followed by a 15-minute Q&A.
We will provide captions for the presentation. If you have disability-related needs, please contact the Career Success office at mpelrine@ucsc.edu as soon as possible.

Learn more about David:
David Coy is a communications professional with a focus on the non-profit, social enterprise, and philanthropy sectors. He is currently Communications Manager for The Bar Association of San Francisco, where he leads communication strategy and supports fundraising efforts. Prior to joining BASF, David worked with mission-driven organizations in investment and philanthropy, conservation, and education. David graduated from UCSC in 2008 with a BA in History.
YOU BELONG HERE
Programs and services 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.

A Sacred Place: Film Screening and Conversation with Dr. Dolly Kikon
2026-04-21 17:30 - 19:30 | Communications Building, 7487 Red Hill Road, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064
Please join us for the American premiere of A Sacred Place (2026), by Professor Dolly Kikon (Anthropology). The film tells the story of stones, spirits, and salt springs in Makhel. The film focuses on intergenerational storytellers and their relationship with the land. It integrates visual ethnography, oral tradition, and geological features of Makhel to center Indigenous pedagogy, community history, and ecology. After the screening, Professor Clementine Bordeaux (HAVC) will provide comments and facilitate a conversation with Kikon and audience member participants.
Makhel in Mao Naga language means a sacred place. Can sacredness exist amid ecocide in our times? Seeking an answer, the film follows life as it unfolds in the mountains of Makhel, a Naga village in northern Manipur. These mountains are composed of sandstones, shales, and siltstones. The sandstone monoliths across the landscape are symbols of ancient alliance and kinship between spirits and humans. The story of the land is also stored in the salt springs, ancient seawater retained in shale soil, a geological feature of these mountains. Geographically part of the Eastern Himalayas, the salt springs of Makhel were formed through sedimentation under an ancient equatorial ocean around 50 million years ago. Naga ancestors regarded these geological features as abodes for spirit custodians and cared for them. A Sacred Place is the story of land narrated by Naga storytellers, as humans prioritize relentless development forgetting their relationship with human and other beings.
Learn more about A Sacred Place.

This screening is a hybrid event. Remote participants will receive a link to the film before the event to watch on their own. They may join the conversation via Zoom.
Please RSVP to register for this event. Register here. Any questions can be directed to seacoast@ucsc.edu
This event is graciously co-sponsored by UCSC’s Center for Southeast Asian Coastal Interactions, Center for South Asian Studies, Indigenous Faculty Network, The Humanities Institute and the Film and Digital Media Department.

Arts & Ecology Festival: Creative Resistance
2026-04-22 10:00 - 22:00 | Digital Arts Research Center, 407 McHenry Rd, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064
On Earth Day, UC Santa Cruz launches the inaugural Arts & Ecology Festival: Creative Resistance, a campus-wide gathering that refuses to treat climate change as a problem of carbon alone. Instead, it brings together artists, scientists, students, and community partners to engage the deeper conditions of the crisis, and to open space for cultural, political, and imaginative transformations grounded in repair, reciprocity, and collective futures.
Taking place at the Digital Arts Research Center (DARC), the festival unfolds as a full day of exhibitions, film screenings, performances, workshops, talks, and public engagement. Developed through an open call that drew an overwhelming response across disciplines, the program reflects a growing field of practitioners working across environmental research, land-based knowledge, climate resistance, and practices of repair that move beyond dominant institutional and economic frameworks. Tacos Los Reyes food truck will be on site during the festival.
The UC Santa Cruz Arts & Ecology Festival is sponsored by UCSC Art Department, OpenLab Collaborative Research Center, and UC Climate Action Arts Network, with support from the University of California, Office of the President’s Multicampus Research Programs and Initiatives grant program.
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ADMISSION
– Free and open to the public
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FULL SCHEDULE OF EVENTS
Earth Day Festival
Wed., April 22, 10:00 a.m.–10:00 p.m.
various locations throughout the Digital Arts Research Center (DARC)
Earth Week Film Screenings
Mon.. April 20–Fri., April 24, 10:00 a.m.–5:00 p.m.
Light Lab Gallery at the Digital Arts Research Center (DARC)
More information here at the festival website.
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PARKING
– Parking by UCSC permit or ParkMobile.
– Arts Lot #126 is the closest parking lot to the event.
– Visitors with DMV placards or plates may park for free in DMV spaces, Medical spaces, or ParkMobile spaces without additional payment, or in timed zones for longer than the posted time.
– More information provided by UCSC Transportation & Parking Services (TAPS).
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This program is open to all members of the public consistent with state and federal law.

