Events

Mojada: A Medea in Los Angeles, directed by Kinan Valdez
2026-05-22 19:30 - 21:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | Experimental Theater, Theater Arts Center, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064
Blending Euripides’ classic Medea with Mexican folklore, Luis Alfaro examines the tragedy behind America’s immigration system and the destiny of one family caught in its grip. Directed by Kinan Valdez.
ADVISORIES
– Content advisory: includes violence, adult language, mature themes, and mention of sexual violence
– This presentation is 90 minutes in length with no intermission.
– Seating is limited and will reach full capacity.
– Ticket holders not seated at least five minutes before the advertised start time may forfeit their ticket/seat, and no refund will be issued.
– Parking impacts may be significant on Fri-Sun during Week 2 of this production in Lot 126 due to other overlapping events expected to reach full capacity.
ADMISSION
– Tickets issued online through Eventbrite only.
– Attend in person at Theater Arts eXperimental Theater at UC Santa Cruz.
– Free for UCSC undergrads (ticket required).
– General admission “Pay What You Like” options for $10, $15, or $20.
– Follow the Dept. of Performance, Play & Design on Eventbrite for notifications and updates.
– Doors are scheduled to open 30 minutes prior to event start time.
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.
Full Schedule of Events
This production includes seven performances over the course of two weeks, including the following dates/times:
– Fri, May 22, 7:30 p.m.
– Sat, May 23, 7:30 p.m.
– Sun, May 24, 2:00 p.m. matinee
– Thu, May 28, 7:30 p.m.
– Fri, May 29, 7:30 p.m.
– Sat, May 30, 7:30 p.m.
– Sun, May 31, 2:00 p.m. matinee
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This program is open to all members of the public consistent with state and federal law.

Volunteer Workday at the UCSC Farm
2026-05-23 11:00 - 13:00 | UCSC Farm, 152 Farm Rd, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064
Spend a morning working at the UCSC Farm in the Community Herb Garden, a BIPOC-centered garden space committed to uplifting knowledge of herbal medicine with fellow volunteers and Center for Agroecology student staff. Tasks may include pruning, mulching, weeding, or hand tilling. Please come prepared with adequate shoes, water, and sun protection. We will provide all the necessary tools, but request that volunteers bring their own work gloves. Heavy rain will cancel.
Free parking is available in UCSC Lots 168 (the Village), 115, and 116. Please do not park in the dirt lot at the farm’s back gate. Biking, carpooling, and busing are encouraged.
RSVP

Santa Cruz Pickwick Club presents: Bleak House
2026-05-24 13:00 - 15:00 | CA
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.

The Creative Collective student arts event
2026-05-24 17:00 - 22:00 | Cultural Center – Merrill College, 641 Merrill Rd, Santa Cruz, 95064, United States
The Creative Collective is a multidisciplinary student arts event designed to showcase and elevate the diverse creative work produced at UCSC. This event highlights student talent that often remains underrecognized while fostering a stronger sense of community among creatives by bringing together student artists across disciplines and colleges to showcase the collective creativity at UCSC!
The Creative Collective is student-led and motivated, an event for students by students. This festive evening will feature bands, rappers, and a fashion show, along with an art gallery and creative stations where students can create and show their works.
Date: Sunday, May 24
Time: 5-10 p.m.
Location: Cultural Center at Merrill
For more information or accommodations, email involved@ucsc.edu
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
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.

Chou, Y. (CM) - Exploring Future AI-Mediated Health Creator–Audience Interactions on Social Media: Transparency, Care, and Accountability
2026-05-26 07:00 - 09:00
Health and wellness content creators play an important role in shaping how people receive and engage with health information on social media. Beyond delivering information, they also convey care, build trust, and sustain relationships with audiences. As generative AI (GenAI) becomes increasingly integrated into creator work, existing research has examined AI disclosure, AI-mediated communication, and health communication more broadly, but less is known about how AI should be integrated into health creator–audience interactions, where informational support, emotional care, accountability, and relational meaning are often intertwined. My dissertation examines AI-mediated health creator–audience interaction through four connected studies. Study 1 used mock-up interfaces and semi-structured interviews with 16 Instagram users who interact with health and wellness creators to examine audience perceptions of GenAI use disclosure. Study 2 conducts co-design sessions with social media health creators to explore how creators might communicate human labor and personal contribution in a future social media environment where AI-generated content is widespread. Study 3 extends the focus to audience-invoked AI in public comment sections by scraping and analyzing comment data from platfrom X, examining how audiences invoke AI agents through @-mentions in response to health creator posts, and how these public AI invocations may shape information credibility, accountability, community discussion, and social dynamics. Finally, Study 4 will synthesize insights from the first three studies and translate them into interactive prototypes. By examining how audiences and health creators interact with these prototypes, this study will explore future forms of AI-mediated health creator–audience interaction and broader community engagement on social media.

