BEGIN:VCALENDAR
VERSION:2.0
PRODID:-//Events - ECPv6.15.20//NONSGML v1.0//EN
CALSCALE:GREGORIAN
METHOD:PUBLISH
X-ORIGINAL-URL:https://events.ucsc.edu
X-WR-CALDESC:Events for Events
REFRESH-INTERVAL;VALUE=DURATION:PT1H
X-Robots-Tag:noindex
X-PUBLISHED-TTL:PT1H
BEGIN:VTIMEZONE
TZID:America/Los_Angeles
BEGIN:DAYLIGHT
TZOFFSETFROM:-0800
TZOFFSETTO:-0700
TZNAME:PDT
DTSTART:20250309T100000
END:DAYLIGHT
BEGIN:STANDARD
TZOFFSETFROM:-0700
TZOFFSETTO:-0800
TZNAME:PST
DTSTART:20251102T090000
END:STANDARD
BEGIN:DAYLIGHT
TZOFFSETFROM:-0800
TZOFFSETTO:-0700
TZNAME:PDT
DTSTART:20260308T100000
END:DAYLIGHT
BEGIN:STANDARD
TZOFFSETFROM:-0700
TZOFFSETTO:-0800
TZNAME:PST
DTSTART:20261101T090000
END:STANDARD
BEGIN:DAYLIGHT
TZOFFSETFROM:-0800
TZOFFSETTO:-0700
TZNAME:PDT
DTSTART:20270314T100000
END:DAYLIGHT
BEGIN:STANDARD
TZOFFSETFROM:-0700
TZOFFSETTO:-0800
TZNAME:PST
DTSTART:20271107T090000
END:STANDARD
END:VTIMEZONE
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20260313T140000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20260313T150000
DTSTAMP:20260423T033038
CREATED:20260219T170502Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20260219T170502Z
UID:10009254-1773410400-1773414000@events.ucsc.edu
SUMMARY:Wang\, H. (CSE) - Accelerating RTL Simulation with Specialized Graph Partitioners
DESCRIPTION:Register transfer level (RTL) simulation is an invaluable tool for developing\, debugging\, verifying\, and validating hardware designs. However\, the performance of RTL simulation has long been a limiting factor in industry. Despite the inherent parallelism of hardware\, current RTL simulators have not achieved practical performance gains due to fundamental challenges in communication\, synchronization\, memory bandwidth\, and architectural mapping. \nThis dissertation addresses the RTL simulation performance problem from three complementary perspectives: optimizing simulation latency through parallelism\, improving aggregate throughput via deduplication\, and enabling efficient GPU acceleration with RTL-native semantics. \nFirst\, we present RepCut\, a parallel RTL simulation methodology that uses replication-aided partitioning to cut circuits into balanced partitions with minimal overlaps. By replicating the overlaps\, RepCut eliminates problematic data dependences between partitions and significantly reduces synchronization overhead. RepCut achieves superlinear speedups of up to 27.10x using 24 threads with only a 3.81% replication cost. \nSecond\, we introduce Simulation Deduplication\, a technique that exploits the extensive reuse of building blocks in modern hardware designs. By generating shared code for duplicated instances and carefully co-scheduling their execution\, we reduce the instruction cache footprint and memory bandwidth pressure. This approach achieves up to 1.95x speedup for single simulations and 2.09x improvement in overall batch simulation throughput. \nThird\, we present Toucan\, a GPU-accelerated RTL simulation framework that preserves RTL semantics rather than flattening designs to gate-level netlists. By leveraging native GPU arithmetic operations and introducing warp-level micro-partitioning with shuffle-based communication\, Toucan achieves efficient mapping of irregular circuit topologies to GPU SIMT architectures while maintaining fast compilation times. Toucan achieves up to 4.73x speedup over the state-of-the-art GPU RTL simulator on large multi-core designs. \nTogether\, these three approaches provide a comprehensive solution to RTL simulation performance optimization\, demonstrating significant improvements over state-of-the-art commercial and open-source simulators across multiple hardware platforms and design scales. \nEvent Host: Haoyuan Wang\, Ph.D. Candidate\, Computer Science and Engineering \nAdvisor: Jose Renau \nZoom- https://ucsc.zoom.us/j/94044618343?pwd=xZkK8GmD28P2Vf8pbyl6aoOaNxxhya.1 \nPasscode- 574772
URL:https://events.ucsc.edu/event/wang-h-cse-accelerating-rtl-simulation-with-specialized-graph-partitioners/
LOCATION:Jack Baskin Engineering\, Baskin Engineering 1156 High Street\, Santa Cruz\, CA\, 95064
CATEGORIES:Ph.D. Presentations
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://events.ucsc.edu/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/ph.d.-presentation-graphic-option2.jpg
GEO:37.000369;-122.0632371
