Events

2026 Right Livelihood International Conference
2026-04-13 08:00 - 2026-05-15 17:00 (America/Los_Angeles)
The Right Livelihood International Conference is a five-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.
Registration is free and open to the public. Sign up to receive conference updates, session links, and participation opportunities.

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

ECE 290 Seminar: Speaker Luat T. Vuong - Biospeculative approaches to the “needle in a haystack”: vortex encoders and hybrid optical neural-networks
2026-04-27 10:40 - 11:45 | Engineering 2, Engineering 2 1156 High Street, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064
Presenter: Luat Vuong, Associate Professor in Mechanical Engineering, UC Riverside
Description: Given the growing computational demands of machine learning, how can we scale approaches for sifting through large volumes of data—including patterned or delayed information embedded as “noise”? Many computer vision applications have a strict power budget and demand robust, rapid-response, and even real-time image processing. In this talk, I’ll describe our “biospeculative” approaches to efficiently offload traditional computer vision tasks to diffractive optics. Such hybrid approaches leverage the benefits of preprocessing optics and shallow electronic algorithms. With optics, we spatially encode multiple dimensions of light (color, polarization) and decode with simple, back-end neural networks. I will focus the discussion on the role of encoding from vortex optical singularities. With vortex and multi-vortex encoders, we identify sparse and reconstruct low-signal features, tracking the “needle in a haystack”.
Bio: Luat Vuong is currently Associate Professor in Mechanical Engineering at UC Riverside, with cooperating faculty memberships in Physics, Electrical and Computer, and Materials Science and Engineering. She is also affiliate faculty in Robotics and at the Center for Environmental Research and Technology. She is trained as an optical applied physicist, received her undergrad at UC Berkeley, PhD at Cornell University. She is a recipient of the 2007 Fulbright Fellowship (which she took at the Technical University of Delft in The Netherlands), 2010 European Council MC-IIF Global Postdoctoral Fellowship (which she took at the Institute of Photonic Sciences in Spain), 2012 NSF Career Award, a 2016 J-FRASE, Sloan- funded Award, the 2019 DARPA Young Faculty Award, and the 2021 DARPA Director’s Fellowship. Her research is broadly at the intersection of optics, nonlinear dynamics, and data science.
Hosted by: Professor Soumya Bose, ECE Department
Zoom Link: https://ucsc.zoom.us/j/97975378707?pwd=[REDACTED]

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

Socio-Ecological Complexity in Coffee Agroecosystems
2026-04-27 13:25 - 14:30
Sanya Cowal from the UCSC Environmental Studies Department
In Person Location: ISB 221
Zoom Link
One of the most pressing global challenges considers how to combine sustainable agricultural land use with biodiversity conservation. Agricultural systems have been dramatically transformed and intensified, leading to the simplification of agricultural landscapes through increased agrochemical use, landscape homogeneity, decreased crop diversity, and mechanization. All of these activities restructure the physical and social environment in which food systems are embedded. Market motivations overlook ecological costs, including the loss of habitat complexity, functional biodiversity, and related ecosystem services, such as biological pest control, as well as socio-cultural costs, such as the erasure of traditional agroecosystems. The coffee agroecosystem is one system in which management intensification negatively impacts functional biodiversity and ecosystem services. In this talk, I explore how socio-ecological complexity informs coffee farm management, habitat complexity, and subsequent outcomes for biodiversity, ecosystem services, and equitable supply chain governance.

