Events

Rules Are Not Neutral: Play As Sense-Making, Acts Of Resistance, And Imagining Otherwise
2026-06-06 12:00 - 17:00, 2026-06-05 12:00 - 17:00, 2026-06-04 12:00 - 17:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | Eloise Pickard Smith Gallery, 11 Cowell Service Rd, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064
This exhibition brings together a range of analog games – including board, card, role-playing, and other participatory works – that engage social and political realities in different ways. The works span widely circulated commercial games to independently produced projects, one-of-a-kind artworks by artists, faculty, alumni, and students, and materials drawn from UC Santa Cruz Special Collections and Archives.
In part, the exhibition challenges the persistent assumption that games and play are detached from social and political life. On the contrary, game designers and artists across diverse perspectives and positions have long used play to engage questions of social systems, lived experience, and how power operates. This exhibition does not attempt to represent that full spectrum. Instead, it brings together a particular set of works that foreground how games can make systems visible, intervene in them, and imagine alternatives.
All games embody values, whether intentional or not.
– Mary Flanagan, game designer and scholar
Across all of these works, games are not only forms of entertainment, though they may be that as well. They are encountered in multiple ways: as objects, as systems, as artworks, and as experiences that unfold unpredictably through interaction. In each case, rules and constraints shape what participants can do. In these different forms, the works stage systems – such as housing and land ownership, capitalism, race and identity, civil rights and protest, fascism, and colonialism – in ways that are simplified and easy to see, opening space to recognize similar structures beyond the game. In this sense, the works suggest that rules are not neutral – they organize experience, distribute power, and produce meaning.
Games are the art of agency.
– C. Thi Nguyen, philosopher
The exhibition is intentionally dense. This abundance reflects the breadth of ways games operate across contexts, from activism and education to art and everyday life. While it celebrates creativity and difference, it also asks how these works engage critically with the structures that shape our lives.
Some works use rules to model systems, helping players understand how those systems operate. Others use play to rehearse action, asking players to practice navigating or challenging those systems. Still others turn toward speculation, inviting players to imagine alternative futures, worlds, and the systems that might shape them.
The imagination is an instrument of change.
– Ursula K. Le Guin, author
The focus on analog games reflects how they foreground materiality and shared physical presence. Played face-to-face, handled, read aloud, and experienced together, these works show how rules operate not in abstraction, but through lived, embodied experience.
Ultimately, the exhibition asks us to consider not only how games represent the world, but how they shape our engagement with it – and how through play, the social and political systems they model might be understood, challenged, and reimagined.
Games are not apolitical.
– Kishonna L. Gray, media scholar

Gallery Reception
May 15 from 1 to 4pm at the Eloise Pickard Smith Gallery

Art Friday
Hands-on art activities drawing from the current exhibition.
ALL ARE WELCOME regardless of skill level. Art supplies and free snacks are provided!

Visualizing Abolition Screening Series: Beyond Access
2026-06-06 12:00 - 17:00, 2026-06-04 12:00 - 17:00 | Institute of the Arts and Sciences, 100 Panetta Ave, Santa Cruz, United States
On view in the IAS Screening Room is a selection of short films curated by Visualizing Abolition Visiting Faculty Fellow Dr. Pooja Rangan.
Prisons deny and censor the access of those trapped inside them—to information, to intimacy, to community, to meaningful work, to nourishment of all kinds, and perhaps most cruelly, to care. This program assembles a series of films, including works by filmmakers incarcerated in California as well as others without that lived experience. Together, these works confront the debilitating impacts of these restrictions and reveal how the disabling logic of the prison is extended to other institutional spaces (the hospital, the university), turning access into a scarce commodity by enclosing what should be held in common. Questioning the carceral and state-sponsored productions of disability and accessibility, the short films together reveal the courage of people working despite limitations to produce collective access for one another, described simply and beautifully by disability justice activist Leah-Lakshmi Piepzna Samarasinha as “revolutionary love without charity.”
Thanh Tran
Dying in Prison, 2022
HD Video (color, sound), 3 minutes
Courtesy of the artist
Carolyn Lazard
Pre-Existing Condition, 2019
HD video (color, sound), 6 minutes
Courtesy of the artist and Trautwein Herleth3
Anthony Alejandrez
Another Rainy Day, 2023
Phone video (color, sound), 3 minutes
Courtesy of the artist
Jordan Lord
After…After… (Access), 2018
HD Video (color, sound), 16 minutes
Courtesy of the artist
Rahsaan “New York” Thomas
Friendly Signs, 2023
Video (color, sound) 21 minutes
Courtesy of Tommy Wickerd, Empowerment Ave & System Impact Media