CSE Colloquium - Robust Machine Learning for Biomedical Data: Efficiency, Reliability, and Generalizability
2026-04-22 11:00 - 12:15 | Engineering 2, Engineering 2 1156 High Street, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064
Presenter
Chenyu You, Stony Brook University
Abstract
In the rapidly growing area of machine learning, there is profound promise in crafting intelligent, data-driven methods for diverse real-world applications. Yet, in safety-critical domains like healthcare, some fundamental challenges remain: (1) The insufficiency of raw biomedical data emphasizes the need for data-efficient and robust learning approaches. (2) The imperative of safety and stability necessitates a cohesive framework that unifies learning with theoretical guarantees. (3) The inherent heterogeneity and distribution shifts in real-world clinical data call for robust and generalizable learning methods. To address these challenges, there are several major directions I have explored: (i) (Robust) Machine Learning for Imperfect Medical Data: The development of machine learning models, particularly in the context of label scarcity, increasingly necessitates the collection of substantial annotated medical data. Moreover, medical data often display a long-tailed class distribution, which consequently results in notable imbalance issues. To this end, there are several growing interests in training machine learning models jointly across imbalanced class distributions and limited annotations. I have developed novel, efficient, statistically consistent algorithms to improve empirical performance for biomedical image analysis. (ii) Learning with Theoretical Guarantees: As machine learning methods have become ubiquitous in clinical decision-making, their reliability and interpretability have become important. This is particularly crucial in the field of biomedical image analysis, where decision outcomes can have profound implications. I have developed novel machine learning algorithms that enable provably accurate anatomical modeling with theoretical guarantees. (iii) Generalize across Diverse Biomedical Data: The development of medical foundation models often requires massive and diverse biomedical data. To this end, I have developed various foundation models for biomedical imaging data and explored novel applications of these models. I have also developed novel medical AI Agents that lead to the scalable and accurate predictive modeling, particularly for distribution shift problems.
Speaker Bio
Chenyu You is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Applied Mathematics & Statistics and Department of Computer Science at Stony Brook University. He is also the core faculty member of the CVLab, AI institute, and affiliated with the Institute for Advanced Computational Science. His research focuses on both fundamental and applied problems in computer vision and machine learning, often with a focus on generalization, and making machine learning more reliable. Our applied research includes applications to healthcare, biomedical imaging, and cognitive neuroscience. He received his Ph.D. in 2024 from Yale University under the advisement of James S. Duncan, his M.S. in 2019 from Stanford University under the advisement of Daniel Rubin, and his B.S. in 2017 from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute under the advisement of Ge Wang, all in electrical engineering. He has also spent wonderful time at Facebook AI Research (FAIR), as well as Google Research. He serves on the Medical Image Computing and Computer-Assisted Intervention Society (MICCAI), and the SUNY AI Symposium Planning Committee, and as associate editors for IEEE Transactions on Medical Imaging, Medical Image Analysis, IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks and Learning Systems, Pattern Recognition, and Transactions on Machine Learning Research. He has received AAAI’26 New Faculty Highlights, CPAL’26 Rising Stars Award, Tinker Research Grant Award, Lambda Research Grant Award, ICML’25 Oral Presentation Award, EMBC’25 Top Paper Award, MICCAI’25 NIH Registration Grant Award, IEEE TMI’25 Distinguished Associate Editor Certificate of Excellence Award, and Yale George P. O’Leary Graduate Fellowship, and has been ranked as the World’s Top 2% most-cited scientists by Stanford University since 2024, is a member of the Sigma Xi scientific research society, and received the Excellence in Teaching Award for Spring and Fall 2025. For more information, please check his website: https://chenyuyou.me/.
Hosted by: Professor Yuyin Zhou
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]

Policing Belonging: The Politics of Immigration Enforcement
2026-04-22 15:30 - 17:00 | Hay Barn, 94 Ranch View Road, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064, United States
The Legal Studies Program presents: Policing Belonging: The Politics of Immigration Enforcement. This year, we will be hosting Professor Amada Armenta, UCLA Director of Latino Policy and Politics Institute. In this talk, Amada Armenta traces the policy and practice of immigration enforcement in the United States. Drawing on years of qualitative research with police officers, bureaucrats, and undocumented immigrants, she examines how the politics of enforcement are enacted in everyday life—through discretionary decisions, local collaborations, and moral reasoning. Armenta shows how immigration enforcement generates moral tensions for those who carry it out and existential dilemmas for those forced to live within its reach, revealing a system that exposes the uneven burdens of power and belonging.

