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SUMMARY:2026 Right Livelihood International Conference
DESCRIPTION:The Right Livelihood International Conference is a four-week global conference exploring how education can strengthen democracy\, collective intelligence\, and just futures. Bringing together Right Livelihood Laureates\, students\, faculty\, and community partners across continents\, the conference combines asynchronous learning with participatory dialogue and collaborative action. Rather than advocating specific outcomes\, the conference positions education as a democratic practice and the Right Livelihood College as a steward of dialogue\, student voice\, and long-term institutional learning. \nRegistration is free and open to the public. Sign up to receive conference updates\, session links\, and participation opportunities.
URL:https://events.ucsc.edu/event/2026-right-livelihood-international-conference/
LOCATION:
CATEGORIES:Film Screening,Lectures & Presentations,Meetings & Conferences,Ph.D. Presentations,Seminars,Social Gathering,Training,Undergraduate,Workshop
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DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20260423T153000
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SUMMARY:Pawl\, E. (STAT) - Flexible and Scalable Mixtures of Experts for Oceanographic Flow Cytometry Data
DESCRIPTION: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. \nEvent Host: Ethan Pawl\, Ph.D. Student\, Statistical Science \nAdvisors: Sangwon Hyun & Paul Parker \nZoom- https://ucsc.zoom.us/j/96353239941?pwd=a4PJ94EMSD6D0SJ75S3WYzrPbYsBtn.1 \nPasscode- 244463
URL:https://events.ucsc.edu/event/pawl-e-stat-flexible-and-scalable-mixtures-of-experts-for-oceanographic-flow-cytometry-data/
LOCATION:Engineering 2\, Engineering 2 1156 High Street\, Santa Cruz\, CA\, 95064
CATEGORIES:Ph.D. Presentations
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DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20260424T130000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20260424T150000
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SUMMARY:Zheng\, Z. (STATS) - Semi-Supervised Statistical Learning for Oceanographic Data
DESCRIPTION: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.\nThis 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.\nTo 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. \nEvent Host: Ziyue Zheng\, Ph.D. Student\, Statistical Science \nAdvisor: Sangwon Hyun \nZoom: https://ucsc.zoom.us/j/93229540289?pwd=8bsBOSBFmISlexmS4OWTmTZKp420u2.1
URL:https://events.ucsc.edu/event/zheng-z-stats-semi-supervised-statistical-learning-for-oceanographic-data/
LOCATION:Engineering 2\, Engineering 2 1156 High Street\, Santa Cruz\, CA\, 95064
CATEGORIES:Ph.D. Presentations
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DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20260511T080000
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SUMMARY:Johns\, M. (CMPM) - Playing Together in a Co-Designed Future: Building Resilience Through Community-Centered Gameful Design
DESCRIPTION:Complex societal problems (e.g. wicked problems) such as those brought on by climate change can be addressed through a combination of Research through Design (RtD)\, co-design\, and Serious Games (SG) by inviting affected communities to take part in developing iterative\, experimental solutions and exploring their potential impact. In the course of my research\, I have proposed a framework for design research that engages with wicked problems at the community level through gameful design\, which is based on existing literature in HCI drawing from RtD\, co-design\, and SG. Core elements of the framework include supporting diverse perspectives\, interdisciplinarity\, working with local knowledge\, and aligning different concepts with specific gameful elements to support meaningful interactions and discussion. \nIn a specific case study\, my proposed framework is applied to create a gameful intervention to support wildfire resilience in communities at the Wildland-Urban Interface (WUI) which face particular risks from natural hazards. Through a community co-design process\, open discussions have identified consistent pain-points and challenges faced by communities who have experienced wildfires or evacuations\, e.g. traffic congestion in areas with one road in and out\, while also pinpointing differences in their approaches based on local conditions\, such as whether or not to encourage people to evacuate on foot. Through an RtD approach\, important ideas have emerged about how serious games can be utilized in this space. For example\, a common approach to serious game design is to align the win condition of a game with specific learning outcomes or desired changes. However\, when working with wicked problems there are often complex social dilemmas and conflicting values without clear right answers. In these cases there is a need to map dilemmas and trade-offs to game mechanics rather than mapping learning outcomes to win conditions. \nThe gameful intervention developed through this dissertation integrates local knowledge from communities alongside expert knowledge from disciplines including fire science\, social science\, engineering\, and design. The resulting artifact leverages a minigame design to map different concepts to specific and approachable game mechanics. Through universal and inclusive design practices\, the games can be accessible to a broad audience including both children and older adults. The cooperative multiplayer aspects of the games encourage discussion and collaborative play between friends\, community members\, and particularly intergenerational play within families. In addition to contributing RtD reflections as a result of the project\, I also measured change in resilience at the individual and community levels after deployment of the games through qualitative and quantitative methods. This dissertation contributes to knowledge about what game design has to offer to addressing wicked problems\, with specific approaches to better serve communities facing complex risks such as those associated with a rapidly changing climate. \nEvent Host: MJ Johns\, Ph.D. Candidate\, Computational Media  \nAdvisor: Katherine Isbister \nZoom: https://ucsc.zoom.us/j/7959349044?pwd=cVYraU9yMUVwVFhYWHp6T05OZm5rZz09
URL:https://events.ucsc.edu/event/johns-m-cmpm-playing-together-in-a-co-designed-future-building-resilience-through-community-centered-gameful-design/
LOCATION:Engineering 2\, Engineering 2 1156 High Street\, Santa Cruz\, CA\, 95064
CATEGORIES:Ph.D. Presentations
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