Event Host: Yuling Ruby Chou, Ph.D. Student, Computational Media
Advisor: Christina Chung
Zoom: https://ucsc.zoom.us/j/94127645445?pwd=[REDACTED]
Passcode: [REDACTED]

Weber, Z. (ECE) - Sustainable Bioinspired Polymer–Mineral Composites for Adaptable Repair in Conservation Applications
2026-05-26 09:30 - 11:30 | Jack Baskin Engineering, Baskin Engineering 1156 High Street, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064
Every year, tens of thousands of tons of plaster-based materials are used in restoration and conservation applications, many of which are derived from non-renewable sources and discarded at the end of their service life. Here, we introduce a biodegradable, bio-derived composite based on chitosan and calcium carbonate that is composed of simple, widely available constituents and designed for adaptable repair applications. By varying polymer molecular weight, concentration, and mineral content, the composite can be formulated to span injectable, paste-like, and putty-like behaviors, enabling accommodation of diverse structural filling and stabilization needs. We examine relationships between composition, flow behavior, and mechanical performance through rheological characterization of the wet composite and measurements of bulk density, porosity, and compressive strength in the hardened state. Rather than targeting a single optimized formulation, this work demonstrates a tunable material platform in which relationships between composition, flow behavior and mechanical performance guide selection of material behavior based on application requirements. Future applications of this approach include sustainable repair and conservation materials for exhibits, architectural restoration, and other contexts where adaptable handling, mechanical integrity, and biodegradability are desired.
Event Host: Zoë Weber, Ph.D. Student, Electrical & Computer Engineering
Advisor: Marco Rolandi
Zoom: https://ucsc.zoom.us/j/96509847894?pwd=[REDACTED]
Passcode: [REDACTED]

ECE Seminar: Advanced Sensing and AI Technologies for Food Safety and Precision Agriculture
2026-05-26 10:00 - 11:00 | Engineering 2, Engineering 2 1156 High Street, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064
Presenter: Hamid Jafarbiglu, Agricultural Technology Evaluator, Big Idea Ventures
Description: California agriculture is increasingly adopting organic and regenerative production systems, creating a growing need for technologies capable of monitoring complex agricultural environments, assessing food safety risks, and supporting data-driven management decisions. Emerging tools such as drones, hyperspectral scanning, environmental sensors, and artificial intelligence provide new opportunities for continues field-scale monitoring, risk detection, and precision management while supporting sustainable agricultural practices. This talk highlights several applied research projects focused on the use of drone-based sensing, spatio-spectral responses, soil and environmental sensors, and machine learning approaches to address real- world challenges in specialty crop production. These projects demonstrate how sensing technologies and advanced analytics can improve field-scale monitoring, continuous risk assessment, early detection, and suitability in food production. Building on these experiences, future research directions will focus on the intersection of food safety, organic and regenerative agriculture, and precision agricultural technologies.
Bio: Hamid Jafarbiglu is a researcher specializing in remote sensing, spectral analysis, and machine learning for agricultural systems. His work focuses on enhancing food safety, crop monitoring, and precision decision-making in high-value specialty crops.

Dr. Jafarbiglu earned his Ph.D. in Biological Systems Engineering from the University of California, Davis, following six years of intensive field research. His expertise integrates drone-based remote sensing, hyperspectral imaging, and AI to identify crop stress, pest/disease outbreaks, and nutrient deficiencies at their earliest stages.

During his tenure at the UC Davis Digital Agriculture Lab, Dr. Jafarbiglu’s doctoral and postdoctoral research resolved critical limitations in aerial spectral measurements. This work led to superior accuracy in drone-based sensing under variable field conditions and the development of scalable image-processing pipelines and digital orchard models for deep learning applications.
Beyond research, Dr. Jafarbiglu is an experienced extension professional. He has delivered hands-on training in drone operations and geospatial analysis to growers, researchers, and industry stakeholders, bridging the gap between data-driven innovation and real-world adoption.

His background also extends to the commercial sector; as an Agricultural Technology Evaluator with Big Idea Ventures, he conducted technical and market assessments for agri-food innovations, including early-stage bio-based products. Today, Dr. Jafarbiglu’s work continues to advance the integration of AI and remote sensing to foster sustainable, regenerative farming and robust food systems across California and beyond.
Hosted by: Professor Marco Rolandi, ECE Department
Zoom Link: https://ucsc.zoom.us/j/96727838511?pwd=[REDACTED]

Harsh, B. (CSE) - SUPERSCALAR, MULTIPLE TAKEN BRANCH PREDICTOR
2026-05-26 10:00 - 11:00 | Engineering 2, Engineering 2 1156 High Street, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064
This work addresses improvements in branch prediction mechanism to support high perfor-
mance processors. The state of the art aims to balance the prediction latency and prediction
accuracy using multi level correcting predictors [27]. Prior published work focusses on scalar
designs and prediction accuracy improvement for hard to predict branches employing tailor
made, non generic and non transferrable solutions [8]. Recent work also proposes ahead pre-
diction [42–44] to solve the problem of low accuracy of L0 predictor.
This work proposes efﬁcent, generic and transferrable solutions to reduce mispredic-
tions and to use the fetch bandwidth more efﬁciently. This includes a biased overriding multi-
level hierarchy with three predictor levels (L0, L1, L2). L0 uses a High-Conﬁdence-Only Taken
(HOTP) predictor that only predicts high-conﬁdence taken control-ﬂow instructions. This work
further uses L1-L2 biased training to decrease mispredictions by L2 while it trains on branches
on which L1 has reached high conﬁdence. This work proposes a superscalar predictor built
using the state of the art scalar predictor. Superscalar predictor is implemented by sizing a su-
perscalar TAGE variant (BATAGE) using Optuna-based search. with varying table sizes and
aspect ratios. The work further proposes a branch predictor frontend design (nTakenBP) to de-
liver multiple taken branch predictions per cycle. Unlike prior work, nTakenBP achieves this by
extending the existing BTB and TAGE tag-comparison logic rather than deepening lookahead.