2026 Distinguished Lecture (1)

Women of Color Environmentalists panel 2026
2026-04-22 18:00 - 21:00 | Cultural Center – Merrill College, 641 Merrill Rd, Santa Cruz, 95064, United States
Join the UCSC People of Color Sustainability Collective for a panel that celebrates the efforts, voices, and visions of women of color environmentalists. These panelists have worked in various fields, from irrigation systems, marine research, agroecology, and more!

Come learn about opportunities you can take part in as an undergrad, graduate opportunities and programs, and community-building.

For questions/accommodations, email: pocsc@ucsc.edu

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.

Climate Tech & Sustainability Showcase
2026-04-23 14:00 - 17:00 | Jack Baskin Engineering, Baskin Engineering 1156 High Street, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064
Join us for a Climate Tech & Sustainability Showcase, where students, faculty, climate and sustainability-focused companies, founders, and community organizations come together to share their work and ideas. The event is part of Baskin Engineering Climate Week, focused on raising awareness of climate issues and sustainability research and teaching.
Explore a range of interactive demos, poster presentations, and tabling displays highlighting innovative research, emerging technologies, and real-world solutions to climate challenges. Baskin Engineering student organizations will also be on hand to share their climate friendly projects!
Come network, promote your organization, and meet up-and-coming talent alongside other passionate, like-minded members of the climate and sustainability community.
Where: BE Courtyard
When: 2:00-5:00 p.m.

Pawl, E. (STAT) - Flexible and Scalable Mixtures of Experts for Oceanographic Flow Cytometry Data
2026-04-23 15:30 - 17:30 | Engineering 2, Engineering 2 1156 High Street, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064
Flow cytometry is a valuable technique in microbial research used to measure the optical properties of single-celled organisms at high throughput. Oceanographers often deploy flow cytometers on research cruises in order to study the characteristics of phytosynthetic microbes—called phytoplankton—in regions and times with diverse environmental conditions. Because cytometers cannot distinguish between subpopulations, researchers typically cluster observations into subpopulations and subsequently analyze cluster characteristics. This two-stage workflow is often manual, difficult to reproduce, and fails to account for uncertainty in cluster assignments when relating subpopulation behavior to environmental conditions. To address these shortcomings, statistical mixture models are gradually being introduced as alternatives to manual flow cytometry data analysis. However, existing models either cannot use covariates or make restrictive assumptions about the relationships between cluster characteristics and covariates. Additionally, they are designed to analyze individual cruises and consequently characterize local, rather than global, patterns in phytoplankton behavior. We propose to develop computationally efficient mixtures of experts which account for the complex dependency structures in oceanographic flow cytometry data. In this framework, cells are probabilistically assigned to latent subpopulations, while cluster-specific regressions relate each subpopulation’s optical properties and relative abundance to environmental conditions. Our first project develops a mixture of random weight neural network experts which can estimate arbitrary nonlinear regressions at low computational cost, without a priori specification of functional forms. In the second project, we develop a variational Bayesian mixture of experts which automatically selects variables without requiring cross-validation for hyperparameter selection. The final project incorporates spatial and temporal dependence, allowing joint inference on data collected from multiple research cruises conducted at different locations and times.
Event Host: Ethan Pawl, Ph.D. Student, Statistical Science
Advisors: Sangwon Hyun & Paul Parker
Zoom- https://ucsc.zoom.us/j/96353239941?pwd=[REDACTED]
Passcode- 244463

Artist Roundtable for EASP M.F.A. Exhibition—"Picking up Shells Amid a Tsunami"
2026-04-23 17:00 - 18:00 | 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.

