Events

A Conversation on Black Ecologies
2025-10-23 12:00 - 13:15 (America/Los_Angeles) | Rachel Carson College, 1156 High Street, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064
Join the Sociology Department together with the Center for Critical Urban & Environmental Studies (CUES), The Black Geographies Lab, and Critical Race and Ethic Studies in the Rachel Carson College Red Room, to welcome speakers Tianna Bruno and Justin Hosbey (UC Berkeley) for a conversation on Black Ecologies.
Tianna Bruno is an Assistant Professor of Geography at UC Berkeley.
Justin Hosbey is an Assistant Professor of City & Regional Planning at UC Berkeley.
Lindsey Dillon is an Associate Professor of Sociology at UC Santa Cruz.
This event is part of a series co-sponsored by the Center for Critical Urban & Environmental Studies (CUES) together with the Sociology Department, The Black Geographies Lab, and Critical Race and Ethnic Studies.

Behavioral, Econometrics and Theory Seminar Series Presents: Kevin Chen
2025-10-23 13:40 - 15:00 | Engineering 2, Engineering 2 1156 High Street, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064
Economics Behavioral, Econometrics, & Theory Seminar
Date: Thursday, October 23, 2025
Time: 1:40-3:00 p.m.
Location: Engineering 2, Rm 499

Speaker: Kevin Chen
Title: Assistant Professor of Economics
Affiliation: Stanford University
Host: Michael Leung

Seminar title: Compound Selection Decisions: An Almost SURE Approach

ABSTRACT: This paper proposes methods for producing compound selection decisions in a Gaussian sequence model. Given unknown, fixed parameters µ_{1:n} and known σ_{1:n} with observations Yᵢ ∼ 𝒩(μᵢ, σᵢ²), the aim is to select a subset of units S to maximize utility Σ_{i∈S}(μᵢ − Kᵢ) for known costs Kᵢ. Inspired by Stein’s unbiased risk estimate (SURE), we introduce an almost unbiased estimator, ASSURE, for the expected utility of a proposed decision rule. ASSURE allows a user to choose a welfare-maximizing rule from a pre-specified class by optimizing the estimated welfare, thereby producing selection decisions that borrow strength across noisy estimates. We show that ASSURE yields decision rules that are asymptotically no worse than the optimal but infeasible rule in the pre-specified class. We apply ASSURE to p-value decision procedures in A/B testing, selecting Census tracts for economic opportunity, and identifying discriminating firms.

Robots that Know What They Do Not Know: Assured AI-enabled Autonomy in Unknown Environments
2025-10-23 14:00 - 15:00 | Engineering 2, Engineering 2 1156 High Street, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064
Speaker: Yiannis Kantaros, Assistant Professor, Electrical and Systems Engineering at WashU in St. Louis.
Title: Robots that Know What They Do Not Know: Assured AI-enabled Autonomy in Unknown Environments.
Time: Thursday, Oct 23rd, 2025, 2:00-3:00 pm.
Location: E2-553 or Zoom.
Abstract: Designing robots that navigate unfamiliar environments to execute natural language (NL) commands is a cornerstone of advanced embodied intelligence. While recent AI-enabled architectures have made impressive empirical progress, they often lack introspection, leading to systems that act with unwarranted confidence, unaware of their own limitations or whether they have successfully completed their tasks. As a result, these systems offer limited performance and safety guarantees, restricting their deployment in safety-critical settings.
In this talk, I will present an introspective, neuro-symbolic autonomy architecture that enables robots to complete NL tasks in unknown environments with assurance guarantees by explicitly quantifying their own uncertainty using uncertainty quantification (UQ) tools. The neural component employs large language models (LLMs) to translate NL commands into temporal logic specifications, while leveraging conformal prediction, a UQ tool, to calibrate and quantify prediction uncertainty arising from LLM imperfections and potential NL ambiguity. When uncertainty exceeds user-defined thresholds, uncertainty-aware feedback is solicited from auxiliary LLMs—or, if necessary, from human operators. We provide theoretical guarantees, supported by empirical case studies, that the proposed uncertainty-aware translation framework, called ConformalNL2LTL, achieves user-specified translation success rates under certain distributional settings. The symbolic component generates plans for mobile robots with AI-enabled perception systems to satisfy temporal logic tasks while explicitly reasoning over perceptual and environmental uncertainty. This allows robots to decide when to proceed confidently and when to actively gather additional sensor data, ensuring task completion with the desired probability. Notably, the developed planners are agnostic to specific sensor models or noise characteristics. The talk will conclude with case studies and demonstrations, followed by a discussion of limitations and open problems.
Speaker Bio: Yiannis Kantaros is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Electrical and Systems Engineering, Washington University in St. Louis (WashU), St. Louis, MO, USA. He earned a Diploma in Electrical and Computer Engineering in 2012 from the University of Patras, Greece, and M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees in Mechanical Engineering from Duke University, Durham, NC, in 2017 and 2018, respectively. Prior to joining WashU, he was a postdoctoral associate in the Department of Computer and Information Science, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA. His current research interests include machine learning, distributed control and optimization, and formal methods with applications in robotics. He received the Best Student Paper Award at the 2nd IEEE Global Conference on Signal and Information Processing (GlobalSIP) in 2014 and was a finalist for the Best Multi-Robot Systems Paper at the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) in 2024 and a finalist for the Best Paper Award at the ACM/IEEE International Conference on Cyber-physical Systems (CPSWeek-ICCPS) in 2025. He also received the 2017-18 Outstanding Dissertation Research Award from the Department of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science at Duke University and a 2024 NSF CAREER Award.