Event Host: Bhawandeep Singh Harsh, Ph.D. Candidate, Computer Science & Engineering
Advisor: Jose Renau
Zoom: https://ucsc.zoom.us/j/4166778865?pwd=[REDACTED]

Castro, S. (CSE) - Agentic AI for Security: Adversarial Foundations for Autonomous Cyber Operations
2026-05-26 10:30 - 12:30 | Engineering 2, Engineering 2 1156 High Street, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064
Autonomous Cyber Operations (ACO) agents promise effective security automation with minimal human intervention, yet their deployment raises three interconnected challenges: agents must be realistic (reproducing diverse attacker sophistication), secure (preventing autonomy from becoming an attack surface), and feasible (safely replicating human behavior at full autonomy).
We argue that these three properties are requirements for ACO agents. Existing approaches do not address them together and lack diverse adversarial coverage, formal threat models for attacks against the agents themselves, and systematic evaluation of multi-agent topologies.
We advance all three ACO properties: (1) For realism, we establish adversarial foundations by discovering Windows OS vulnerabilities and releasing two exploits reliable across XP through 11. (2) For security, we formalize ACO meta-attacks and meta-defenses, propose the first invariant-based Meta-IDS detecting both sensor and actuator meta-attacks, and introduce the first hybrid LLM–RL ACO integration for defense with a novel inter-agent communication protocol. (3) For feasibility, we present MaLO, the first dynamic-topology multi-agent ACO system, achieving a 78.6% success rate across a new 42-task security benchmark and solving operations up to 40× faster than human experts. We further propose the Security Operation Complexity Index (SOCX) classification and the T×V×O taxonomy as the first objective-driven evaluation methodology for coding-agent attacks.
Together, these contributions demonstrate that ACO agents can match real-world adversarial sophistication, resist meta-attacks, and outperform human operators on complex security tasks. Open challenges remain in adaptive adversaries, LLM–RL co-training, dynamic topology selection, and deployment beyond simulated environments.

Event Host: Sebastián R. Castro, PhD Candidate, Computer Science & Engineering
Advisor: Alvaro A. Cárdenas
Zoom: https://ucsc.zoom.us/j/2267557290?pwd=[REDACTED]
Passcode: [REDACTED]

Liu, P. (CM) - Reimagining Workplace Concern Reporting: From Emotional Harm to Co-Designed Futures
2026-05-26 11:00 - 13:00
Workplace concern reporting infrastructure, including human resources (HR) portals, grievance procedures, and whistleblower hotlines, is the formal channel through which employees in most organizations raise concerns about harassment, discrimination, and retaliation. Yet existing research consistently finds that these systems fail the employees they are meant to protect: reports stall, concerns get filtered, retaliation occurs, and marginalized employees face disproportionate risk. This dissertation examines workplace concern reporting as relational, emotional, and processual rather than procedural and discrete, and pursues this account through three studies. Study 1, drawing on semi-structured interviews with 12 HR professionals and 10 employees in California, develops the concept of emotional re-victimization to describe how reporting infrastructure produces additional harm at multiple stages of the reporting process. Study 2 returns to the same corpus with a different theoretical lens to develop the concept of buffer spaces: intermediary practices through which employees navigate the gap between informal sense-making and formal escalation. Study 3 will move the dissertation from diagnostic to practical work in two phases. Phase 1 uses speculative co-design with employees and HR professionals to surface what each group would build if they could redesign concern reporting infrastructure together. Phase 2 translates design directions from Phase 1 into prototypes, iterated with participants across both groups to develop design artifacts that have been shaped by the people who would use them. The dissertation as a whole moves from documenting harm, through identifying workarounds, to imagining redesign, contributing to HCI/CSCW scholarship on workplace technology, labor studies on employee voice and accountability, and methodological work on cross-stakeholder speculative design.
Event Host: Peiyao Liu, Ph.D. Student, Computational Media
Advisor: Norman Makoto Su
Zoom: https://ucsc.zoom.us/j/99335305923?pwd=[REDACTED]
Passcode: [REDACTED]

Test Anxiety Workshop for International Students
2026-05-26 13:30 - 14:30 | https://ucsc.zoom.us/j/6299323184?pwd=[REDACTED]
Test Anxiety Workshop
Facilitated by Jen Emmett, MA (Counseling & Psychological Services)

Date: May 26, 2026
Time: 1:30 – 2:30 pm
Zoom link: https://ucsc.zoom.us/j/6299323184?pwd=[REDACTED]

Do you freeze up during exams? You know this feeling: you worked hard all quarter and studied for the final, but suddenly your mind is blank. Learn practical, effective strategies for managing anxiety and improving your academic performance and confidence. This event will be tailored specifically for international students, but it is open to all!