Careers in Climate Tech & Sustainability
2026-04-23 17:00 - 18:15 | Engineering 2, Engineering 2 1156 High Street, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064
Ready to explore career pathways that matter?
Attend our very special Careers in Climate Tech & Sustainability Panel—celebrating Baskin Engineering Climate Week—for an inside look at careers that will help build a sustainable future. Panelists representing different roles and organizations will share their career journeys and offer practical insights into working in climate tech. There will also be a catered networking reception that follows—don’t miss it!
Get informed, inspired, and discover your path to a career in sustainability!
This event is part of Baskin Engineering’s Climate Tech Day featuring a community fair where students, faculty, climate and sustainability tech companies, and community organizations will showcase their works through demonstrations, poster presentations, tabling, and more.
Where: E2-180
When: Thursday, April 23, 5:00-6:15 p.m.
Register via Handshake.
If you have disability-related needs, please contact the Career Success office at csuccess@ucsc.edu or (831) 459-4420 as soon as possible.
YOU BELONG HERE
Programs and services 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.

Artist Talk with Federico Cuatlacuatl
2026-04-23 18:00 - 19:30 | Institute of the Arts and Sciences, 100 Panetta Ave, Santa Cruz, United States
We invite you to join us for a film screeening and discussion with artist Federico Cuatlacuatl. This will be the west coast premiere of QUEMAR LAS PATAS DEL IMPERIO (to burn the feet of the empire), Cuatlacuatl’s newest work.
Federico Cuatlacuatl (b. San Francisco Coapan, Cholula, Puebla -México) is Horace W. Goldsmith Distinguished Teaching Associate Professor in the Humanities in the Department of Art at the University of Virginia and currently a research Fellow at the University of Heidelberg in Germany. Cuatlacuatl’s aesthetic oeuvre addresses Nahua Indigenous immigration, social art practice, and cultural sustainability. Building on his own experience as formerly undocumented immigrant and DACA holder, his creative practice collides Indigeneity, immigration, and temporalities. At the core of his most recent research and artistic production is the intersection of transborder Indigeneity, Nahua diasporic resilience, and Nahua futurisms. His work has been featured in international film festivals and exhibitions globally including: the Max Ernst Museum, the Kode Museum of Art in Norway, the KINDL Centre for Contemporary Art in Berlin, the BFI London Film Festival, the Larnaca Biennale in Cyprus, the National Museum of Anthropology in Mexico City, the Museum of Art Såo Paulo in Brazil, Virginia Museum of Contemporary Art, the Sculpture Center in Ohio, the Contemporary Arts Center in New Orleans, and the Tucson Museum of Art. Cuatlacuatl is a co-founder of the UNDOC+Collective and the founder of the Rasquache Artist Residency in Puebla, México.

Slug48—Student Film Competition, Screening, and Awards Ceremony
2026-04-24 01:00 - 2026-04-30 00:59
The third annual Slug48 returns with a 48-hour film competition—open to all UC Santa Cruz students. A 48-hour film is one that is written, shot, edited, and all music composed within a 48-hour time period. Teams and strategies for filming may be formed ahead of time, but nothing can be written, and no footage can be shot, until the clock is ticking. Slug48 was founded in 2024 thanks to the support and enthusiasm of UC Santa Cruz alumnus Kevin Nolting, former editor at Pixar Animation Studios, where he edited the Academy Award-winning films Up!; Inside Out; and Soul.
ABOUT THE EVENT
Competition Opens
Fri., April 24, 5:00 p.m. | UCSC Communications 139
– parameters assigned (a theme, a prop, a line of dialogue that must be in the film to ensure nothing was shot ahead of time)
– filming begins
– open to all UCSC students
– advanced registration recommended here; however students can sign up at the Competition Opens event
Competition Closes
Sun. April 26, 5:00 p.m.
– filming concludes
– submit the finished film
Film Screening & Awards Ceremony
Wed., April 29, event time to be announced | Kresge 3105
– films judged by a panel of celebrity judges, chaired by Kevin Nolting
– open admission for friends/family of the filmmakers and UCSC affiliates
Download and share the event flyer here.