This has a name: Witchcraft, suspicion, and circumlocution in Central Angola
2026-04-27 15:30 - 17:00 | Social Sciences 1, Social Sciences 1, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064
Anthropology Colloquium with Iracema Dulley
Monday, 4/27/2026 @ 3:30
Social Sciences 1, Rm. 261 or Zoom
About the talk: The literature on witchcraft has focused predominantly on the accusation of witches, the procedures for establishing guilt, and the effects thereof. However, during my fieldwork in Central Angola, I did not encounter processes of accusation but rather a prevailing mood of unresolved suspicion. Drawing on ethnographic research conducted between 2014 and 2019, this paper theorizes the relationship between witchcraft and suspicion by examining the micro level of social interactions in which witchcraft narratives emerge. It explores how suspicion operates through circumlocution and tautology, arguing that it thrives on indeterminacy, doubt, and suspended indication—elements that structure the dialectic between the general and the particular in witchcraft. This tension allows the relationship between witchcraft and witches to remain open, conditioned not only by social conventions of plausibility and hierarchical relations that position witches and sorcerers but also by the contingencies of how these conventions are enacted in specific interactions
About the speaker: Iracema Dulley is an anthropologist, psychoanalyst, and creative writer whose work explores how subjects are formed through the entanglement between language, power, and the body. She is the author of monographs On the Emic Gesture (Routledge, 2019), Os nomes dos outros (Humanitas, 2015), and Deus é feiticeiro (Annablume, 2010), and her essays have appeared in HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory, Social Analysis, Comparative Studies in Society and History, European Journal of Psychoanalysis, and Africa. She is currently based at the Institute of Social Sciences of the University of Lisbon.

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

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

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

Landesman Lecture
2026-04-28 18:00 - 20:00 | Music Center Recital Hall, 400 McHenry Road, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064
Landesman Lecture: Integrating Mathematical and Scientific Research with Excellence in Teaching
Ancestral Matter, Shared Humanity, Beyond Borders and Labels
This evening blends science, poetry, and storytelling to explore our deepest origins and shared humanity. Tracing the cosmic formation of the elements that make our bodies, we reflect on an ancestry older than nations, borders, and labels. Through verse and story, we connect stellar history with lived experience, inviting us to see how our many identities arise from the same ancestral matter. Together, we explore how storytelling can soften divisions, cross boundaries, and remind us that we are forged from one common origin.
Register to attend in-person or virtual
Doors open at 5:30 p.m. for guests attending in person
Lecture: 6 p.m.
Followed by a reception for in-person guests
Free and open to the public
Parking is $11
Presented by the UC Santa Cruz Emeriti Association

Enrico Ramirez-Ruiz studies some of the most powerful explosions since the birth of the universe by looking not at the heavens but at computer models. Eager to understand our origins, he uses simulations to explore the cataclysmic death of stars that give rise to many of the elements of the periodic table. His work tests ideas at the edge of human experience, challenging how we imagine the universe and our place within it.

Jasmine Schlafke, better known by her stage name Queen Jasmeen, is a poet, slam coach, diversity trainer, and a doula from Santa Cruz, CA. Her first book, Crowned, published in 2019 by Bay Company Books, is a widely respected expression of the complexity of compounded identities, reflecting on mental health, race, teen parenting, womanhood, ministry, and so much more. Currently, she works as a privately contracted poetry and performance coach and is a proud single mother of two grown children.

CSE Colloquium - Towards Safe and Resilient Large-scale Distributed Programming
2026-04-29 11:00 - 12:15 | Engineering 2, Engineering 2 1156 High Street, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064
Presenter: Philipp Haller, KTH Royal Institute of Technology
Abstract:
Distributed programming is notoriously difficult. Not only are distributed systems concurrent, they pose additional challenges including data consistency and fault tolerance. At the same time, the share of software systems that are necessarily distributed systems is growing rapidly. As a result, too many software developers are asked to become distributed systems experts. Thus, tools and techniques for ensuring the correctness of distributed systems are urgently needed in order to leave this unsustainable trajectory. This talk presents research results towards the design and implementation of programming systems that support emerging applications and workloads; provide reliability and trust; and embrace simplicity and accessibility. Concretely, the presented work focuses on two directions.
The first direction explores a distributed programming model that provides consistency while enabling high availability for workloads operating on join-semilattices without sacrificing partition tolerance. We propose a new consistency protocol, called observable atomic consistency protocol (OACP), which leverages on-demand coordination to support both coordination-free operations as well as totally-ordered operations on replicated data types. We present a formal, mechanized model of OACP in rewriting logic and verify key correctness properties using the model checking tool Maude. Furthermore, we present the evaluation of a prototype implementation of OACP based on Akka, a widely-used actor-based middleware. The second direction explores a programming system that aims to reconcile the scalability and fault tolerance of stream processing systems with the flexibility of the actor concurrency model. The programming system ensures a failure-transparency property, effectively masking failures through transparent recovery. Our work is the first to formalize failure transparency using a small-step operational semantics, and to provide proofs of failure transparency for stateful dataflow streaming and a fault-tolerant actor-based programming model.
Bio:
Philipp Haller is an Associate Professor in the School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS) at KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, Sweden. His main research interests are in the design and implementation of programming languages, type systems, concurrency, and distributed programming. He was part of the team that received the 2019 ACM SIGPLAN Programming Languages Software Award for the development of the Scala programming language. Prior to KTH, he was an early employee at Akka (previously Lightbend, Inc.), a start-up company developing and supporting Scala as well as frameworks for large-scale distributed programming. Prior to Akka, he was a post-doctoral fellow at Stanford University, USA, and at EPFL, Switzerland. In 2010 he received his PhD in computer science from EPFL, including a nomination for the 2010 EPFL Doctorate Award. In 2006 he received his Dipl.-Inform. degree from Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (previously University of Karlsruhe), Germany.
Hosted by: Professor Mohsen Lesani
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]