X-APPLE-STRUCTURED-LOCATION;VALUE=URI;X-ADDRESS=Jack Baskin Engineering Baskin Engineering 1156 High Street Santa Cruz CA 95064;X-APPLE-RADIUS=500;X-TITLE=Baskin Engineering 1156 High Street:geo:-122.0632371,37.000369
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20260316T080000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20260316T100000
DTSTAMP:20260423T033038
CREATED:20260303T180231Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20260303T180253Z
UID:10009388-1773648000-1773655200@events.ucsc.edu
SUMMARY:Teng\, Z. (CM) - Visualizing Player Processes: Towards Design Guidelines for Interactive Process Visualization Tools in Game Analytics
DESCRIPTION:Game analysts face a significant challenge in understanding problem-solving and decision-making processes from the vast and complex sequential data generated by modern video games. Existing visualization tools often fail to adequately support the exploration\, suffering from issues of visual clutter\, inflexible cohort construction\, and a lack of interactive depth. To address this gap\, this dissertation adopts a Research through Design (RtD) methodology to investigate how an interactive process visualization system can be designed and developed to better support the needs of game analysts. \nThe research was conducted in three phases. First\, an initial set of five design guidelines was identified through a breakdown analysis of existing tools and semi-structured interviews with professional game analysts. Second\, these guidelines were iteratively refined through long-term\, collaborative case studies with analysts working on diverse commercial games. This process not only validated the initial guidelines and surfaced one additional guideline concerning interactive inspection\, but also resulted in INSPECT\, an interactive process visualization prototyping system that embodies the refined guidelines. Third\, the guidelines were empirically validated through two complementary user studies of the INSPECT system. A controlled experiment demonstrated that features designed according to the guidelines enabled participants to identify player strategies more efficiently than with a baseline system\, while a qualitative study with professional Dota 2 coaches and players demonstrated the system’s practical value for strategic analysis and strong usability. \nThe primary contributions of this dissertation to the fields of game analytics and information visualization is a set of validated design guidelines for process visualization tools. This contribution provides a durable and transferable framework for the design and development of more effective\, analyst-centered tools for understanding player problem-solving and decision-making processes. \nEvent Host: Zhaoqing Teng\, Ph.D. Candidate\, Computational Media  \nAdvsior: Magy Seif El-Nasr \nZoom- https://ucsc.zoom.us/j/97624383966?pwd=NGolaaTbhdytPcDK6aRIBDIv63b8lm.1 \nPasscode-595285
URL:https://events.ucsc.edu/event/teng-z-cm-visualizing-player-processes-towards-design-guidelines-for-interactive-process-visualization-tools-in-game-analytics/
LOCATION:
CATEGORIES:Ph.D. Presentations
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://events.ucsc.edu/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/ph.d.-presentation-graphic-option-1.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20260409T100000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20260409T120000
DTSTAMP:20260423T033038
CREATED:20260325T172250Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20260325T172250Z
UID:10011766-1775728800-1775736000@events.ucsc.edu
SUMMARY:Ticknor\, B. (STAT) - Clustering and Tractable Multivariate Inference for Extremes
DESCRIPTION:Modeling environmental extremes often involves large collections of spatial or temporal records where both clustering similar series and modeling dependence among extremes are challenging tasks. This Ph.D. proposal addresses several related problems in extreme value analysis. In particular\, we study how to cluster many time series based on their extremal behavior using strategies defined via univariate extremal models\, motivated by an application to 975 coastal wave-height records. We also investigate the development of scalable multivariate models for dependent extremes. A tractable construction based on a latent multivariate $t$ process with generalized extreme value margins is proposed\, together with a regularization strategy that encourages extremal dependence consistent with a max-stable limit while preserving likelihood-based inference. Together\, these efforts aim to provide practical tools for analyzing large collections of environmental extremes. \nEvent Host: Benjamin Ticknor\, Ph.D. Student\, Statistical Science \nAdvisor: Robert Lund \nZoom- https://ucsc.zoom.us/j/94347069554?pwd=21jbzUIlbopj2OFRySIHmBV11Ngoef.1 \nPasscode- 822764 \n 