Spring Exhibitions at the Institute of the Arts and Sciences
2026-06-06 12:00 - 17:00, 2026-06-05 12:00 - 17:00, 2026-06-04 12:00 - 17:00 | Institute of the Arts and Sciences, 100 Panetta Ave, Santa Cruz, United States
Visit the IAS, UCSC’s premier art galleries, for our spring exhibitions. On view April 10–August 16, 2026 are three diverse and interdisciplinary shows: Libia Posada: Everything is Going Right, the first US solo exhibition by the Colombia-based artist and medical doctor; Gina Athena Ulysse: A Redwoods Rasanblaj, a site-specific and immersive exploration of the Haitian kreyol conception of rasanblaj; and Ronaldo V. Wilson: There Are No Words, But Melodies, a mixed-media exhibition emerging at the intersections of Black poetics, performance, and visual art.
The IAS Galleries are open Wednesday-Sunday, 12 pm – 5 pm. Admission is free to the public.
Libia Posada: Everything is Going Right
Libia Posada’s first solo exhibition in the United States features installations, sculptures, and drawings meticulously constructed from surgical instruments, gauze bandages, crutches, used books, and domestic picture frames. The new and existing works in the exhibition powerfully stitch together the personal, social, and political disorders and afflictions that currently trouble the world, from the wars that resonate across the globe to the violences of aging in US prisons.
Gina Athena Ulysse: A Redwoods Rasanblaj: Origins & Disentanglements
The internationally-lauded work of humanities professor Gina Athena Ulysse is on view as a premier Faculty Spotlight Exhibition. The site-specific installation, produced in community from things collected, found, purchased and donated, centers on the Haitian concept of rasanblaj, a form of assembly and collage that transcends the formal use of materials to draw together people, spirits, and ideas.
Ronaldo V. Wilson: There Are No Words, But Melodies
Collage is both a material practice and a structural interrogation in the Faculty Spotlight Exhibition artworks by literature professor Ronaldo V. Wilson. In video, painting, and installation, layers and folds conceal and reveal, delving into the experience, both bodily and emotive, of living in times of violence.

Free Guided Tour of the UCSC Farm
2026-06-06 12:00 - 13:30 | UCSC Farm, 152 Farm Rd, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064
Take a free, guided tour of the 30-acre organic UCSC Farm. Visitors can enjoy touring the organically managed greenhouses, hand-worked garden beds, orchards, row crop fields, and children’s garden, while learning about the history of the site and the basic concepts of organic farming and gardening. Perched on a meadow near the campus entrance, the farm also offers spectacular views of the Monterey Bay. Heavy rain cancels.
RSVP

First Saturday Tour at the Arboretum
2026-06-06 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.

Younger Lagoon Reserve Tours
2026-06-06 10:30 - 12:00 | Seymour Marine Discovery Center, 100 McAllister Way, Santa Cruz, CA, 95060
Younger Lagoon Reserve tours are free and open to the public. Space is limited to 18 participants. Call 831-459-3800 or sign-up online. Virtual tours are available online.

52nd Annual Print Sale—a two-day event
2026-06-06 10:00 - 18:00, 2026-06-05 10:00 - 18:00 | Elena Baskin Visual Arts Center, Baskin Service Road, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064
The 52nd anniversary of the UCSC Print Sale runs in conjunction with the Art Department’s Spring Open Studios. Hundreds of original prints will be for sale in a variety of media at this two-day event, including:

Woodcuts
Lithographs
Etchings
Photo-based prints
Screen prints
And more!