Zheng, Z. (STATS) - Semi-Supervised Statistical Learning for Oceanographic Data
2026-04-24 13:00 - 15:00 | Engineering 2, Engineering 2 1156 High Street, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064
Oceanographic data, generated by modern technologies that measure biological systems across time, space, and cell populations, are often rich, high-dimensional, and highly heterogeneous. Such data provide valuable opportunities to study subcellular organization, cellular heterogeneity, and dynamic biological processes in marine environments. However, because marine plankton systems remain relatively understudied and less well characterized than many model biological systems, both data generation and labeling are particularly challenging. Limited domain knowledge and less mature laboratory protocols often produce noisy observations, while reliable annotation requires substantial expert effort and is therefore difficult to obtain at scale.
This proposal develops statistical methodology for oceanographic data settings in which a small amount of expert-labeled data must be combined with a much larger collection of unlabeled or imperfectly processed data. A central goal is to incorporate limited scientific knowledge into statistical learning procedures to improve interpretability, component identifiability, and inferential reliability. In particular, I develop semi-supervised statistical methods that explicitly quantify the information contributed by expert annotation.
To address this goal, I study three related problems: semi-supervised functional clustering for subcellular spatial proteomics, anchored semi-supervised mixture-of-experts models for flow cytometry, and temporally structured latent-variable models that separate smooth trend and seasonal variation from scientific signals of interest. Together, these projects aim to develop principled and interpretable methodology for partially labeled, structured, and high-dimensional oceanographic data, with an emphasis on valid uncertainty quantification.
Event Host: Ziyue Zheng, Ph.D. Student, Statistical Science
Advisor: Sangwon Hyun
Zoom: https://ucsc.zoom.us/j/93229540289?pwd=[REDACTED]

Artist Tour with Libia Posada
2026-04-25 14:00 - 15:00 | Institute of the Arts and Sciences, 100 Panetta Ave, Santa Cruz, United States
We are thrilled to invite you to join Libia Posada, a multidisciplinary artist as well as a physician, for this artist-led tour of Everything is Going Right, the premiere solo exhibition of her work in the United States. With artworks influenced by her medical training, Posada will discuss how she engages the body as a site for the staging of human experience, both individual and collective, and a territory closely connected to the geopolitical.
Libia Posada’s work has been shown broadly internationally, including at the Museum of Modern Art of Medellín; Musée Les Abattoirs, Toulouse, France; National Museum of Colombia; and the Havana Biennial.

Santa Cruz Pickwick Club presents: Bleak House
2026-04-26 13:00 - 15:00
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.

CM Seminar: Edward Wang, "Inventing a New Blood Pressure Monitor"
2026-04-27 12:30 - 13:30 | Silicon Valley Campus, 3175 Bowers Avenue, Santa Clara, CA, 95054, United States
Presented by: Edward Wang
Description: “What does it actually look like to invent something? In this talk, I trace the decade-long journey of turning a smartphone into a blood pressure monitor, from Seismo, which used smartphone accelerometers to measure pulse transit time, to BPClip, a dollar clip that brought calibration-free oscillometry to the fingertip, to VibroBP, which eliminated the attachment entirely using the phone’s vibration motor. Each project was born from the limitations of the last. And each time we thought we’d solved the problem, new layers of unknowns appeared around usability, manufacturing, and FDA classification. This is a talk about what inventing looks like when you zoom in past the papers and patents. Less about creating something new, and more about finding the unknowns between a need and its solution, and creatively working through them, one by one.”
Bio: Dr. Edward J. Wang is the Jacobs Faculty Chair in Entrepreneurship Associate Professor of Design and Electrical & Computer Engineering at UC San Diego, where he directs the Digital Health Technologies Lab. His research explores practical solutions to address real-world medical needs drawn from collaborations with clinicians and world health organizations, but solved using new and creative insights that leverage state-of-the-art applied machine learning, embedded systems, and mobile sensors. He has been named an NAI Senior Member, NIH Trailblazer, Norman Design Laureate, and Google Research Scholar. He publishes in premier computer science and health science venues including ACM IMWUT, CHI, UIST, Nature Publishing, Frontiers in Digital Health, and JMIR, having been awarded 9 best paper awards. He actively engages in the translation of research through faculty entrepreneurship. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Washington and his B.S. from Harvey Mudd College.
Hosted by: Professor Christina Chung
When: Monday, April 27, 2026 from 12:30PM to 1:30PM
Location:
IN-PERSON @ SVC 3212.
Viewing room @ UCSC Main Campus, E2-280.
LUNCH WILL BE PROVIDED AT BOTH LOCATIONS! Faculty and students are highly encouraged to attend.
Zoom info:
https://ucsc.zoom.us/j/91516487260?pwd=[REDACTED]
Meeting ID: 915 1648 7260
Passcode: [REDACTED]