If you have any questions, please contact us at caps@ucsc.edu or iprogramming@ucsc.edu.

The Deep Read: The Literature and Poetics of Fungi Salon
2026-05-26 18:00 | Hay Barn, 94 Ranch View Road, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064, United States
Join us for a salon-style event at the Hay Barn on campus where we will hold a salon focused on the literary and poetic influence of fungi and its relation to Entangled Life. The salon will feature Professors Hannah Cole (Assistant Professor of Literature at UC Santa Cruz), Brenda Hillman (Professor Emerita of Poetry at Saint Mary’s College), A. Laurie Palmer (Professor Emerita of Art at UC Santa Cruz), and Jennifer Tseng (Associate Professor of Literature and Creative Writing at UC Santa Cruz) in conversation with moderator Laura Martin and the Deep Read community. Participants can also attend virtually.

In person at the Cowell Ranch Hay Barn. Doors open at 5:30pm.
Event Logistics: Bicycling, carpooling, ridesharing, and public transportation are encouraged as parking is limited on campus. If you drive to the event, please plan to park in UCSC Lot #115 or #116. To reach these lots, proceed through the main entrance to campus, continue up the hill from the information kiosk on Coolidge, then turn right at the Ranch View/Carriage House Road stoplight into the Carriage House/Campus Facilities parking lot. The Hay Barn is a 5-minute walk across the street from the parking lot. There will be directional signage to help you get to the correct parking lot and the Hay Barn entrance. Overflow parking will be available in lot #122. View the campus parking map here.

Additional Events of Interest:
Entangled Life Faculty Salon: On May 19, 2026, at 6pm, we will hold a salon-style event at the Hay Barn on campus where a group of Deep Read faculty—Professors Breen, Gilbert, and Haraway —will give brief presentations and discuss Entangled Life with moderator Laura Martin and the Deep Read community. Participants can also attend virtually.
Author Event – A Conversation with Merlin Sheldrake: On May 31, 2026, at 4pm, we will welcome Merlin Sheldrake to the Quarry Amphitheater on campus where he will be in conversation with Associate Professor of History, Benjamin Breen. This will be an in-person event, and, as always, it will be free and open to the public.

The Deep Read is an annual program of The Humanities Institute at UC Santa Cruz made possible through the generous support of the Helen and Will Webster Foundation. We invite curious minds to think deeply about books and the most pressing issues of our contemporary moment.

Baskaran, D. (CM) - More than Just Fun: Exploring Meaningful Play, Communities of Play, and Relatedness of Play
2026-05-27 09:00 - 11:00
Play is often seen as a form of entertainment, leisure, or childhood development. However, it also acts as a meaningful experience that shapes how people connect with others and interact with the world around them throughout their lives. Prior work on meaningful play and communities of play has mainly focused on individual experiences and participation, giving less attention to how meaning is socially co-constructed through playful interactions and to how these experiences contribute to relatedness, or the human need to feel connected to and belong with others, across physical, digital, and hybrid environments.
Using qualitative methods, this dissertation proposal explores how meaningful play is collectively constructed within communities of play and how it shapes relatedness among members. This work positions meaningful play as a socially and technologically embedded relational phenomenon rather than solely an individual experience. Across case studies of PlayStation trophy hunting, Pokémon Nuzlocke, LEGO, and theme park communities of play, this research explores how meaningful play within these communities contributes to relatedness among members. Ultimately, this dissertation proposal aims to advance a more holistic understanding of play as a process through which people build shared meaning, connection, and belonging in increasingly digital and hybrid social spaces.

Event Host: Derusha Baskaran, Ph.D. Student, Computational Media
Advisor: Kathryn Ringland

Zoom: https://ucsc.zoom.us/j/96290198842?pwd=[REDACTED]
Passcode: [REDACTED]

Tu, H. (CSE) - From Evaluation to Adaptation: Building Reliable Multimodal Intelligence
2026-05-27 09:00 - 11:00
Multimodal large language models (MLLMs) are rapidly becoming general-purpose AI systems, yet their capabilities are advancing faster than our ability to evaluate, improve, and validate their reliability in realistic use. Standard benchmarks mainly measure in-distribution final-answer accuracy, leaving critical gaps in safety, robustness, fine-grained reasoning evaluation, and reliability in real-world agentic settings. My research proposes an evaluation-to-adaptation framework for building reliable multimodal intelligence: developing rigorous evaluations that expose failures beyond conventional benchmarks, learning feedback models that guide inference-time reasoning, and studying how multimodal systems can adapt through experience. We instantiate this agenda through two completed works and two proposed directions. Unicorn evaluates safety and robustness under out-of-distribution and adversarial conditions, revealing substantial vulnerabilities across 22 vision-language models. ViLBench studies vision-language process reward modeling as both an evaluation challenge and a mechanism for inference-time improvement, showing that process-guided reasoning selection can improve reliability. Building on these foundations, we further study test-time experience accumulation and explore reliable multimodal agents for GUI and computer-use tasks. Together, my research aims to move beyond capability-driven progress alone, toward multimodal AI systems whose reliability can be evaluated, improved, and tested in realistic deployment settings.
Event Host: Haoqin Tu, Ph.D. Student, Computer Science & Engineering
Advisor: Cihang Xie
Zoom: 964 1355 0550
Passcode: [REDACTED]