All proceeds benefit art students: 80% of proceeds go to the individual artists, and 20% goes to support the Print Studio (thereby back to printmaking students). This once-a-year event presents an extraordinary opportunity for students to display and sell their work to the public. The event also offers an opportunity to see the exceptional quality of the printmaking program and facilities at UC Santa Cruz.
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ADMISSION
– FREE and open to the public.
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FULL SCHEDULE OF EVENTS
– Print Sale: Two-day event scheduled for Fri. June 5 & Sat. June 6 from 10:00 a.m.–6:00 p.m.
– Open Studios: One day only, in conjunction with the Print Sale, on Fri. June 5 noon–4:00 p.m.
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PARKING
– Parking by permit or ParkMobile
– Arts Lot #126 is the closest parking lot to the event.
– Visitors with DMV placards or plates may park for free in DMV spaces, Medical spaces, or ParkMobile spaces without additional payment, or in timed zones for longer than the posted time.
– More information provided by UCSC Transportation & Parking Services (TAPS)
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This program is open to all members of the public consistent with state and federal law.

Berry U-Pick at the UCSC Farm
2026-06-06 09:00 - 12:00 | UCSC Farm, 152 Farm Rd, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064
Come enjoy picking your own organic strawberries and/or blueberries at the campus farm! Our delicious, organic berries will be plentiful this spring and we hope you can come enjoy the bounty.
When: U-picks will take place on Saturdays from 9am to 12pm while supplies last. Blueberries will be available approximately through June, and strawberries will be available into the summer season. PLEASE NOTE that u-picks will not occur on Saturday, June 13 due to campus commencement ceremonies that will impact traffic and parking.
Where: Free parking will be available in the Hay Barn lot or lot 115/116 during u-pick hours. Please do not park in the dirt lot at the farm’s back gate. Please walk to the pinned location at the farm to pre-pay and collect your u-pick container(s). We will have directional signage displayed. There is one ADA parking spot on the farm. The UCSC Farm has uneven, hilly terrain. If you require accommodations to fully participate, please email agroecology@ucsc.edu and we will do our best to accommodate.
Cost: UCSC students with valid ID get 25% off.

Strawberry pints – $4 each
Strawberry flats (12 pints) – $44
Blueberry pints – $4.50 each
Blueberry flats (12 pints) – $50

Payment: Credit card payments only (you will need a smartphone to scan a QR code and enter your card info manually).
Dogs are not allowed on the UC Santa Cruz campus (service animals are OK).

The Very Persistent Slug - AA/PI/SWANA Year-End Ceremony
2026-06-05 18:00 - 21:30 | Merrill Cultural Center, 200 McLaughlin Dr, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064
Save the date and join the Asian American/Pacific Islander Resource Center (AA/PIRC) on Friday, June 5th from 6-9:30pm at the Merrill Cultural Center! Doors open at 5:30 p.m., with our ceremony beginning at 6 p.m.
Come celebrate the graduating students who have contributed to the Asian American, Pacific Islander, and Southwest Asian & North African (AA/PI/SWANA) community at UCSC.
Our ceremony will include faculty and student speakers, awards, FREE cultural stoles for graduates as they cross our stage, and a food reception.
Inspired by Eric Carle’s The Very Hungry Caterpillar, this year’s YEC theme is “The Very Persistent Slug” to celebrate the growth and determination of our graduating students. The Class of 2026 is nourished with the knowledge of their academic studies and life experiences, grounded in community, and is now breaking out of the slug-equivalent of their UCSC cocoons, ready to take on the world.
Graduates! Register at bit.ly/aapirc-yec26 to secure your FREE cultural stole!
To volunteer, please sign up at bit.ly/yec26-volunteer.
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.

Sluggers of the Lost Goal: Mud, Slime, and World Cup Madness!
2026-06-05 18:00 - 20:30 | Kresge College, R-3 Suites, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064
Watch robots compete in the Mechatronics Public Demo! Cheer on their sleep-deprived creators as they run their ‘bots through the field.Thrill to contest between autonomous robots navigating the field and score points by shooting ping-pong balls at each other and scoring the Golden Goal! Come see this exciting Sluggers of the Lost Goal competition!
The Mechatronics class is having their public demonstration of their final design project, Sluggers of the Lost Goal: Mud, Slime, and World Cup Madness! , Friday June 5th, 2026 at 6:15 PM in the UCSC Kresge Auditorium.
In this thrilling competition, teams from UCSC’s Mechatronics course will pit their autonomous robots against each other in an epic Sluggers of the Lost Goal Competition. Each robotic agent will navigate the field, shoot ping pong balls at each other, hide behind obstacles, and try to score the golden goal. The champions will compete in a wild head to head tournament, until one robot emerges victorious! The Public is welcome (and it is free)!
The public is invited (you might have to duck a few ping pong balls) and the teams will be on hand to explain their designs to one and all. Come see what these students have accomplished in 10 weeks and cheer on the competition.
There will be a live webcast starting at 6PM: www.twitch.tv/elkaim_ucsc (we will try, might not work)
Feel free to forward this to any and all that might be interested, children (future engineers) especially welcome.

