Events

March is Hummingbird Month at the UCSC Arboretum & Botanic Garden
2026-03-01 00:00 - 2026-03-31 23:59 (America/Los_Angeles) | Arboretum, 122 Arboretum Road, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064
March is Hummingbird Month at the UCSC Arboretum & Botanic Garden
This time of year, the Arboretum hosts both Anna’s and Allen’s hummingbirds, the two most common species in Northern California. “The density of hummingbirds—the number per area in the Arboretum—is ridiculously high,” says Bruce Lyon, Professor Emeriti of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at UCSC. “You can watch them feeding on ﬂowers, you can watch their courtship, you can watch them chasing different species. It’s a great opportunity to see some pretty amazing hummingbird biology.”
In celebration of this special time of year, we invite you to visit the garden as much as possible! We will have presentations, workshops, and tours throughout the month. See our webpage for a schedule of activities and more information about hummingbirds and the abundance of plants at the Arboretum that attract them.
We will also feature hummingbird merchandise and hummingbird-attracting plants at our gift shop and nursery. Visit Norrie’s Gift & Garden Shop, Tuesdays thru Sundays from 10 – 4. For more information visit: https://arboretum.ucsc.edu/garden-shop/
All events are free with paid admission: Adults: $10, Seniors $8 and Youth 4-17 $5. Current UCSC students are free. Rain cancels outdoor activities.
Current Arboretum members are always free and enjoy other great benefits year-round! Join Today at https://arboretum.ucsc.edu/get-involved/join-us/

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

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

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

Topics

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

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

Explore lots of AI courses
Project management courses
Workshops

Enroll today.

Santa Cruz Pickwick Club presents: Bleak House
2026-03-22 13:00 - 15:00
Spontaneous human combustion! Evil lawyers! Detectives! Family intrigue! These all come together in Charles Dickens’s masterwork, Bleak House. This year, we will spend the year reading the 2026 Dickens Universe novel. Join Dickens enthusiasts and Pickwick Club members on Zoom for a series of discussions about this beloved book.
Register via Zoom
Reading Schedule:

OCT 26: Chapters 8-13
NOV 23: Chapters 14-19
DEC 28: No meeting
JAN 25: Chapters 20-25
FEB 22: Chpaters 26-32
MAR 22: Chapters 33-38
APR 26: Chapters 39-46
MAY 24: Chapters 47-53
JUN 28: Chapters 54-67 (End)

Recommended Edition: We recommend the Penguin Classics edition of the novel for its appendices and notes, but other versions are fine. First-time readers should avoid the Introduction if they don’t want spoilers. Download the novel to read at Gutenburg.org or listen to it at LibriVox.org.
The Santa Cruz Pickwick (Book) Club, a branch of the Dickens Fellowship, is a community of local bookworms, students, and teachers who meet monthly to discuss a nineteenth-century novel. The Santa Cruz Public Libraries provide support for the reading group.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

VMCC Talk with Maggie Cao—Sepia: Biotic Media and Ocean Worlds
2026-04-01 16:00 - 17:30 | Porter College, D-Building, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064
Sepia is a term used to describe inks of a rich, brown color, but few know that this artistic usage is taken from the animal world, where sepia refers to a genus of cuttlefish—a nod to the long history of extracting melanin fluid from cephalopods for drawing and writing. This talk uses cuttlefish ink as a vehicle for rethinking human-ocean relations in the mid nineteenth century, tracing flows between Victor Hugo’s maritime drawings made in the Channel Islands to paleontological discoveries and scientific illustrations on nearby coastlines. During the nineteenth century, the expansion of fisheries and the growth of marine biology fostered public interest in the strangeness of cephalopods, or “devil fish,” whose inkiness was associated with artistic creation. Experiments with biotic media, the talk argues, were efforts to conceptualize the nonhuman environment of the ocean.
This event is presented as part of the Visual & Media Cultures Colloquium (VMCC) Series.
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ADMISSION
– FREE and open to the public
– Located in Porter College Rm. D245
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PARKING
– Lot 124 & 125 are the closest parking lots to the event.
– Parking is by permit or ParkMobile.
– Refer to TAPS for more parking information.
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This program is open to all members of the public consistent with state and federal law.

Your AI Advantage: Tools, Skills, and Career Paths
2026-04-01 18:00 - 19:00 | Silicon Valley Campus, 3175 Bowers Avenue, Santa Clara, CA, 95054, United States
Transform your workplace with practical AI skills.
Explore how to lead with AI—whether you want to build it or apply it. In this information session, discover two dynamic pathways: AI Business Practices, for professionals seeking practical AI tools to boost productivity without coding, and AI Engineer, for those ready to design and deploy production-ready AI systems. Learn how generative AI, automation, and intelligent agents are transforming today’s workplace—and how you can be part of that change.
Speaker
Join Hien Luu, Program Chair and Head of Machine Learning Infrastructure at Zoox, for an inside look at how our courses help you build prompt‑engineering know‑how, ethical AI awareness, and productivity‑boosting workflows—so you can lead AI‑driven change in your organization.
Learn more
This spring info session is sponsored by the AI Business Practices and Engineering programs.