Mary Roach - Replaceable You
2025-10-23 19:00 - 20:00 | London Nelson Community Center, 301 Center St., Santa Cruz, United States
Bookshop Santa Cruz welcomes #1 New York Times bestselling author Mary Roach for a discussion about Replaceable You: Adventures in Human Anatomy. In this irrepressible new work, Mary Roach explores the remarkable advances and difficult questions prompted by the human body’s failings. When and how does a person decide they’d be better off with a prosthetic than their existing limb? Can a donated heart be made to beat forever? Can an intestine provide a workable substitute for a vagina?

The body is the most complex machine in the world, and the only one for which you cannot get a replacement part from the manufacturer. For centuries, medicine has reached for what’s available–sculpting noses from brass, borrowing skin from frogs and hearts from pigs, crafting eye parts from jet canopies and breasts from petroleum by-products. Today we’re attempting to grow body parts from scratch using stem cells and 3D printers. How are we doing? Are we there yet? Irrepressible and accessible, Replaceable You immerses readers in the wondrous, improbable, and surreal quest to build a new you. This event is cosponsored by The Humanities Institute at UC Santa Cruz.
Mary Roach is the author of seven best-selling works of nonfiction, including Grunt, Stiff, and, most recently, Fuzz. Her writing has appeared in National Geographic and the New York Times Magazine, among other publications. She lives in California.

Science & Justice Training Program Informational Meeting
2025-10-24 14:00 - 15:00 | Register at: https://ucsc.zoom.us/meeting/register/u6h-cJvDQBiscaNIJpzVUw
Join the Science & Justice Research Center on Friday, October 24th at 2PM on Zoom for an Informational Meeting on our internationally recognized interdisciplinary Graduate Training and Certificate Program.
Register at: https://ucsc.zoom.us/meeting/register/u6h-cJvDQBiscaNIJpzVUw.
Our Science & Justice Training Program (SJTP) is a globally unique initiative that trains doctoral students to work across the disciplinary boundaries of the natural and social sciences, engineering, humanities and the arts. Through the SJTP we at UC Santa Cruz currently teach new generations of PhD students the skills of interdisciplinary collaboration, ethical deliberation, and public communication. Students in the program design collaborative research projects oriented around questions of science and justice. These research projects not only contribute to positive outcomes in the wider world, they also become the templates for new forms of problem-based and collaborative inquiry within and beyond the university.
As SJTP students graduate they take the skills and experience they gained in the training program into the next stage of their career in universities, industry, non-profits, and government.
Opportunities include graduate Certificate Program, experience organizing and hosting colloquia series about the research projects, mentorship, potential for additional research funding and training in conducting interdisciplinary research at the intersections of science and society.
WINTER 2026 / WINTER 2027 COURSE SERIES:
Science & Justice: Experiments in Collaboration, taught by Associate Professor of Critical Race Science and Technology Studies Kriti Sharma is scheduled for Tuesday’s 1:00-4:00 pm. Science and Justice Research Seminar will be offered in Winter 2027. Enrollment in the courses is required for participating in the Training Program. Attending the informational meeting is strongly encouraged, but not required.
Students from all disciplines are encouraged to attend. Prior graduate fellows have come from every campus Division and have represented 24 departments.
Past collaborative research projects have included:

Physicists working with small scale farmers to develop solar greenhouses scaled to local farming needs.
Colloquia about the social and political consequences of scientific uncertainties surrounding topics such as climate change research, food studies, genomics and identity.
Examining how art can empower justice movements.
Working with local publics to improve African fishery science.

For more information on the Science & Justice Training Program, visit: https://scijust.ucsc.edu/about-sjrc/sjtp/.

Campus Debt is a Labor Issue
2025-10-24 14:00 - 16:00 | Rachel Carson College, 1156 High Street, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064
Join the Center for Labor and Community on Friday, October 24, from 2-4pm at the Rachel Carson Red Room for a conversation on campus debt, austerity, and labor organizing in higher education.
Drawing from his book, Lend and Rule: Fighting Shadow Financialization of Public Universities (2024), Jason Wozniak, of the Debt Collective and the Coalition Against Campus Debt, will describe how institutional debt drives the erosion of public higher education and disciplines labor.
This event is FREE and open to the public. RSVP today!

Elevate Your Interviews: Strategies for Success
2025-10-25 09:00 - 16:30 | CA
Job interviews can be challenging, even for seasoned professionals. Preparation and practice are key. This one-day workshop for the PMI Silicon Valley Chapter, led by communications coach Karen Schiff, will teach you the skills you need to ace your next interview.
Throughout the day, you’ll learn how to craft your responses, both the organization and the content, so you sound clear and look confident. Practice with your peers and get personalized feedback from Karen in a supportive space. You’ll leave with actionable insights and a toolkit of techniques to set you apart from the competition.
Learning Outcomes:

Structure. Find out which speaking structures are the most effective for different question types
Content. Learn the most impressive content to use in your responses to seven key questions.
Presentation. See how to look and sound your best on video, phone, and in person.