Science in the Neighborhood: The earthquake problem
2026-06-05 18:00 - 19:30 | Coastal Biology Building, 130 McAllister Way, Santa Cruz, CA, 95060
Science In the Neighborhood
A public lecture series hosted quarterly by the UC Santa Cruz Science Division
The earthquake problem
Presentation by Emily Brodsky, Professor, UC Santa Cruz
Q&A with Stefano Profumo, Associate Dean of Science, UC Santa Cruz
Register here.
Earthquake prediction has simultaneously remained both the central, unsolved problem in seismology and the issue that communities care about most—especially here in Northern California. Earth & Planetary Sciences Professor Emily Brodsky will discuss what we do and do not know about when earthquakes will happen. She will explain what we understand about the basic mechanics of faults and how drilling into faults has transformed our understanding of how earthquakes happen. Her talk will also explore how the machine learning revolution is powering a transformation in forecasting aftershocks, as well as look ahead toward the kind of instrumentation and approaches that offer the most promise for the next big advances.
The event is in-person only. Register here.
Friday, June 5, 2026 | 6:00–7:30 p.m.
Coastal Biology Building. Rm. 110
UC Santa Cruz Coastal Campus
130 McAllister Way
Santa Cruz, CA 95060
The screenshot below shows where to find the entrance of the Coastal Biology Building.

Almost Alumni Celebration for '26!
2026-06-05 16:00 - 20:00 | Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk
2026 graduates, come celebrate with us! Join us for a memorable evening at the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk Aloha Terrace complete with arcade passes, live music, giveaways from your college, food, champagne, and more!
This annual tradition is hosted by the Office of Alumni Engagement to celebrate your accomplishments and welcome you to the UC Santa Cruz Alumni Association. See you there!
Register for the Almost Alumni Celebration.

GCH190 Taskforce Showcase
2026-06-05 15:00 - 17:00 | Stevenson Event Center, Stevenson Service Road, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064
Please join us in celebrating the past year’s offerings of the Global and Community Health Task Force! There will be student ambassadors presenting on each topic, along with faculty giving a sneak peek on their courses for next academic year. This will be a great way to both honor the research from this year and orient incoming seniors to what the Task Force is all about.
The showcase will be held at Stevenson Event Center on Friday, June 5th from 3:00 – 5:00 PM. There will be hot and cold appetizers, along with refreshments. It’s going to be a great time!

BME80G Seminar – Sheril Kirshenbaum, "Science in Policymaking"
2026-06-05 13:20 - 14:25 | Jack Baskin Auditorium, 191 Baskin Cir, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064
Please note: Following this lecture, the Genomics Institute’s Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Committee will host a reception on the Baskin Engineering Lanai with Dr. Kirshenbaum where we can continue the discussion on how to effectively engage lawmakers and the public to value and support genomic science.
Presenter: Dr. Sheril Kirshenbaum
Abstract: Science shapes our world, but meaningful policy engagement and understanding of research and innovation are critical if new advances are to reach their full potential. Dr. Sheril Kirshenbaum will share her research on science in policymaking and reflect on her experiences serving as a science advisor in Congress. The talk will explore effective strategies for engaging policymakers and staff, countering misinformation, promoting evidence-based decision-making, and strengthening the role of science in the policy process.
About the speaker: Dr. Sheril Kirshenbaum is an Emmy Award-winning scientist and author in the Office of Research and Innovation at Michigan State University, and an assistant professor in the College of Communication Arts and Sciences. Her research explores how senior policymakers in the U.S. government make decisions about science and she has worked in the U.S. Senate with Senator Gary Peters (MI) and Bill Nelson (FL). She also hosts and writes the PBS series Serving Up Science with WKAR about the global food system and its impact on the environment and our health. Kirshenbaum is the author of The Science of Kissing and Unscientific America: How Scientific Illiteracy Threatens Our Future (with Chris Mooney), and co-founded the NGO Science Debate.
Hosted by: Professor Karen Miga, BME Department