Statistics Seminar: Active Learning for Fair and Stable Allocations
2026-04-27 16:00 - 17:00 | Jack Baskin Engineering, Baskin Engineering 1156 High Street, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064
Presenter: Riddhiman Bhattacharya, Postdoc, UCSC
Description: We propose an active learning approach for dynamic fair resource allocation problems. In contrast to prior work that assumes full feedback from all agents on their allocations, we focus on scenarios where feedback is available only from a carefully select subset of agents at each epoch of the online resource allocation process. Despite this limitation, our algorithms achieve sub-linear regret in the number of time-periods for multiple fairness metrics commonly used in resource allocation problems and stability constraints inherent to matching mechanisms. The core innovation of our approach lies in the adaptive identification of the most informative feedback through dueling upper and lower confidence bounds. This strategy enables efficient decision-making with limited feedback, achieving favorable outcomes across various problem classes.
About the speaker: I am Riddhiman Bhattacharya, currently a postdoc at UCSC, Statistics Department, working with Justin (Sangwon Hyun). I have previously been a postdoc at Purdue and have obtained my PhD from the University of Minnesota in Statistics. I am interested in methodological development in statistics with varied applications including oceanography, biology and economics. I am also interested in theoretical development of statistics particularly in the fields of Markov Chain Monte Carlo, Optimization and Fast Sampling.

AM Seminar: Machine Learning in Molecular Simulations: From Free Energy to Vibrational Spectroscopy
2026-04-27 16:00 - 17:00 | Jack Baskin Engineering, Baskin Engineering 1156 High Street, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064
Presenter: Marcos Calegari Andrade, Assistant Professor, Chemistry and Biochemistry, UC Santa Cruz
Description: In this talk, I will demonstrate how neural networks can represent the high-dimensional potential energy surfaces of many-body systems. By achieving the accuracy of first-principles quantum calculations at a fraction of the computational cost, these models enable atomistic simulations of condensed matter at unprecedented scales. I will discuss how this approach provides a detailed lens into chemical reaction dynamics under experimentally relevant conditions and facilitates the direct calculation of observables, such as vibrational spectra, effectively bridging the gap between theoretical simulation and experimental observation.
About the speaker: Marcos Calegari Andrade is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at the University of California, Santa Cruz. He earned his PhD from Princeton University, where he developed machine learning models to simulate the chemistry and vibrational spectroscopy of condensed-phase systems. He later joined the Quantum Simulations Group at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, applying deep neural network models to fundamental challenges in climate and energy security. His current research at UCSC focuses on the application of machine learning to molecular simulations, with a particular emphasis on chemical reaction mechanisms, vibrational spectroscopy, and the development of automated simulation frameworks.
This seminar is hosted by Applied Mathematics

Taming Two Scorpions: Climate Science Tipping Points Meet Finance Tail Risks
2026-04-28 15:30 - 17:00 | Center for Adaptive Optics, 7487 Red Hill Road, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064
When two quite different disciplines make eerily similar predictions about the future of the planet and human societies, they deserve notice. Climate scientists warn that we may be heading toward a Hothouse Earth “inhospitable to … human societies,” with “increasingly catastrophic impacts” possibly “worldwide societal breakdown.” Finance and actuarial science emphasize the importance of tail risk (rare adverse events). Planning and preparing for them is essential to the survival of insurance companies, pension funds, banks, and the entire financial system. In Climate Salon 6, Economist Dan Friedman and Environmental Sociologist Andy Szasz team up to show how these disciplinary perspectives interconnect and what they say about the path forward.
Tues Apr 28 3:30-5 pm, Center for Adaptive Optics Atrium or via zoom (free and open to the public!)
Dan Friedman is Distinguished Professor of Economics Emeritus at UCSC. The author of 6 books, over 100 research articles and the recipient of 14 National Science Foundation grants, Dan has begun to apply his expertise in finance and evolutionary game theory to issues in environmental economics.
Andrew Szasz is Professor Emeritus of Environmental Studies. At UCSC he taught courses on Classical and Contemporary Social Theory, Environmental Sociology and Environmental Justice. He has written books and articles on environmental regulation, the grassroots toxics movement, green consuming, environmental justice and climate change.
CO-SPONSORED by UCSC Climate Action Now, the Earth Futures Institute, and Baskin Engineering.