Registration

Student Discount: UCSC Extension students receive 50% off registration.
Early bird registration: $200 for members, $250 for non-members
Regular registration: $250 for members, $300 for non-members

This event is co-sponsored by the UCSC Silicon Valley Professional Education Project and Program Management certificate program.

Santa Cruz Pickwick Club presents: Bleak House
2025-10-26 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.

ECE 290 Seminar: Performance Bounds and Bottlenecks for Neuromorphic ML Accelerators
2025-10-27 10:40 - 11:45 | Engineering 2, Engineering 2 1156 High Street, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064
Presenter: Jason Yik, PhD Candidate, Harvard SEAS
Description: Recent research on neuromorphic accelerators has investigated their efficiency and performance benefits for machine learning (ML) inference at the edge. This talk will focus on the performance implications of the fully-on-chip, manycore-distributed memory architecture used by current neuromorphic accelerators. In conventional architectures, the roofline model is a well-known performance model for denoting performance bounds and bottlenecks. For neuromorphics, we show that bounds create a different shape, a floorline, and we demonstrate how to optimize ML deployment using the floorline as a performance guide.
Bio: Jason Yik is a PhD candidate at Harvard SEAS, with a research focus in neuromorphic computing architectures. His prior work includes designing benchmark frameworks and tools for neuromorphic research, and modeling and optimizing neuromorphic system performance. Currently, he is an intern with the ASIC architecture team at Cerebras Systems.
Hosted by: Professor Soumya Bose, ECE Department
Zoom Link: https://ucsc.zoom.us/j/97975378707?pwd=[REDACTED]
Room: E2-192

Statistics Seminar: Sampling Depth Trade-Off in Function Estimation Under a Two-Level Design
2025-10-27 16:00 - 17:00 | CA
Presenter: Akira Horiguchi, Visiting Assistant Professor, University of California, Davis
Description: Many modern statistical applications involve a two-level sampling scheme that first samples subjects from a population and then samples observations on each subject. These schemes often are designed to learn both the population-level functional structures shared by the subjects and the functional characteristics specific to individual subjects. Common wisdom suggests that learning population-level structures benefits from sampling more subjects whereas learning subject-specific structures benefits from deeper sampling within each subject. Oftentimes these two objectives compete for limited sampling resources, which raises the question of how to optimally sample at the two levels. We quantify such sampling-depth trade-offs by establishing the L_2 minimax risk rates for learning the population-level and subject-specific structures under a hierarchical Gaussian process model framework where we consider a Bayesian and a frequentist perspective on the unknown population-level structure. These rates provide general lessons for designing two-level sampling schemes given a fixed sampling budget. Interestingly, they show that subject-specific learning occasionally benefits more by sampling more subjects than by deeper within-subject sampling. We show that the corresponding minimax rates can be readily achieved in practice through simple adaptive estimators without assuming prior knowledge on the underlying variability at the two sampling levels. We validate our theory and illustrate the sampling trade-off in practice through both simulation experiments and two real datasets. While we carry out all the theoretical analysis in the context of Gaussian process models for analytical tractability, the results provide insights on effective two-level sampling designs more broadly.
Bio: Akira Horiguchi is a Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of Statistics at the University of California, Davis. He was a Postdoctoral Associate in the Department of Statistical Science at Duke University, advised by Professors Li Ma and Cliburn Chan. He completed his Ph.D. in Statistics at The Ohio State University, advised by Professors Matthew T. Pratola and Thomas J. Santner. His research interests include improving nonparametric inference for flow cytometry data, developing sensitivity analysis tools for regression trees, and developing tree-based methods for tensor regression.
Hosted by: Professor Paul Parker

AM Seminar: Why do we care about inertial waves on the Sun?
2025-10-27 16:00 - 17:00 | CA
Presenter: Ms. Catherine Blume, University of Colorado-Boulder
Description: Recent observations of Rossby waves and other inertial oscillations in the Sun’s convection zone have kindled the hope that such waves might be used as a seismic probe of the Sun’s interior. Here, we present a 3D numerical simulation in spherical geometry that models the Sun’s convection zone and upper radiative interior. This model features a wide variety of inertial oscillations, including both sectoral and tesseral Rossby waves, retrograde mixed inertial modes, prograde thermal Rossby waves, and the recently observed high-frequency retrograde (HFR) vorticity modes. In this talk, we’ll explore these different waves, their physical impact, and their potential helioseismic utility.
Bio: Catherine Blume is an astrophysics PhD student at the University of Colorado Boulder, where she works with Brad Hindman studying solar inertial waves.
Hosted by: Professor Julie Simons

Julian Brave NoiseCat - We Survived the Night
2025-10-27 19:00 - 20:00 | London Nelson Community Center, 301 Center St., Santa Cruz, United States
Bookshop Santa Cruz welcomes Julian Brave NoiseCat who will share his stunning debut We Survived the Night. Drawing from five years of on-the-ground reporting, We Survived the Night paints a profound and unforgettable portrait of contemporary Indigenous life, alongside an intimate and deeply powerful reckoning between a father and a son. Soulful, formally daring, indelible work from an important new voice.
This event is cosponsored by the American Indian Resource Center and The Humanities Institute at UC Santa Cruz. It will take place at the London Nelson Community Center.