FINS: Fisheries Insights Narratives and Stories seminar series featuring Lisa Uttal
2026-05-27 10:30 - 12:00 | Ocean Health Building, McAllister Way, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064
Please join us for the final talk in the FINS: Fisheries Insights Narratives and Stories seminar series featuring Lisa Uttal.
FINS: Fisheries Insights Narratives and Stories Seminar Series
Lisa Uttal, Marine Biologist for Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary
Title: Science Unlocked: Translating Research into Public Stewardship
When: Wednesday, May 27th 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

CSE Colloquium - Learning to Image: Computational Microscopy for Dynamic Systems
2026-05-27 11:00 - 12:30 | Engineering 2, Engineering 2 1156 High Street, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064
Presenter: Laura Waller, UC Berkeley
Abstract:
Computational imaging jointly designs hardware and algorithms to push beyond the classical limits of imaging, enabling measurement of new quantities (e.g. 3D, phase, and super-resolution) with simple, inexpensive hardware. These approaches have already transformed consumer photography; our goal is to achieve a similar transformation in scientific microscopy.
In this talk, I will show how end-to-end learning is reshaping the design of imaging systems, from programmable illumination with LED arrays to compact, lensless cameras built from Scotch tape. By combining physical models with neural networks, we can jointly learn how to capture data, reconstruct images, and self-calibrate systems that would otherwise be too complex to model. However, many computational methods rely on multiple measurements, limiting their use for live, dynamic samples. I will introduce new space-time algorithms based on implicit neural representations (INRs) that jointly recover structure and motion, correct artifacts, and enable high-resolution imaging in regimes where traditional approaches fail.
Bio:
Laura Waller is the Charles A. Desoer Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences at UC Berkeley. She received B.S., M.Eng. and Ph.D. degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2004, 2005 and 2010. After that, she was a Postdoctoral Researcher and Lecturer of Physics at Princeton University from 2010-2012. She is a Packard Fellow for Science & Engineering, Moore Foundation Data-driven Investigator, OSA Fellow, and Chan-Zuckerberg Biohub Investigator. She has received the Carol D. Soc Distinguished Graduate Mentoring Award, OSA Adolph Lomb Medal, the SPIE Early Career Award and the Max Planck-Humboldt Medal.
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]

Film Screening—Let the City Speak: The Sonic Journey of Quetzal—Arts Dean's Speaker Series
2026-05-27 12:00 - 13:30 | Digital Arts Research Center, 407 McHenry Rd, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064
Audiences are invited to Let the City Speak: The Sonic Journey of Quetzal—a conversation and panel discussion with filmmaker Akira Boch and Quetzal members Martha Gonzalez and Quetzal Flores. Introduced by Interim Dean and Professor of Film and Digital Media Lawrence Andrews. Conversation and panel discussion with UCSC Professors Russell Rodriguez and Felicity Amaya Schaeffer (4:00–6:00 p.m.) with reception (6:00–6:30 p.m.) immediately following the panel.
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ABOUT THE SERIES
This event is presented as part of the “Arts Dean’s Speaker Series,” an annual event focused on bringing together scholarship and practice related to critical issues of our time in the Arts, in order to expand our students’ imaginations on what is possible, the importance of ambition and aspiration and tackling real structural problems and exclusions in our society and in the arts.
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ADMISSION
– FREE and open to the public.
– REGISTER ON EVENTBRITE here for the 4:00 p.m. panel event due to limited venue capacity.
– Attend in person in the Dark Lab (DARC 108) at the Digital Arts Research Center at UC Santa Cruz.
– Doors open 30 minutes prior to the scheduled event start time.
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FULL SCHEDULE OF EVENTS
noon–1:30 p.m.: Film screening of Let the City Speak: The Sonic Journey of Quetzal (no registration needed for the screening)
4:00–6:30 p.m.: Conversation and panel discussion with UCSC Professors Russell Rodriguez and Felicity Amaya Schaeffer (4:00–6:00 p.m.) with reception (6:00–6:30 p.m.) immediately following the panel.

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PARKING
– Parking by UCSC 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.