Muskism: A Guide for the Perplexed
2026-04-29 15:30 - 17:30 | Merrill Cultural Center, 200 McLaughlin Dr, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064
Please join us as Quinn Slobodian & Ben Tarnoff discuss their new book, Muskism: A Guide for the Perplexed (April, 2026).

A Financial Times Most Anticipated Nonfiction Book of the Year • A Kirkus Most Anticipated Nonfiction Book of Spring 2026• A Literary Hub Most Anticipated Book of the Year

A pyrotechnic examination of Elon Musk as a symptom and avatar of our postliberal age
Everyone’s got an Elon take. He’s a messiah. A menace; a genius; a clown. The verdicts differ, but they share one theme: they treat him as an individual. Muskism argues otherwise. Elon Musk isn’t a glitch in the system—he is the system. His worldview promises sovereignty through technology: plug in, power up, and become self-reliant. But the more you connect, the more he owns you.
If Fordism defined the capitalism of the twentieth century, Muskism may define the twenty-first. Fordism helped build the welfare state. Musk undoes it. He thrives on dependence while preaching freedom. His cars run on subsidies; his satellites run the battlefield; his social networks train the AI that trains us. Muskism sells itself as the future but entrenches age-old hierarchies. It offers autonomy for some and exclusion for others. It’s pro-natalist but anti-immigrant, futurist but reactionary. It speaks of humanity but warns against empathy. Quinn Slobodian and Ben Tarnoff cut through the hype and the hate to reveal what Musk really represents: a new political economy, where to be “free” means to serve a Technoking. Muskism isn’t about the man. It’s about the machine that made him—and the world he’s making next.
Quinn Slobodian is professor of international history at Boston University, and the author or editor of seven books translated into ten languages including, Hayek’s Bastards: Race, Gold, IQ and the Capitalism of the Far Right, Crack-Up Capitalism: Market Radicals and the Dream of a World without Democracy, and Globalists: The End of Empire and the Birth of Neoliberalism.
Ben Tarnoff is a writer and technologist based in Massachusetts and is the author of Internet for the People and the co-author of Voices from the Valley: Tech Workers Talk About What They Do—And How They Do It. He is a frequent contributor to the New York Review of Books, and has also written for the New York Times, The New Yorker, and the New Republic, among other publications.

TLC Convocation 2026
2026-04-30 05:00 - 19:30 | Colleges Nine and John R. Lewis College Multi-purpose Room, 615 College Nine Road, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064
The Opposite of Cheating: Rethinking Instruction in the Age of AI
David Rettinger, Applied Professor and Undergraduate Program Director at the University of Tulsa
Higher education stands at a crossroads. Generative AI is a powerful and flawed tool that may render traditional assessments obsolete and call fundamental pedagogical assumptions into question across all disciplines. Yet this moment of disruption also presents an opportunity to refocus on what truly matters: student learning and growth. In this session, David Rettinger will outline a positive, evidence-based approach to academic integrity in the age of AI, encouraging all of us to move beyond policing to authentic learning. Together, we will take an evidence-based approach toward change, by rethinking assessments to focus on durable human skills, by learning to communicate the value of higher education to our students, and by evaluating strategies for integrating AI thoughtfully into our courses. Attendees will leave with both conceptual frameworks for decision-making and concrete tools for AI integration, communicating about integrity, and reducing misconduct through improved teaching and learning.
Register to attend in person or watch remotely