Spring 2026 Open Studios
2026-06-05 12:00 - 16:00 | Elena Baskin Visual Arts Center, Baskin Service Road, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064
Art Department students exhibit their art work throughout studios and classrooms at the Elena Baskin Visual Arts Center at UC Santa Cruz. The Open Studios event features student art work in a variety of media, including:
– Drawing
– Painting
– Print media
– Sculpture
– Photography
– Environmental art
– Electronic art/new media
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ADMISSION
FREE and open to the public.
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PARKING
– Arts Lot #126 is the closest parking lot to the event.
– $5 ParkMobile Arts Special Event flat rate; cash/credit via parking attendant when present in the lot; or by valid UCSC permit.
– Before arriving to UCSC, we recommend downloading the ParkMobile App on Google Play or Apple App Store and setting up a profile with license plate and payment information.
– Visitors with DMV placards or plates may park for free in DMV spaces, Medical spaces, or ParkMobile spaces without additional payment, or in timed zones for longer than the posted time.
– UCSC affiliates must get their permits in advance; attendants will only sell non-affiliate rates
– More information provided by UCSC Transportation & Parking Services.
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This program is open to all members of the public consistent with state and federal law.

Chen, Z. (CSE) - GPU Subgroup Semantics for Portable High-Performance Kernels
2026-06-05 08:00 - 10:00 | Engineering 2, Engineering 2 1156 High Street, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064
Modern high-performance GPU kernels increasingly rely on subgroup-level execution, including subgroup-level communication, subgroup operations, and matrix operations. These features are essential for workloads such as matrix multiplication and FlashAttention, but their language-level guarantees remain difficult to reason about. Existing programming models often leave unclear which threads participate in subgroup operations, when subgroup threads are required to execute together, and what synchronization is implied by subgroup-level operations. This ambiguity becomes especially important in portable GPU programming, where the same kernel may run across devices with different subgroup sizes, compiler stacks, browser backends, and hardware execution behavior.
My research studies how precise subgroup semantics can support portable and correct high-performance GPU kernels. SIMT-Step, my main completed work, develops a formal and flexible operational semantics for GPU subgroup execution. It introduces dynamic blocks to specify converged subgroup execution and subgroup-operation participation, classifies instructions as independent, synchronous, or collective to express a spectrum of candidate subgroup semantics, and validates these models through a TLA+ implementation and an empirical fuzzing study across real GPUs. My systems work studies how subgroup-dependent kernels behave in practice, including WebGPU FlashAttention kernels for LLM inference, tunable WebGPU kernels for performance portability, and Vulkan-based execution for heterogeneous SoCs. Building on these foundations, my proposed verification work develops data-race-free checking techniques for ML kernels that rely on subgroup operations and matrix operations. Together, these projects aim to clarify the execution guarantees that optimized GPU kernels can rely on and to support portable GPU programming systems whose performance and correctness can be reasoned about across diverse hardware.
Event Host: Zheyuan Chen, Ph.D. Student, Computer Science & Engineering
Advisor: Tyler Sorensen
Zoom: https://ucsc.zoom.us/j/92175288480?pwd=[REDACTED]
Passcode: [REDACTED]

UCSC Jazz Combos
2026-06-04 19:30 - 21:30 | Music Center Recital Hall, 400 McHenry Road, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064
Join the UC Santa Cruz Jazz Combos for a spring concert. Directed by Charles Hamilton.
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ADMISSION
– General admission
– Free for UCSC students (ticket required).
– Tickets available here online through Eventbrite only.
– Follow the Music Dept on Eventbrite for notices and updates.
– Doors are scheduled to open 30 minutes prior to event start time.
– Ticket holders not seated at least 5 minutes before the advertised start time may forfeit their ticket/seat and no refund will be issued.
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PARKING
– Arts Lot #126 is the closest parking lot to the event.
– $5 ParkMobile Arts Special Event flat rate; cash/credit via parking attendant when present in the lot; or by valid UCSC permit.
– Before arriving to UCSC, we recommend downloading the ParkMobile App on Google Play or Apple App Store and setting up a profile with license plate and payment information.
– Visitors with DMV placards or plates may park for free in DMV spaces, Medical spaces, or ParkMobile spaces without additional payment, or in timed zones for longer than the posted time.
– UCSC affiliates may use a valid UCSC A-permit or daily scratcher rather than purchasing additional event parking.
– More information provided by UCSC Transportation & Parking Services.
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EVENT FLYER

This program is open to all members of the public consistent with state and federal law.