URL:https://events.ucsc.edu/event/ticknor-b-stat-clustering-and-tractable-multivariate-inference-for-extremes/
LOCATION:Engineering 2\, Engineering 2 1156 High Street\, Santa Cruz\, CA\, 95064
CATEGORIES:Ph.D. Presentations
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://events.ucsc.edu/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/ph.d.-presentation-graphic-option-1.jpg
GEO:37.0009723;-122.0632371
X-APPLE-STRUCTURED-LOCATION;VALUE=URI;X-ADDRESS=Engineering 2 Engineering 2 1156 High Street Santa Cruz CA 95064;X-APPLE-RADIUS=500;X-TITLE=Engineering 2 1156 High Street:geo:-122.0632371,37.0009723
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20260414T140000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20260414T160000
DTSTAMP:20260423T033038
CREATED:20260326T162922Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20260326T162922Z
UID:10011787-1776175200-1776182400@events.ucsc.edu
SUMMARY:Castello\, J. (CSE) - Space Mission Simulation From the Outside In
DESCRIPTION:Robotic space missions often use discrete event simulation to reduce risk in operation. A simulation applies a set of planned activities to a model of mission resources\, and the model’s observed behavior is used to predict real-world outcomes. However\, logically concurrent activities are typically simulated under one possible linearization of their events – an order that may not reflect the eventual reality. Some simulation systems provide mechanisms for controlling the order of events; but this is a solution to a self-imposed problem. We instead question the assumption causing this problem: that events are totally ordered to begin with. \nWe study Merlin\, an open-source simulator developed at Caltech’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and designed by the author\, that exchanges the traditional total order of events for a *partial* order. Under this approach\, a resumed activity can only observe events that causally precede its resumption\, and concurrent events are reconciled under custom policies. However\, the resulting design is more complex (and less understood) than that of linearizing simulators\, obscuring its key insights. As such\, we have developed Eidolon: a compact core calculus for Merlin-style simulation whose operational semantics follows an “outside-in”\, substitution-based execution model. Although Eidolon is derived from the concepts present in Merlin\, we intend it to be a vehicle for exploring non-linearizing simulation in general. \nFirst\, we propose making Eidolon *incremental*: a change to the set of planned activities should not incur a full resimulation from scratch except in the worse case\, instead reusing any cached computations that are not sensitive to the change. Since mission planning is a highly iterative process involving many simulations and subsequent tweaks to the plan\, incremental resimulation may allow plans to be finalized in less time\, or allow higher-quality plans to be obtained in the same amount of time. The substitution-oriented approach of Eidolon is what makes this feasible\, since individual computations align cleanly with subtree boundaries. \nSecond\, in the spirit of Reynolds’ defunctionalization and Danvy’s rational reconstruction\, we propose developing a denotational semantics for Eidolon and demonstrating its mechanical conversion into an abstract machine. As a mathematical artifact\, Eidolon is designed for reasoning and legibility rather than efficiency; nonetheless\, defunctionalization allows us to *refactor* our semantics into something that stands a chance of being practical. In particular\, defunctionalization reifies the recursive structure of a denotational semantics into an explicit data structure. As a result\, the defunctionalized form of Eidolon will recover an explicit priority queue like that of traditional linearizing simulators\, but without their assumption of total ordering. \nEvent Host: Jonathan Castello\, Ph.D. Student\, Computer Science and Engineering \nAdvisor: Lindsey Kuper  \nZoom- https://ucsc.zoom.us/j/98171466380?pwd=L2rkpr8tEt0MZamYbxxPTfvhAd4gl6.1 \nPasscode- 990848 \n 