Claim your seat today.

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

Opening Celebration for EASP M.F.A. Exhibition—"Picking up Shells Amid a Tsunami"
2026-04-02 17:00 - 19:00 | Mary Porter Sesnon Art Gallery, Baskin Service Road, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064
The culminating exhibition of the Environmental Art and Social Practice (EASP) M.F.A. program at UC Santa Cruz presents new projects—Picking up Shells Amid a Tsunami 쓰나미가 밀려오는데, 조개나 줍고 있네—developed through concentrated inquiry over a two-year period and offers a window into the artists’ unique long-term research projects that expand beyond the gallery space.
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FULL SCHEDULE OF EVENTS
– Ongoing Exhibition: Thurs.., April 2–Sat., May 2, 2026
– Opening Celebration: Thurs., April 2, 5:00–7:00 p.m.
– Artist Roundtable: Thurs., April 23, 5:00–6:00 p.m.
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ADMISSION
– FREE and open to the public
– Gallery hours are Tues.–Sun.noon–5:00 p.m (closed Mondays)
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PARKING
– Lot 124 & 125 are the closest parking lots to the event.
– Parking is by permit or ParkMobile.
– Refer to TAPS for more parking information.
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ABOUT THE EXHIBITION
– More exhibition information here.
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This program is open to all members of the public consistent with state and federal law.

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

BME 80G Seminar: To Infinity and Beyond? Ethical, legal, and social issues of human research in space”
2026-04-03 13:20 - 14:25 | Jack Baskin Auditorium, 191 Baskin Cir, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064
Presenter: Vaso Rahimzadeh, Assistant Professor, Baylor College of Medicine
Description: As humans venture farther into outer space, new scientific discovery awaits including in genomics; but so do new ethical dilemmas. Who bears the risks (and rewards) of space exploration and how should humanity ethically expand beyond our planet? This session will have students think critically about the ethical, legal, and social issues of human genomic research in space and offer frameworks for analyzing them. Students will learn about the contemporary challenges and opportunities of genomic research for the upcoming lunar missions, and in anticipation of future Mars exploration.
Bio: I am Assistant Professor at the Center for Medical Ethics and Health Policy at Baylor College of Medicine. In my National Institutes of Health-funded research, I investigate the ethical, legal, and social issues of health data sharing on earth and in space. I aim to inform policy and practice in ways that maximize the scientific value of data while respecting the rights and interests of individuals and communities. I director the METEORS program (Mission to Enhance eThics Education, Outreach, and Research in Space) and serve on the Bioethics Advisory Panel for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). I am a proud UC alum, earning my BS in Microbial Biology from UC Berkeley in 2012, and hold a PhD from McGill University with a specialization in biomedical ethics. You can read more about my background and read my work here.
Hosted by: Professor Karen Miga, BME Department

First Saturday Tour at the Arboretum
2026-04-04 11:00 - 12:00 | Arboretum, 122 Arboretum Road, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064
First Saturday Tours are a wonderful way to introduce yourself to the Arboretum or to deepen your knowledge of the Arboretum’s plant collections. Each tour is a little different depending on the time of year, the interests of the tour guide, and the people who join in. For example, you might learn about the birds and mammals that make this land their home or about the amazing physical adaptations that plants have evolved to better deal with our extreme weather and climate conditions. Tours are free with paid admission.

Film Screening: Sotong and Against this Messy World
2026-04-06 14:00 - 16:00 | Humanities 1 Building, 257 Cowell-Stevenson Road, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064, United States
On April 6, 2026, the Graduate Training in Southeast Asia (GETSEA) consortium and UCSC’s Center for Southeast Asian Coastal Interactions will host two short films highlighting the challenges to art and expression in Malaysia’s complex political, legal, and societal landscape.
Sotong follows four fierce local drag queens who were part of the 2022 Halloween party raided by the authorities. One of them, Juan, was arrested for ‘a man dressing up as a woman’. Two years later, they revisit on the fallout of that night as they continue to perform underground and nurture the Malaysian drag scene in all its beauty, joy, and pain.
Against This Messy World is a deeply introspective and visually captivating short documentary that delves into the heart and soul of artistic expression in Malaysia. A personal exploration, narrated by Malaysian artists, this documentary takes viewers on an evocative journey to understand the essence and purpose of being an artist in a world marked by chaos and uncertainty and piece together conversations and unfiltered moments in their lives.
Universities from across North America will come together to watch the films simultaneously, then connect via Zoom with the filmmakers for a post-screening discussion. Please join us in conversation!