Creative Technologies—Digital Spaces: From Practice to Praxis
2026-06-04 18:00 - 22:00
The inaugural class of Creative Technologies presents, Digital Spaces: From Practice to Praxis, a digital art exhibition hosted in New Art City. This digital showcase highlights the culmination of the students’ work both in and out of the program. Explore the various creations from our students that range from game design, digital art, media and visual design. Through individual exploration and collaborative exchanges, these students have shaped a virtual destination that is representative of their personal creative growth and technical practice. We invite visitors to explore a small glimpse into the variety of work this program has been able to foster and sharpen, and to see just how “creative” Creative Technologies can be.
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ADMISSION
– Free and open to UCSC affiliates.
– This is an online event.
– Click this link here to enter the Creative Tech Lobby.
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This program is open to all UC Santa Cruz affiliates consistent with state and federal law.

Business Administration in the Age of AI
2026-06-04 18:00 - 19:00 | Silicon Valley Campus, 3175 Bowers Avenue, Santa Clara, CA, 95054, United States
Learn how to build practical leadership, finance, marketing, and management skills for today’s dynamic business environment.
Reynold Lewke, M.S., M.B.A, LLB, a corporate attorney, litigator, author, and business advisor, will explore how AI is reshaping business operations, decision-making, and strategy, and how emerging technologies are being integrated across the field. Attendees will gain insight into upcoming courses, evolving career pathways, and the skills professionals need to drive performance and adapt in today’s rapidly changing marketplace.
Keep learning this summer

Supply Chain Operations Management | May 30
Business Communications | June 17
Finance I, Fundamentals | June 22
Finance for the Business Professional | July 9
Managing Global Supply Chains | Aug. 8

Explore our course catalog to see the full course lineup.
Claim your seat!

POSTPONED—Celebrating Agroecology: A book talk with Author Bruce H. Jennings and Mayor Fred Keeley
2026-06-04 17:30 - 19:30 | Hay Barn, 94 Ranch View Road, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064, United States
This event has been postponed.
Join us for a conversation with Author Bruce H. Jennings and Santa Cruz Mayor Fred Keeley about Jennings’ new book, Revolutionary Science: The Struggle for Agroecology in the Americas.
RSVP
About the book
As the climate crisis becomes more urgent and issues of social inequality intensify, Revolutionary Science: The Struggle for Agroecology in the Americas shows how agroecology offers hope rooted in a deeper understanding of ecology, society, and collective struggle. In the 1940s, a US-backed campaign spread industrial agriculture across the Americas, dismantling traditional farming systems that had sustained campesino communities for generations. The result was ecological damage, cultural loss, and deepened inequality. Amid this devastation, a group of Latin American scientists chose another path. Working alongside farmers, Indigenous communities, and social movements, they helped shape a new vision — agroecology: a science grounded in ecology, cultural respect, and political commitment to those most marginalized. Revolutionary Science tells their story and asks a vital question: Can agroecology thrive as both a science and a movement strong enough to advance livelihood for millions of campesinos and many others across the Americas?