URL:https://events.ucsc.edu/event/castello-j-cse-space-mission-simulation-from-the-outside-in/
LOCATION:Engineering 2\, Engineering 2 1156 High Street\, Santa Cruz\, CA\, 95064
CATEGORIES:Ph.D. Presentations
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://events.ucsc.edu/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/ph.d.-presentation-graphic-option-1.jpg
GEO:37.0009723;-122.0632371
X-APPLE-STRUCTURED-LOCATION;VALUE=URI;X-ADDRESS=Engineering 2 Engineering 2 1156 High Street Santa Cruz CA 95064;X-APPLE-RADIUS=500;X-TITLE=Engineering 2 1156 High Street:geo:-122.0632371,37.0009723
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20260415T120000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20260415T130000
DTSTAMP:20260423T033038
CREATED:20260403T221951Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20260403T222913Z
UID:10012044-1776254400-1776258000@events.ucsc.edu
SUMMARY:The Emergence of Maritime Archaeology in the Republic of Benin: Research\, Challenges\, and Ongoing Initiatives
DESCRIPTION:Presentation Abstract:  The Republic of Benin has a rich maritime history shaped by human interactions along its coast. However\, these coastal areas remain understudied in terms of archaeological research. Over the past five years\, research has explored the potential of both land and submerged archaeological sites to understand long-term occupation and material evidence of Atlantic-era exchanges. This presentation traces the development of maritime archaeology in Benin through ongoing research. Grounded in a Maritime Cultural Landscape framework\, it combines terrestrial survey data\, underwater investigations\, oral traditions\, and historical archives to reconstruct past human interactions along the coast. \nAbout the Presenter: Affolabi Angelo Ayedoun is a PhD Student in the Department of Anthropology at UCSC. His research seeks to illuminate the precolonial history of coastal Benin by analyzing patterns of occupation and cultural interaction during the second millennium AD. It focuses on the Grand-Popo region\, an area of early settlement and a key site of initial colonial contact in present-day Benin.
URL:https://events.ucsc.edu/event/the-emergence-of-maritime-archaeology-in-the-republic-of-benin-research-challenges-and-ongoing-initiatives/
LOCATION:Social Sciences 1\, Social Sciences 1\, Santa Cruz\, CA\, 95064
CATEGORIES:Lectures & Presentations,Ph.D. Presentations
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://events.ucsc.edu/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/ArchBio-2-scaled.jpg
GEO:37.0023717;-122.0580874
X-APPLE-STRUCTURED-LOCATION;VALUE=URI;X-ADDRESS=Social Sciences 1 Social Sciences 1 Santa Cruz CA 95064;X-APPLE-RADIUS=500;X-TITLE=Social Sciences 1:geo:-122.0580874,37.0023717
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20260416T110000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20260416T130000
DTSTAMP:20260423T033038
CREATED:20260408T202602Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20260408T202602Z
UID:10012082-1776337200-1776344400@events.ucsc.edu
SUMMARY:Mirchandani\, C. (BMEB) - Population and Evolutionary Genomics Across Ecological Scales
DESCRIPTION: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. \nEvent Host: Cade Mirchandani\, Ph.D. Candidate\, Biomolecular Engineering & Bioinformatics \nAdvisors: Russ Corbett-Detig & Shelbi Russell \nZoom- https://ucsc.zoom.us/j/98034081971?pwd=L5RoKoNEFxyapNhSRoXC8os2K2YZwv.1
URL:https://events.ucsc.edu/event/mirchandani-c-bmeb-population-and-evolutionary-genomics-across-ecological-scales/
LOCATION:Engineering 2\, Engineering 2 1156 High Street\, Santa Cruz\, CA\, 95064
CATEGORIES:Ph.D. Presentations
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://events.ucsc.edu/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/ph.d.-presentation-graphic-option2.jpg
GEO:37.0009723;-122.0632371
X-APPLE-STRUCTURED-LOCATION;VALUE=URI;X-ADDRESS=Engineering 2 Engineering 2 1156 High Street Santa Cruz CA 95064;X-APPLE-RADIUS=500;X-TITLE=Engineering 2 1156 High Street:geo:-122.0632371,37.0009723
END:VEVENT
END:VCALENDAR