“Written in gorgeous, sparse prose, We Survived the Night reads like a novel. Told with a blistering honesty, the truth and grit create a beautifully woven coyote story we haven’t heard before. This is a love letter to Oakland, to the Canim Lake Band Tsq’secen of the Secwepemc Nation, to a father from his son, to the act of being a Native person in the twenty first century finding ways to love even through all that wounds have opened and wrought. With this, Julian Brave NoiseCat has written a book I’ve been waiting my whole life to read.” —Tommy Orange
A stunning narrative from one of the most powerful young writers at work today—We Survived the Night (Knopf) interweaves oral history with hard-hitting journalism and a deeply personal father-son journey into a searing portrait of Indigenous survival, love, and resurgence.
Julian Brave NoiseCat’s childhood was rich with culture and contradictions. When his Secwépemc and St’at’imc father, an artist haunted by a turbulent past, abandoned the family, he and his non-Native mother were embraced by the urban Native community in Oakland, California, as well as by family on the Canim Lake Indian Reserve in British Columbia. In his father’s absence, NoiseCat immersed himself in Native history and culture to understand the man he seldom saw—his past, his story, where he came from—and, by extension, himself.
Years later, NoiseCat sets out across the continent to correct the erasure, invisibility, and misconceptions surrounding the First Peoples of this land, as he develops his voice as a storyteller and artist in his own right.
Julian Brave NoiseCat is a writer, Oscar-nominated filmmaker, champion powwow dancer, and student of Salish art and history. His writing has appeared in dozens of publications, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The New Yorker. NoiseCat has been recognized with numerous awards including the 2022 American Mosaic Journalism Prize and many National Native Media Awards. He was a finalist for the Livingston Award and multiple Canadian National Magazine Awards, and was named to the TIME100 Next list in 2021. His first documentary, Sugarcane, was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary. Directed alongside Emily Kassie, Sugarcane premiered at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival, where NoiseCat and Kassie won the Directing Award in U.S. Documentary. NoiseCat is a proud member of the Canim Lake Band Tsq̓éscen̓ and descendant of the Líl̓wat Nation of Mount Currie. We Survived the Night is his first book.

Alatawi, A. (ECE) - Learning-Based Channel Estimation for Next-Generation Wireless Communications
2025-10-28 10:00 - 12:00
Accurate Channel State Information (CSI) is critical for coherent detection, equalization, and adaptive resource allocation in modern wireless systems. Traditional estimators rely on stationary statistical models, and many learning-based methods assume training and deployment conditions are matched. In practice, these assumptions break down under user mobility and environmental dynamics, leading to degraded performance. This proposal explores machine-learning approaches for channel estimation that address two complementary challenges.
First, we develop an adaptive deep neural network (ADNN) for single-input single-output links over slowly time-varying channels. The method converts readily available physical-layer feedback—cyclic redundancy check (CRC) and automatic repeat request (ARQ)—into reliable self-supervision. Specifically, packets decoded without errors are re-estimated using least squares (LS) across all symbols to generate high-quality labels, and the DNN weights are periodically updated online. This design eliminates the need for ground-truth labels at deployment and enables continual learning. Simulations show that the ADNN tracks distributional shifts and recovers near–linear minimum mean-square error (LMMSE) performance in both mean-square error (MSE) and symbol error rate (SER), whereas a fixed offline-trained DNN degrades as channel statistics change.
Second, we propose a sequence-to-sequence LSTM estimator for orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM). The model exploits both temporal and frequency correlation by taking LS pilot estimates from several previous OFDM blocks as input and reconstructing the full channel frequency response of the current block. Trained on realistic time-selective channels such as WINNER II, the LSTM outperforms LS interpolation and recent super-resolution–based methods across a wide range of SNRs, pilot densities, and temporal window sizes.
Finally, the proposal outlines future research on semantic-aware channel estimation using CSI timeliness, and enhanced sequence models with DNN-refined pilots, whole-block inputs, and efficient GRU architectures.
Event Host: Abdulaziz Alatawi, Ph.D. Student, Electrical & Computer Engineering
Advisor: Hamid Sadjadpour & Zouheir Rezki
Zoom- https://ucsc.zoom.us/j/94895993579?pwd=[REDACTED]
Passcode- 884927