Zheng, Y. (CSE) - Extending eBPF Beyond Kernel Extensions: Verified Interfaces for Runtime System Extensibility
2026-05-27 12:00 - 14:00
Modern system software increasingly needs runtime extensibility: userspace applications need safe ways to expose domain-specific extension points, GPU resource management needs workload-specific memory and scheduling policies, and kernel eBPF JIT compilers need different runtime optimizations as workloads and hardware vary. However, built-in policies are safe but difficult to specialize across rapidly changing workloads and hardware environments, limiting efficiency, while code modifications are flexible but difficult to deploy safely. This dissertation argues that verified eBPF interfaces can turn eBPF from a kernel-extension mechanism into a general substrate for safe runtime extensibility. In this model, trusted mechanisms expose narrow, constrained programmable hooks; extensions declare their requirements; verifier-enforced checks preserve safety; and execution remains low-overhead.
I develop this thesis through three systems spanning userspace applications, heterogeneous GPU subsystems, and the kernel eBPF compiler itself. EIM, implemented in bpftime, applies verified eBPF interfaces to userspace applications, allowing application behavior to be extended through explicit constraints and efficient userspace eBPF execution. gpu_ext extends the same idea to heterogeneous systems by exposing programmable resource management hooks for GPU memory and scheduling policy across driver and device. BpfReJIT with kinsn makes the eBPF JIT compiler itself extensible: it enables runtime-guided optimization through dynamic recompilation and extends eBPF bytecode to express diverse hardware capabilities. Together, these systems show how verified eBPF interfaces can support safe programmability, separation of policy and mechanisms, and runtime specialization across applications, GPU subsystems, and the kernel JIT infrastructure.
Event Host: Yusheng Zheng, Ph.D. Student, Computer Science & Engineering
Advisor: Andi Quinn
Zoom: 504 350 0245
Passcode: [REDACTED]

Career Success Drop-Ins at the Cantú - Week 9
2026-05-27 13:00 - 14:30 | Cantu Queer Center, Crown Lane, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064
Drop-in at the Cantú with Career Coach & Engagement Specialist Bridge Kennedy to discuss career exploration, job search strategy, interview prep, grad school prep, or whatever’s on your mind related to your career success!
If you need accommodations please email bridgekk@ucsc.edu

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.

Exhibit Opening Event! "Improvising in fields of constraint": How Feminist Studies at UCSC was made, changed and unmade"
2026-05-27 16:00 - 17:00 | McHenry Library, 1156 High St, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064
Join us on on May 27th from 4-5pm for the opening of “Improvising in fields of constraint”: How Feminist Studies at UCSC was made, changed and unmade”!
An April 9, 2026 press release from the U.S. Department of Education, titled, “Victories for Higher Education: Ending Gender Extremism and Cutting Underused Programs,” celebrated the closure of Gender Studies departments in U.S. universities. The closure of UCSC’s Feminist Studies department in July 2025 was listed as an example of the necessary end of an “underused,” “low-value” and “extremist” program of study that was “incapable of providing workforce-benefiting skills” to students. But for students, faculty, and staff, Feminist Studies was a center of intellectual and political life at UC Santa Cruz. The persistent struggle to make, define, change, and maintain the department over its 50-year history underscores feminisms’ continued significance in the university, even in a time of departmental closures and other forms of peril for the discipline.
This exhibit draws its title from feminist scholar Judith Butler’s evocative phrase in the book, Undoing Gender, which describes sexuality as an “improvisational possibility within a field of constraints.” The exhibit tracks the constraints within which UCSC’s Feminist Studies department took shape.
Curated by Madhavi Murty, Jess Fournier, Liliana Mata and Nithya Raghunath
We hope to see you then!

Panel Discussion—Let the City Speak: The Sonic Journey of Quetzal—Arts Dean's Speaker Series
2026-05-27 16:00 - 18:30 | Digital Arts Research Center, 407 McHenry Rd, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064

Your Next Degree: Graduate School
2026-05-27 17:00 - 18:30 | CA
Careers and academic interests often evolve over time, and many people choose to pursue graduate education after gaining experience in the workforce or further exploring their fields. Whether you are considering a master’s or PhD, in an academic or professional program, graduate school can be a powerful step toward advancing your goals, shifting career paths, or deepening your expertise.
This UCLA Alumni webinar will explore what it takes to apply to graduate school across a range of disciplines. The application process can differ significantly from other advanced degrees and depends on your individual goals and motivations. You will gain an overview of the process and timeline, hear from a representative from the UCLA Division of Graduate Education, and learn how to evaluate programs such as those offered through the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health. A UCLA Career Center representative will also share insights on how graduate education can help unlock future career opportunities.
Whether you are actively preparing an application or just beginning to consider graduate school, this session will help clarify the process and available pathways.
This program, hosted by UCLA, is open to UC alumni from all 10 campuses.
Website for additional information
Registration link

“So, There We Were...” – Celebrating the Untold Stories Behind the Discoveries
2026-05-27 17:00 - 19:30 | Hay Barn, 94 Ranch View Road, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064, United States
To celebrate another year of profound discoveries, uplifting unheard voices, and opening up the world for the next generation of students, the Academic Senate is planning a year-end celebratory event on Wednesday, May 27, 5-7:30 pm (week 9), at the Haybarn. But lest you think this is yet one more end-of-year academic event with mind-numbing presentations and hard-to-read powerpoint slides, think again. This Scholarly Event is an excuse for us to do what we never get to do: come together to share the real stories behind our work and, most of all, HAVE FUN! In this spirit we are launching a celebratory event to feature the true but unknown, the odd, the awkward, and just plain unbelievable stories behind our research:
“So, There We Were…”
Celebrating the Untold Stories Behind the Discoveries

These might be the adventures, misadventures, revelations, miscues, or simply the “you would never believe it all worked out” moments that we have all experienced but rarely talk about (at least not in public). These are the stories that our friends, neighbors, and students want to hear, but never would make it into scholarly publications or presentations. These are the stories we swap with our colleagues over drinks. While this event is intended primarily for faculty, the campus community and community members will be welcome to attend (in other words, feel free to bring your kids, your partner, your neighbors).