Imlau Dagostini, J. (CSE) - Intent-Driven Orchestration for Scientific Computing
2026-06-04 14:00 - 15:30 | Jack Baskin Engineering, Baskin Engineering 1156 High Street, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064
The growing complexity of high-performance computing (HPC) systems poses a fundamental challenge for domain scientists, whose primary objective is to obtain scientifically valid results rather than to optimize resource utilization. Modern leadership-class facilities combine heterogeneous CPUs, GPUs, and specialized accelerators across systems that simultaneously support traditional scientific simulations and AI-driven workloads. This creates a vast, machine-dependent configuration space that even experienced systems researchers find difficult to navigate. In practice, users must explicitly specify resources, node counts, and walltime estimates before submitting jobs to an orchestrator, resulting in iterative trial-and-error that wastes both human effort and compute resources.
This thesis proposes an intent-driven orchestration middleware for scientific computing, in which domain scientists express high-level computational goals rather than low-level resource parameters, and the system assumes responsibility for identifying configurations that satisfy those goals efficiently. This thesis proposal builds on a completed study of the computational performance of pangenome mapping, a representative workload of data-intensive pipelines increasingly common in modern science. We demonstrate that tailoring tuning parameters to specific inputs and architectures yields significant performance improvements while exposing the depth of the configuration search problem that motivates this thesis. We then present an in-progress user-aware, intent-driven middleware that uses surrogate models to aid this exploration and map high-level goals to suitable configurations. We end this presentation by proposing a cluster-aware orchestrator that enables existing HPC resource managers to support intent-aware decision-making.
Event Host: Jessica Imlau Dagostini, Ph.D. Student, Computer Science & Engineering
Advisor: Abel Souza
Zoom: https://ucsc.zoom.us/j/93851280425?pwd=[REDACTED]
Passcode: [REDACTED]

Exhibit Opening! "Ideas to Postpone the End of the World": Artists Books and Archives towards Landels-Hill Big Creek Reserve
2026-06-04 14:00 - 15:00 | McHenry Library, 1156 High St, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064
Join us on on Thursday, June 4th from 2:00–3:00pm for Ideas to Postpone the End of the World: Artists Books and Archives toward Landels-Hill Big Creek Reserve, a pop-up exhibition curated by MFA student SeeVa Dawne Kitslis!
Just a sliver of the wonderful artist book collection at Special Collections & Archives at UC Santa Cruz focused on how artists are negotiating their relationship with, through, and alongside the natural world.
The phrase, “ideas to postpone the end of the world”, is Krenak philosopher and writer, Ailton Krenak’s observation that both creativity and poetry can hold off ‘the sky from falling’ by preserving indigenous ways of life that are more integrated with the natural world. This collection of artist books tries to open up that cavity and showcase the diverse material modalities, timescales, and geographies of artists that connect with ecological storytelling.
“For a long time, we have been alienated from the organism to which we belong–the earth. So much so that we begin to think of Earth and Humanity as two separate entities. I can’t see anything on Earth that is not Earth. Everything I can think of is a part of nature.” -Ailton Krenak

Lietz, R. (CM) - Reflecting on Failure: Designing and Evaluating Archetype Profiles as a Tool for Self-Reflection
2026-06-04 13:00 - 15:00 | Silicon Valley Campus, 3175 Bowers Avenue, Santa Clara, CA, 95054, United States
Self-reflection holds significant potential for learning, behavior change, and emotional processing, yet designing technologies that effectively support it remains challenging, particularly when reflection involves difficult experiences such as failure. Most current technologies avoid negative experiences altogether, leaving users without support at precisely the moments when reflection could be most valuable.
This dissertation investigates how technology can better support self-reflection through three mixed-methods studies. The first examines how people experience and reflect on failure, revealing how identity, self-blame, and emotional avoidance create barriers to productive reflection. These findings informed an iterative design process through which archetype profiles emerged as a promising reflective format. The second study evaluated archetype profiles against standard graph-based visualizations, finding that the quiz-profile sequence effectively scaffolded reflection by supporting emotional re-engagement followed by cognitive reframing. The third study extended this work into a collaborative context, examining archetype profiles derived from sleep tracking data as shareable artifacts for social reflection. Across these studies, this dissertation contributes empirical insights into reflection on failure and design knowledge about archetype profiles as a reflective format.
Event Host: Rebecca Lietz, Ph.D. Candidate, Computational Media
Advisor: Steve Whittaker
Zoom: https://ucsc.zoom.us/j/7855885795?pwd=[REDACTED]
Passcode: [REDACTED]

Week 10: De-Stress Event
2026-06-04 12:00 - 16:00 | Cowell Courtyard, Santa Cruz, CA 95064
Need to let off some steam before finals?
Join the Center for Leadership and Involvement for the ultimate Week 10 de-stressor!
Choose between:
The Rage Room: Choose the path of total mayhem! Grab a bat, suit up, and smash your stress away on old electronics and glassware in a safe, enclosed space.
The Splatter Room: Choose the path of creative release! Get messy and unleash your creativity by throwing on vibrant, washable paint to create a masterpiece.
Join us at the Cowell Courtyard to take a much-needed breather before exams!
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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.