CSE Colloquium: A Journey from Programming Systems Research to AI Agents
2025-10-28 11:00 - 12:15 | Engineering 2, Engineering 2 1156 High Street, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064
Speaker: Koushik Sen, UC Berkeley and Google DeepMind
Abstract: Coding has emerged as an important application area for large language models (LLMs), with a proliferation of code-specific models and their applications across various domains and tasks such as program repair, performance optimization, debugging, test generation, documentation, and security hardening. In this talk, I will describe how we built powerful coding agents such as R2E-Gym and DeepSWE using test-driven methodology for solving various kinds of coding tasks, such as repair, optimization, security vulnerability detection, and refactoring. I will also discuss a novel technique, called GEPA, for domain-specific optimization of AI agent systems, which has shown a significant advantage over reinforcement learning.
Bio: Koushik Sen is a professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences at the University of California, Berkeley. His research interest lies in Software Engineering, Programming Languages, and AI. He is interested in developing software tools and methodologies that improve programmer productivity and software quality. He is known for his work on “DART: Directed Automated Random Testing,” concolic testing, and LiveCodeBench. He has received a NSF CAREER Award in 2008, a Haifa Verification Conference (HVC) Award in 2009, a IFIP TC2 Manfred Paul Award for Excellence in Software: Theory and Practice in 2010, a Sloan Foundation Fellowship in 2011, a Professor R. Narasimhan Lecture Award in 2014, an Okawa Foundation Research Grant in 2015, and an ACM SIGSOFT Impact Paper Award in 2019. He has won several ACM SIGSOFT Distinguished Paper Awards. He received the C.L. and Jane W-S. Liu Award in 2004, the C. W. Gear Outstanding Graduate Award in 2005, and the David J. Kuck Outstanding Ph.D. Thesis Award in 2007, and a Distinguished Alumni Educator Award in 2014 from the UIUC Department of Computer Science. He holds a B.Tech from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, and an M.S. and Ph.D. in CS from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Hosted by: Professor Mohsen Lesani
Location: Engineering 2, E2-180 (Refreshments such as coffee and pastries will be provided.)
Zoom: https://ucsc.zoom.us/j/93445911992?pwd=[REDACTED]

Macroeconomics & International Finance Seminar Series Presents: Zhiguo He
2025-10-28 13:40 - 15:00 | Engineering 2, Engineering 2 1156 High Street, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064
Macroeconomics and International Finance Seminar
Date: Tuesday, October 28, 2025
Time: 1:40-3:00 p.m.
Location: E2-499

Speaker: Zhiguo He
Title: James Irvin Miller Professor of Finance
Affiliation: Stanford University
Host: Michael Leung

Seminar title: Household Migration and Collateral Constraint: Cash-based Housing Resettlement in China

ABSTRACT: Collateral constraints reduce household migration to expensive locations by restricting financing for home purchases. This endogenous location choice can amplify the impact of relaxing borrowing constraints. Using China’s cash-based shantytown renovation program (2015-2018) as a natural experiment, we provide evidence that cash resettlement– by converting illiquid shanty houses into cash– facilitated household location upgrading and raised house prices in more expensive locations. A dynamic spatial model with collateral constraints confirms that endogenous location upgrading amplified the effect of cash transfer, raising lifetime housing expenditures by nearly 50%, and house price growth in low-tier cities by 9% in 2016-2020.

Genomics Rooftop Mixer
2025-10-28 16:00 - 19:00 | Anton Pacific Apartments rooftop, 800 Pacific Avenue, Santa Cruz, CA, 95060, United States
On October 28, the rooftop will come alive with the energy of science, entrepreneurship, and community as the Genomics Rooftop Mixer brings together leaders from genomics and biotechnology to shape the future of health, science, and technology. Hosted in collaboration with UC Santa Cruz researchers, this event is a rare opportunity to experience the cutting edge of discovery in one of the fastest-moving fields in the world.
The evening is designed as more than just another networking reception. Guests will hear lightning talks that distill complex science into compelling insights, while table demonstrations will provide the chance to ask questions directly to the researchers breaking new ground. For entrepreneurs, investors, and city leaders, this is a chance to glimpse the innovations that could become tomorrow’s breakthrough companies or public health solutions. For community members, it’s a moment to see how science being developed locally is poised to transform lives globally.
Learn more and get tickets

Mark Primack: The Truth in Drawing
2025-10-28 17:20 - 18:55 | Media Theater, Experimental Theater, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064
Join ART 10D: 2D Foundations for a Lecture by Mark Primack where he will present “Truth in Drawing,” a talk on his recent drawing practice and experiences. Mark Primack (b.1951) is a Situationist who at times engages in drawing, writing, designing, building, critiquing and politicking. He holds degrees from the Rhode Island School of Design and the Architectural Association of London. He resides in Santa Cruz, California, where he has maintained an architectural practice for forty years while serving on various commission and the City Council. In 1978 he was awarded a special projects grant from the California Arts Council to document the World Famous Tree Circus, but has supported his own work ever since. He lives, works, draws and gardens in spaces of his own design, which he shares with landscape architect and artist Janet Pollock.
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ADMISSION
– FREE and open to the public
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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)
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This program is open to all members of the public consistent with state and federal law.

Emeriti Faculty Lecture, Fall 2025
2025-10-28 19:00 - 21:00 | Music Center Recital Hall, 400 McHenry Road, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064
Kicking the Prow: Reflections on a Life in Conversation with Past and Present People and Other Creatures
In this lecture, Distinguished Research Professor Diane Gifford-Gonzalez reflects on fifty-five years of zooarchaeology work, studying animal remains from archaeological sites to explore how past people and their kin interacted. While varying in geographical and theoretical foci, a common thread runs through what she believes are her most influential contributions to archaeology. Starting with a true story, Professor Gifford-Gonzalez will outline how these have “kicked the prow” of wider conversations in archaeology and share a few of her creative works.
Register to attend in-person or virtual
Doors open at 6:30 p.m. for guests attending in-person
Lecture: 7 p.m.
Followed by a reception for in-person guests
Free and open to the public

Presented by the UC Santa Cruz Emeriti Association

In-person Info Session – Japan Research Fellowships (JSPS)
2025-10-29 13:30 - 14:30 | Engineering 2, Engineering 2 1156 High Street, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064
Are you interested in funding for research, collaboration, and travel opportunities in Japan? Representatives from the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) will be on campus for an in-person info session:

When: Wednesday, October 29, 2025 | 1:30 p.m. – 2:30 p.m.
Where: Engineering Building 2, Room 180 (E2-180)
Light refreshments provided.