We are therefore soliciting applications (or nominations if you know someone—including yourself—who really needs to share that story) to regale your colleagues with details about “that time that…(fill in the blank),” while showing how those hidden moments shaped what finally came out of that research. This is meant to be a lighthearted and fun event, so while having the audience learn something about what you do and why it is SO COOL is very good, our focus will remain on humor, fun, and engaging tales. As the Ig Nobel Awards put it: “First make them laugh…then make them think!”

Presenters will give a ~10 min TED style talk. Talks must begin with the phrase “So, there we were” (or “So, there I was” ) and they should feature the adventurous, the bizarre, and ideally the humorous in your research. Absolutely no tedious PowerPoints, jargon, or literature background review will be allowed.

A reception will follow. Or it may precede, or even take place during, the event. But rest assured, we will be celebrating in style.

NB: There may well be prizes. But we have not gotten quite that far yet.

Build better chips
2026-05-27 18:00 - 19:00 | Silicon Valley Campus, 3175 Bowers Avenue, Santa Clara, CA, 95054, United States
Verify faster. Build better chips.
Semiconductor Design Info Session
Explore the fast-paced world of semiconductor design and verification, and how advanced tools—including AI—are transforming the industry.
At this info session, instructor Mandar Munishwar, a formal verification architect at the Intel Data Center and AI Division, will discuss his SystemVerilog Assertions and Formal Verification course which prepares you to write assertions, create verification test plans, and use simulation and formal tools to catch design issues early and improve first-pass silicon success.
Discover how this hands-on, lab-based course builds practical skills in SystemVerilog, assertion-based verification, and formal verification using industry-standard tools like VCS and VC Formal. You’ll better understand emerging trends such as AI-assisted assertion generation and debugging.
See how this course in the UCSC Silicon Valley Extension Semiconductor Design program can help advance your career in chip design and verification engineering.
Claim your seat!
You might also be interested in:

Physical Design Flow From Netlist to GDSII | June 5
Practical Design with Xilinx FPGAs | June 15
System and Functional Verification Using UVM | June 18
SystemVerilog Assertions and Formal Verification | June 22
Advanced Verification with SystemVerilog OOP Testbench | June 25
Comprehensive Signal and Power Integrity for High-Speed Digital Systems | June 25

Lounge 'n Lei
2026-05-27 18:30 - 20:00 | Terry Freitas Commons, 600 McLaughlin Dr. College Nine, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064
Join AA/PIRC and APISA on Wednesday, May 27th from 6:30-8pm at Terry Freitas Commons to learn about the significance of different leis in Pasifika culture before making your own candy, ribbon, and ti leaf leis!
Register at bit.ly/aapirc-lei
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.

Social Services & Health Opportunities with Aspiranet
2026-05-28 10:00 - 23:30 | Social Sciences 1, Social Sciences 1, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064
Get hired for a social services or health related job!
Aspiranet, a Californian, public services nonprofit will answer questions, talk about career advancement in social services, and share how you can help move Hope Forward in your community.
Aspiranet has become one of California’s largest and most successful social service organizations. Aspiranet is a 501 (c) (3) California nonprofit organization with the mission of providing children, youth, and families with a foundation of support so they can thrive at home, at school, and in their communities.
Check out some of the opportunities all over California: Aspiranet’s Internal Job Board
COME & GO! (you don’t have to be at the event the whole time).
If you need accommodations please email slugtalent@ucsc.edu

YOU BELONG HERE
Programs and services 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.