Planetary Health and Innovation Panel
2026-04-30 16:00 - 19:00 | Seymour Marine Discovery Center, 100 McAllister Way, Santa Cruz, CA, 95060
Join us for an interactive conversation featuring visionary entrepreneurs, investors, and ecosystem experts at the forefront of global sustainability. This panel explores the intersection of environmental stewardship and cutting-edge solutions to drive meaningful impact. Following the discussion, please stay for a networking reception to connect with fellow attendees and industry leaders. It is a premier opportunity to exchange ideas and forge new partnerships within the planetary health space.

Slugs at Sundown: CEO of Your Own Career
2026-04-30 17:30 - 19:30 | Silicon Valley Campus, 3175 Bowers Avenue, Santa Clara, CA, 95054, United States
Tired of the dreaded question, “So, what do you do?” Join us for a high-impact session designed to help you ditch the “humble brag” and start speaking like the CEO of your career. Our alumna career coach will guide you through a “Marketing Mindset” workshop, using timed journaling and a proven three-part formula to help you craft a powerful statement of your professional impact. You won’t just leave with a draft—you’ll have the chance to test-drive your new narrative immediately during our networking portion. Whether you’re leveling up or pivoting, come gain the confidence to own your value in a supportive, low-pressure environment.
Thursday, April 30
5:30 – 5:45 p.m. | Check-in
5:45 – 6:45 p.m. | Welcome, Presentation, Q&A
6:45 – 7:30 p.m. | Networking
This workshop will be presented by Megan Rees (Porter ’99). Megan is a therapist, coach, and workplace consultant with nearly 20 years of experience helping people communicate more clearly and work better together. After studying theater at UC Santa Cruz, she earned a master’s degree in drama therapy at NYU, combining psychology, storytelling, and performance to help people better understand themselves and each other. Megan works with individuals, leaders, and teams to clarify their narrative, strengthen their professional presence, and build the trust and communication that sup11port collaboration and innovation.
Please register to confirm your attendance.

Summer Session Enrollment Open
2026-05-01 09:00 - 17:00 | https://events.ucsc.edu/event/summer-session-enrollment-open/2026-05-01/
Summer Session enrollment is now open! All continuing students can add classes in MyUCSC. Incoming students must register to enroll. Get ahead on your degree, explore new subjects, or catch up on requirements. Financial aid is available. Learn more and enroll at summer.ucsc.edu

Sequence to Survival: Using Genomics to Save Biodiversity
2026-05-01 13:00 - 16:30 | Cultural Center – Merrill College, 641 Merrill Rd, Santa Cruz, 95064, United States
A Free Public Symposium
Friday, May 1, 2026 Merrill Cultural Center, UC Santa Cruz Main Campus Doors open at 12:30 PM | Program begins at 1:00 PM
Registration is free but required!

In the 25 years since the Human Genome Project, scientists have sequenced the DNA of thousands of species. But what can genomics actually do for ecological conservation? The answers are both surprising and urgent. Join us for an afternoon at the cutting edge of conservation genomics as we explore everything from de-extinction to searching water samples for viral genomes, with researchers from the UC Santa Cruz Genomics Institute who are turning DNA into a tool for protecting life on Earth.
Keynote Speaker: Beth Shapiro Chief Science Officer, Colossal Biosciences Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, UC Santa Cruz; Director of Conservation Genomics, UC Santa Cruz Genomics Institute
Beth Shapiro leads the science behind Colossal Biosciences’ efforts to bring back the woolly mammoth and dire wolf. In her talk, “How (and Why) to Clone a Mammoth,“ she’ll share what the science of de-extinction is revealing about how we can protect the species we still have — and why the tools being built for resurrection may be our best hope for preventing extinction in the first place.
Panel Discussion: Conservation Genomics in Action
Following the keynote, Beth joins a panel of researchers working on the front lines of conservation: helping kelp forests survive warming oceans, tracking the genetic health of brown bears, monitoring biodiversity through DNA collected from soil and water, and partnering with Indigenous communities to protect species around the world. Panel participants include:

Beth Shapiro- Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at UC Santa Cruz, CSO of Colossal Biosciences
Meaghan Clark- Postdoctoral Scholar in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at UCSC
Katie Jones- Director of Community Engagement at Wise Ancestors
Joanna Kelley- Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at UC Santa Cruz
Rachel Meyers – Assistant Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at UC Santa Cruz, CSO of eDNA Explorer

Science Fair Showcase
Explore live demos and talk directly with researchers from some of the top conservation genomics labs in the country. Come curious.
Refreshments provided by 10X Genomics and Oxford Nanopore Technologies!
Schedule
12:30 PM — Doors open
1:00 PM — Welcome remarks by David Haussler and Keynote by Beth Shapiro
1:50 PM — Panel discussion and Q&A
2:50 PM — Refreshments and science fair showcase
4:30 PM — Event close

BME80G Seminar - Katherine Bonini, "Rethinking Familial Risk in Genomic Medicine: Ethical Approaches to Cascade Screening"
2026-05-01 13:20 - 14:25 | Jack Baskin Auditorium, 191 Baskin Cir, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064
Presenter: Katherine Bonini, Senior Genetic Counselor @ Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai

Description: It has long been argued that families are central to genomic medicine. Genomic risk, diagnosis, and management are rarely confined to a single individual, and separating patients’ interests from those of their relatives is often neither straightforward nor desirable. Despite this, healthcare systems in the United States continue to operationalize care at the level of the individual. This tension is especially evident in cascade screening, the process of identifying, notifying, and offering genetic testing to relatives of a proband with a hereditary condition. Cascade screening can enable earlier diagnosis, guide preventive care, and reduce morbidity and mortality, but its implementation raises important ethical questions.
In this talk, we will examine how current approaches to familial risk communication place responsibility on patients to notify relatives, often resulting in incomplete reach and missed opportunities for prevention. We will then consider alternative approaches, including system-led contact models in which health systems directly notify at-risk relatives with proband consent. Drawing on public health ethics frameworks, we will discuss a proposed framework demonstrating how system-led models may be ethically justified when specific criteria are met, including considerations of public input, opt-out mechanisms, and a focus on actionable conditions. This talk will encourage consideration of how genomic care can be structured to better balance individual rights with broader responsibilities to families and public health.

Bio: Katherine (Kate) Bonini, MS, MA, CGC is a Senior Genetic Counselor and Core Faculty member in the Institute for Genomic Health at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. Her work focuses on the ethical, legal, and social implications of integrating emerging genomic technologies into clinical care, with particular emphasis on implementation science and equitable translation of genomic advances into practice. She has contributed to several major NHGRI-funded initiatives, including the Clinical Sequencing Evidence-Generating Research (CSER) Consortium, the Electronic Medical Records and Genomics (eMERGE) Network, and the Human Pangenome Reference Consortium (HPRC).
Kate is an active leader within the National Society of Genetic Counselors, where she previously served as Chair of the Research Special Interest Group and Chair of the Public Policy Committee. She is also a member of the Mount Sinai Clinical Ethics Committee, where she contributes to institutional discussions on complex ethical issues in patient care and research.
She received her MS in Genetic Counseling and MA in Medical Humanities and Bioethics from Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine.
Hosted by: Professor Karen Miga, BME Department

First Saturday Tour at the Arboretum
2026-05-02 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.

Sister Warriors in Conversation: Expanding Communities of Care in CA Women's Prisons
2026-05-02 14:00 - 15:30 | Institute of the Arts and Sciences, 100 Panetta Ave, Santa Cruz, United States
This panel discussion with Niki Martinez, Elizabeth Lozano, and Susan Bustamente of Sister Warriors Freedom Coalition will be moderated by Dr. Julissa O. Muñiz, UCLA. Organized for Visualizing Abolition, the event will talk about the movement women and gender expansive folks who have been incarcerated are building to support each other, shift power, and lead systems and policy change.