Please RSVP here
Who should attend?
Faculty, researchers/postdocs, students in ALL disciplines. This information session is particularly relevant for:

Faculty fellowships at junior, mid, and senior levels (short and long term)
Postdocs (summer, short, and long-term fellowships)
Pre-PhD students (summer and short-term fellowships)

Learn more about JSPS here. Questions? Email gsabo@ucsc.edu.

Academic Senate Forum: Systemwide UCAD Work Group Interim Report
2025-10-29 14:30 - 17:00 | https://www.google.com/url?q=https://ucsc.zoom.us/j/92116175167?pwd%3D8GzPi58g1dddt2aebnPpNEaWQDAwUF.1&sa=D&source=calendar&ust=1761590334348990&usg=AOvVaw0IE4jxtMvpYKIH0XD9WgWm
Senate faculty forum for discussion of the UCAD Interim Report (July, 2025) to understand the implications of the systemwide planning framework, UCAD part 2, and plan for divisional and individual feedback via the provided form.

Creative Interventions (CI) Series
2025-10-29 16:00 - 17:35 | CA
Creative Interventions (CI) is a community colloquium in contemporary creativity and creative practices that addresses the interconnected work of artists, designers, activists, and knowledge workers—and the intrinsic and transformative capacity of that work to cultivate a just society.
The CI Speaker Series raises questions of import to contemporary creative workers in media and technology:
– How do creative workers address their most challenging problems?
– How does creative labor intersect with other forms of labor to nurture the world views and cultural practices of our democracy?
The Creative Interventions (CI) Series is co-sponsored by the Arts Division’s Creative Technologies program and Porter College at UC Santa Cruz.
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ADMISSION
– Free and open to UCSC affiliates.
– All events in the series are presented online with registration required.
– Refer to the individual event listings for more information and a link to register.
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FULL SCHEDULE OF EVENTS
– Wed., Oct 15, 4:00 p.m.: “Expensive-Sounding Sounds” with Catherine Provenzano
– Wed., Oct 29, 4:00 p.m.: “Asymptote: Computation, Disillusion, and Enchantment” with Nora Khan
– Additional event dates to be announced on the Creative Interventions events page here
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This program is open to all UC Santa Cruz affiliates consistent with state and federal law.

Creative Interventions: "Asymptote" with Nora Khan
2025-10-29 16:00 - 17:35 | CA
Nora Khan explores our personal relationships with computational systems through moments spanning from childhood gaming experiences to contemporary AI. The central metaphor of the “asymptote”—a curve endlessly approaching but never reaching a line—describes both humanity’s pursuit of technological mastery, and the incomputable aspects of experience that resist capture by algorithms and surveillance. Through encounters with drones, machine learning systems, and glitched game worlds, this talk argues for maintaining space for the mystical, ineffable, and offscreen in an era of relentless quantification and prediction. The talk ultimately calls for preserving doubt, acknowledging what cannot be computed, and remembering the personal “why” that precedes professional identity in navigating our algorithmic present.
This event is presented as part of the Creative Interventions (CI) Series and is co-sponsored by the Arts Division’s Creative Technologies program and Porter College at UC Santa Cruz.
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ADMISSION
– Free and open to UCSC affiliates.
– This is an online event.
– Registration is required here.
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FULL SCHEDULE OF EVENTS
– Event dates to be announced throughout the 2025-26 academic year.
– Learn more about the Creative Intervention Series here.
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ABOUT THE SERIES
Creative Interventions addresses the interconnected work of artists, designers, activists, and knowledge workers—and the intrinsic and transformative capacity of that work to cultivate a just society. More information about the Creative Technologies program.
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This program is open to all UC Santa Cruz affiliates consistent with state and federal law.

Pokémon Makers Market
2025-10-29 16:00 - 19:00 | Porter College Quad
Catch the Pokémon Makers’ Market at Porter Quad! Shop student vendors, enjoy performances, join a cosplay contest, trade Pokémon cards, and compete in tournaments. Celebrate creativity and community with food, activities, and prizes.
Presented by: UCSC Women’s Center, Cantu Queer Center, and Jack Baskin Engineering
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.