AM Seminar: The Thinking Eye: AI That Sees, Reads, and Reasons in Medicine
2026-04-06 16:00 - 17:00
Presenter: Yuyin Zhou, Assistant Professor, UCSC
Description: Medical AI is undergoing a profound transformation, evolving from simple pattern recognition to systems capable of complex clinical reasoning. This talk will chart this evolution across three dimensions: data, models, and evaluation. I will first highlight the shift from limited, unimodal datasets to massive multimodal resources. In particular, I will introduce MedTrinity-25M—a novel collection of over 25 million richly annotated medical images that serves as a foundation for multimodal tasks such as visual question answering and report generation. Building on this, I will describe how grounding decision processes in a structured medical knowledge graph enables the generation of high-fidelity reasoning chains. Using these chains, we construct a large-scale medical reasoning dataset, which in turn allows us to develop a new class of reasoning models. These models not only achieve state-of-the-art performance on multiple clinical Q&A benchmarks but also produce reasoning outputs that physicians across seven specialties have independently verified as clinically reliable, interpretable, and more factually accurate than existing large language models. Finally, the talk will offer a deep dive into the critical evaluation of these advanced models, moving beyond standard benchmarks to expose their current limitations—particularly in interpreting dynamic clinical scenarios such as tracking disease progression from temporal image sequences. To foster a holistic understanding of the mechanisms underlying these reasoning models, I will introduce a new evaluation framework that examines performance from two complementary perspectives: their grasp of static knowledge versus their capacity for dynamic reasoning. Together, these advances point toward a future where AI systems can holistically analyze patient information and function as true collaborative partners in complex medical decision-making.
Bio: Yuyin Zhou is an Assistant Professor of Computer Science and Engineering at UC Santa Cruz. Her research interests lie at the intersection of machine learning and computer vision, with a primary focus on AI for healthcare and scientific discovery. Her work (70+ peered-reviewed publications with18,000+ citations) has been recognized with honors including 2025 Google Research Scholar Award, Best Paper Award at KDD 2025 Health Day and at Computerized Medical Imaging and Graphics 2024, 2023 Hellman Fellowship, Best Paper Honorable Mention at DART 2022, and finalist recognition for the MICCAI Young Scientist Publication Impact Award in 2022. Beyond her research, Yuyin has organized over 20 workshops and tutorials at major conferences including ICML, MICCAI, ML4H, ICCV, CVPR, and ECCV, with coverage in media outlets such as ICCV Daily and Computer Vision News. She serves as a regular Area Chair for CVPR, ICLR, MICCAI, CHIL, and ISBI, an associate editor for SPIE medical imaging, Image and Vision Computing, and was the Doctoral Consortium Chair for WACV 2025.
Hosted by: Applied Mathematics Department

Statistics Seminar: Some Recent Results on Transfer Learning
2026-04-06 16:00 - 17:00
Presenter: Oscar Hernan Madrid Padilla, Assistant Professor, University of California, Los Angeles
Description: In the first part of the talk, I will introduce TRansfer leArning via guideD horseshoE prioR (TRADER), a novel approach enabling multi-source transfer through pre-trained models in high-dimensional linear regression. TRADER shrinks target parameters towards a weighted average of source estimates, accommodating sources with different scales. Theoretical investigation shows that TRADER achieves faster posterior contraction rates than standard continuous shrinkage priors when sources align well with the target while preventing negative transfer from heterogeneous sources. Extensive numerical studies and a real-data application demonstrate that TRADER improves estimation and inference accuracy over state-of-the-art transfer learning methods. In the second part of the talk, I will discuss some ongoing work involving transfer learning in nonparametric regression with ReLU networks
Bio: Oscar Madrid Padilla is a tenure-track Assistant Professor in the Department of Statistics at the University of California, Los Angeles. Previously, from July 2017 to June 2019, he was a Neyman Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of Statistics at the University of California, Berkeley. Before that, he earned his Ph.D. in Statistics from The University of Texas at Austin in May 2017 under the supervision of Professor James Scott. He completed his undergraduate degree, a B.S. in Mathematics, at CIMAT in Mexico in April 2013.
Hosted by: Statistics Department

Next Wave of Faculty in Genomics Symposium
2026-04-07 11:40 - 13:15 | Jack Baskin Engineering, Baskin Engineering 1156 High Street, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064
The BME Department and Genomics Institute are once again hosting our annual Next Wave of Faculty in Genomics Symposium, which will be held on April 7th from 11:40–1:15 in E2 180. Please join us to hear cutting-edge genomics talks from outstanding postdocs from around the country!
A burrito reception catered by Alebrije’s will follow immediately after the talks. Registration is free, but required, so please RSVP HERE!
This year’s speakers include:

Dr. Yutong Wang, UC San Francisco
Talk title: “A genome-wide CRISPR activation screen of surface protein expression in primary human CD4 T cells”
Dr. Ian Traniello, Princeton
Talk title: “The Making of a Queen: Neurogenomic Building Blocks of Social Dominance in Bee Societies”
Dr. Alex Cope, Vanderbilt University
Talk title: “Unlocking the rules of proteome evolution by integrating evolutionary theory, mechanistic models, and functional genomics”
Dr. Conner Langeberg, UC Berkeley
Talk title: “Interpreting RNA Foundation Models to Reveal Structure, Function, and Biological Organization”