Humanities Grad School 101
2025-10-29 17:00 - 18:30 | https://events.ucsc.edu/event/humanities-grad-school-101/
Are you curious about graduate school in the humanities? Join this Humanities Grad School 101 session, where we’ll hear from Associate Dean of Research Pranav Anand and stellar UCSC graduate students in History, Linguistics, Literature, and Philosophy. We’ll discuss important considerations for deciding to pursue graduate school and what to look for in an academic program and advisor. You’ll leave knowing how to decide whether grad school is right for you and what you can do now to prepare.
This is a hybrid event and will be hosted both in-person in Humanities 1, Room 210 and on Zoom. Dinner will be provided for those joining in person.
Register on Handshake here

Queer Emergent: Scandalous Stories from Twilight of AIDS in Peru: Book Celebration and Conversation with Professor Justin Perez
2025-10-29 17:30 - 19:00 | Charles E. Merrill Lounge, Rutherford House, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064
Join us as Huerta Center Faculty Awardee Professor Justin Perez (Latin America and Latino Studies Department) presents his new book, Queer Emergent: Scandalous Stories from Twilight of AIDS in Peru. In Queer Emergent, Justin Perez explores how advances in HIV prevention work alongside broader economic and political shifts in global health to shape queer subjectivities. Drawing on ethnographic research among gay and transgender communities in urban Amazonian Peru, Perez describes how queer social worlds emerge through scandalous storytelling—a practice of exaggerating and embellishing stories about everyday life that transgresses social norms and hierarchies. Perez shows that through such storytelling, gay and transgender communities contested the assumptions of global HIV prevention’s shift from the provision of costly antiretrovirals to the mitigation of social conditions like discrimination and stigma. He argues that the global ambition to “End AIDS” by 2030 is not just a technical project oriented at ending the epidemic, but also a project of sexual subjectification and ongoing social transformation. By taking seriously the scandalous stories that gay and transgender Peruvians circulated as they responded to new forms of HIV prevention, Perez reveals how they imagine possibilities of what could be as the effort to end AIDS continues to play out in the present.
There will be a short reception following the discussion. We look forward to seeing you there!

Bridging Practices: Deepening Collaboration in Community-engaged Research and IRB Process
2025-10-30 11:00 - 13:00 | Namaste Lounge, 615 College Nine Road, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064
Building on last April’s Bridging Perspectives: Navigating Community-Engaged Research and IRB Requirements, this Building Practices colloquium event continues the conversation between researchers, administrators, and the IRB with a focus on answering the pressing questions raised by our community. Together, we will explore:

Involving undergraduates in community-engaged research
Navigating IRB requirements in ways that respect cultural, social, and political environments
Minimizing harm and risk when conducting research with vulnerable populations and community organizations
Ethical quandaries in community-engaged research that the IRB does not cover

Through dialogue and collective problem-solving, this session seeks to move beyond identifying barriers toward developing clearer practices, stronger collaborations, and more practical strategies between researchers and the IRB for supporting ethical community-engaged research.
Roundtable Moderators

Regina Day Langhout, Professor of Psychology
Sana Khoury-Shakour, Director of the Office of Research Compliance Administration
Jessica Taft, Professor of LALS and Director of the Dolores Huerta Research Center for the Americas
Lora Bartlett, Associate Professor of Education and Department Chair
Saskias Casanova, Associate Professor of Psychology
Margarita Azmitia, Distinguished Professor of Psychology and IRB Chair
Heather Bullock, Director of the Center for Economic Justice and Action and Professor of Psychology
Ned LeBlond, Managing Director for the Institute of Social Transformation and Campus + Community
Rebecca London, Professor of Sociology and Faculty Director of Campus + Community

RSVP

This is a B.Y.O. lunch time colloquium event. Event sponsors will provide drinks and snacks.
For more information, please visit the event website.
Sponsors: Campus + Community and the Office of Research

BME 280B Seminar: Preconfigured neuronal firing sequences in human brain organoids
2025-10-30 11:40 - 13:15 | Physical Sciences Building, Physical Sciences Building, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064
Presenter: Tjitse (TJ) van der Molen, Ph.D. (Postdoc, Sharf Lab, UC Santa Cruz and PhD Kosik Lab, UC Santa Barbara)
Description: Neuronal firing sequences are thought to be the building blocks of information and broadcasting within the brain. Yet, it remains unclear when these sequences emerge during neurodevelopment. Here we demonstrate that structured firing sequences appear in spontaneous activity of human and murine brain organoids, both unguided and forebrain identity directed, as well as ex vivo neonatal murine cortical slices. We observed temporally rigid and flexible firing patterns in human and murine brain organoids and early postnatal murine somatosensory cortex, but not in dissociated primary cortical cultures. These results suggest that temporal sequences do not arise in an experience-dependent manner, but are rather constrained by a preconfigured architecture established during neurodevelopment. By demonstrating the developmental recapitulation of neural firing patterns, these findings highlight the potential of brain organoids as a model for neuronal circuit assembly.
Bio: Tjitse van der Molen studies spontaneous and evoked neural circuit activity in human and mouse stem cell derived brain organoids using dense multi electrode arrays. His main goal is to gain a better understanding of how healthy neural circuits process information and how possible malfunctions in neural circuit activity may result in disease, in order to develop appropriate treatments. Tjitse recently completed his PhD in the Kosik lab at UC Santa Barbara and is now continuing his research as a postdoc in the Sharf lab at UC Santa Cruz.
In this talk, Tjitse will present his latest manuscript that is currently in press with Nature Neuroscience, focused on spontaneously occurring repeated sequential firing patterns that are present in the intrinsic activity of both brain organoids and neonatal mouse brain slices but not in 2D primary cultures. Similar sequential firing patterns have recently been shown to be important for information encoding and learning in the human cortex. The presence of these sequential firing patterns in the spontaneous activity of brain organoids that have never received external stimuli supports the notion that they develop in an experience-independent manner.
Hosted by: Professor Josh Stuart, BME Department
Zoom Link: https://ucsc.zoom.us/j/99970819390?pwd=[REDACTED]
Full Schedule: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1xD09vITwd_Pj9Ge6hHEuBFa5zBUYu2O-bjpSibt7VHE/edit?tab=t.0
Room: PSB-240

When Human-Centered AI Encountered Digital Humanities: A Dialogue between Magy Seif El-Nasr and Minghui Hu
2025-10-30 12:00 - 13:30 | CA
What happens when the ethical and interpretive frameworks of the humanities meet the algorithmic and interactive architectures of artificial intelligence? This dialogue brings together two leading voices from distinct yet converging fields: Magy Seif El-Nasr, a pioneer in human-centered AI, game analytics, and interactive narrative design, and Minghui Hu, a historian and digital humanist, explores the cultural, religious, and intellectual history of China through computational and interpretive lenses.
Together, they will explore shared concerns—from narrative design and agency to ethical modeling and epistemological boundaries—charting new possibilities at the intersection of technology and the humanities. This conversation is not only a meeting of disciplines, but a reimagining of the collaborative future of AI and humanistic inquiry.
This event is sponsored by the Leading the Change Collaboration Series at UC Santa Cruz.

Applied Microeconomics and Trade Seminar Series presents: Shanjun Li
2025-10-30 13:40 - 15:00 | Engineering 2, Engineering 2 1156 High Street, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064
Applied Microeconomics and Trade Seminar
Date: Thursday, October 30th, 2025
Time: 1:40-3:00 p.m.
Location: E2-499

Speaker: Shanjun Li
Personal Webpage
Title: Steven and Roberta Denning Professor of Global Sustainability
Affiliation: Stanford University
Host: Peter Christensen

Seminar title: Range Anxiety

ABSTRACT: Range anxiety, the fear of depleting battery before reaching a charging station, is often cited as a major barrier to electric vehicle (EV) adoption, yet there has been limited formal economic analysis to quantify its importance and understand the policy implications. We develop a continuous-time dynamic model of EV usage and charging decisions to quantify range anxiety as the utility loss from feasible yet unrealized trips due to perceived range constraints. Using high-frequency data of 188,000 EV trips and 30,000 charging events among 8,000 EVs in Shanghai, we recover model parameters governing consumer driving and charging decisions. The estimates imply that, across EV models with varying driving ranges, average range anxiety was about $1,900 in 2021 but declined to $1,200 in 2024, driven by improvements in charging infrastructure and, especially, in creases in driving range. Policy simulations underscore the importance of coordinating investments in battery capacity and charging infrastructure to address range anxiety: relative to socially optimal levels, Shanghai’s EV market has under-invested in driving range while over-investing in charging infrastructure.

Human Acceptance of Autonomous Systems
2025-10-30 14:00 - 15:00 | Engineering 2, Engineering 2 1156 High Street, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064
Speaker: Sina Nordhoff, Postdoctoral Researcher, Institute of Transportation Studies at UC Davis.
Title: Human Acceptance of Autonomous Systems.
Time: Thursday, Oct 30th, 2025, 2:00-3:00 pm.
Location: E2-506 or Zoom.
Abstract: This seminar explores how society engages with autonomous transportation systems, focusing on automated vehicles and Advanced Air Mobility (AAM). Dr. Sina Nordhoff will present research on human acceptance, trust, and safety, emphasizing that public confidence and social readiness are essential alongside technological progress. Drawing on theoretical models, real-world applications, and extensive empirical data, including over 220 interviews and 40,000 surveys, Dr. Nordhoff will identify key factors shaping acceptance, such as socio-demographics, personality traits, perceived risks and benefits, and the effects of misuse or miscalibrated trust. The seminar will highlight how ethical considerations, societal norms, and regulatory frameworks influence deployment. Attendees will gain insight into how this work can guide policymakers, industry, and communities in ensuring responsible, equitable, and safe implementation. Dr. Nordhoff will also briefly discuss future research directions.
Speaker Bio: Dr. Sina Nordhoff is a leading expert in the field of human factors and user acceptance of new and emerging transportation technologies. She holds a Ph.D. from Delft University of Technology and is affiliated with the University of California, Davis. Dr. Nordhoff specializes in electric vehicles and automated vehicles (AVs), focusing on how to responsibly integrate these innovations into society. Her research spans theoretical models, empirical studies, and real-world applications, involving over 220 interviews and 40,000 analyzed surveys. She has developed innovative frameworks to understand human acceptance, trust, and safety, addressing critical issues such as misuse, trust miscalibration, and cyber-physical attacks. Dr. Nordhoff’s research is published in top-tier journals and has garnered significant attention from policymakers and industry leaders. Her work aims to inform the design, deployment, and regulation of these technologies to ensure they are safe, equitable, and socially beneficial. Dr. Nordhoff’s current research agenda includes pioneering efforts in interdisciplinary theory development, safety assessment, and understanding cognitive measurements. Her overarching goal is to bridge the gap between technological advancements and societal well-being, creating a future where transportation benefits all members of society.