Oh, S. (CSE) - Efficient Instruction Supply for Datacenter Processors
2026-05-28 11:00 - 12:00 | Engineering 2, Engineering 2 1156 High Street, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064
Modern datacenter CPUs lose 25–66% of execution cycles to instruction-delivery stalls. This bottleneck persists, despite the recent trend towards accelerators and GPUs, as there is continuing demand by applications that only execute on CPUs. Two workload classes dominate today’s datacenter execution cycles: hyperscale server software (databases, build systems, and content stores), whose large instruction footprints create severe frontend pathologies; and agentic AI systems, in which large-language-model agents plan, dispatch tools, and maintain growing conversational contexts, causing CPUs to account for up to 88% of end-to-end agent latency. Reflecting this shift, major CPU vendors have publicly repositioned the CPU as the orchestration layer of the AI stack and have begun shipping processors optimized for agent-centric workloads.
This dissertation argues that instruction delivery is the dominant CPU bottleneck across both workload classes and that the recent trend towards agentic AI further exacerbates this challenge. In hyperscale server binaries, the primary pathologies are wrong-path prefetch pollution and post-recovery instruction-delivery gaps across large, irregular call graphs. In agentic AI systems, the bottleneck shifts to an orchestration substrate composed of protocol stacks, dynamic-runtime dispatch, and agent-specific extensions that is even more frontend-bound than traditional warehouse-scale workloads.
To address these bottlenecks, this dissertation presents three technical contributions, together with a companion infrastructure contribution. First, Utility-Driven Prefetching (UDP) extends fetch-directed instruction prefetching (FDIP) with a learned per-prefetch utility model that admits candidates based on their historical contribution to demand-fetch hits, including those reached along wrong-path execution. Second, Junction-based Unified Miss-point Prefetching (JUMP) addresses the post-recovery instruction-delivery gap that UDP and prior FDIP optimizations cannot reach by launching a lightweight secondary FDIP thread at a learned miss point following each branch-prediction failure. Across a suite of datacenter workloads, UDP improves IPC by 3.6% on average (up to 16.1%) over a state-of-the-art FDIP baseline, while JUMP improves IPC by 2.0% on average (up to 14.9%). Combined, the two mechanisms substantially close the gap between FDIP and a perfect L1 instruction cache at a storage cost of only a few tens of kilobytes.
Third, this dissertation introduces the Agentic Tax, the first CPU characterization study of agentic AI workloads across three runtime families. The study is packaged as a deterministic-replay benchmark infrastructure that enables repeatable, cycle-level evaluation under controlled conditions. The characterization shows that the orchestration substrate of agentic AI workloads is significantly more frontend-bound than the hyperscale datacenter workloads examined in prior work, and that it introduces new dominant function families with no analog in traditional warehouse-scale systems. These findings motivate two architectural directions proposed as future work: extending UDP and JUMP to optimize the orchestration substrate itself, and designing heterogeneous CPU cores that allocate frontend resources according to the execution phase.
Event Host: Surim Oh, Ph.D. Candidate, Computer Science & Engineering
Advisor: Heiner Litz
Zoom: https://ucsc.zoom.us/j/94753352649?pwd=[REDACTED]
Passcode: [REDACTED]

BME 280B Seminar: 4th Year Grad Talks
2026-05-28 11:40 - 13:15 | Biomedical Sciences Building, 575 McLaughlin Drive
Please join us for our BME 280B seminar series Thursday (5/28/26) in person at Biomed 200. The event will run from 11:40 AM to 1:15 PM and feature our 4th year grad talks.

11:40AM – 11:50AM: Ivana Pacar
11:53AM – 12:03PM: Jesus Gonzalez Ferrer
12:06PM – 12:16PM: Connor Mattingly
12:19PM – 12:29PM: Samira Vera
12:32PM – 12:42PM: Nick Chu
12:45PM – 12:55PM: Julian Menendez
12:58PM – 1:08PM: Parsa Eskandar

Ortiz Barbosa, D. (CSE) - HARDENING AUTONOMOUS CYBER-PHYSICAL SYSTEMS AGAINST ADVERSARIAL CONDITIONS
2026-05-28 12:00 - 14:00 | Engineering 2, Engineering 2 1156 High Street, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064
Autonomous systems, such as Autonomous Vehicles (AVs) and drones, are increasingly
deployed across a wider array of contexts for both civilian and military use. As these
systems become more common, they may be targeted by malicious actors seeking to
exploit and abuse them, compromising safety-critical operations. Among the ways to
protect these systems simulation based testing frameworks have been developed. How-
ever, existing testing frameworks primarily focus on identifying logical flaws or system
vulnerabilities, often emphasizing static scenarios and paying less attention to an adap-
tive intelligent adversary.
To help reduce this gap, this dissertation develops and applies adaptive, adversary-
aware methodologies to discover, formalize, and mitigate security vulnerabilities in au-
tonomous systems spanning vehicle platooning, drone swarms, and vision-based drone
recovery. We first apply NLP techniques to discover and formalize driving rules across
North American and Australian jurisdictions, identifying possible restriction that an
adversary can exploit. Likewise, these rules can be used to test the adaptability of AVs
to new contexts and to establish a formal basis for context-aware AV testing. Next,
we apply optimization-based adversarial search to both ACC-controlled vehicle pla-
toons and obstacle-avoiding drone swarms. We uncover maneuvers that an adversary
can use against the system that range from crash-inducing patterns against platooning
controllers to herding strategies that divert swarms from their objectives. Finally, to
address the gap regarding the possible solutions to an adversarial attack we explore how
a drone can recover from it by using LVLMs to understand its context and select a safe
landing surface.
Event Host: Diego Ortiz Barbosa, Ph.D. Candidate, Computer Science & Engineering
Advisor: Alvaro A Cardenas

Yang, D. (CSE) - Inner Monologue: a Pathway to Human-Like Reasoning for Complex Tasks
2026-05-28 13:00 - 15:00 | Silicon Valley Campus, 3175 Bowers Avenue, Santa Clara, CA, 95054, United States
A central goal on the path toward general AI is to build systems capable of deliberative reasoning before action. Such systems should inspect what they know, identify what they need, seek or construct useful information, and revise their reasoning through intermediate cognitive states. This dissertation studies this goal through the lens of Inner Monologue (IM), a mechanism that enables AI systems to coordinate internal components, acquire external information, and reason through structured intermediate states.
I will first introduce IM as a mechanism for internal coordination in static information systems, where multiple models collaborate within one AI system to solve reasoning tasks. I will then extend IM to dynamic information systems, where AI system is learned to retrieve external information. Finally, I will present how IM can move beyond verbal reasoning toward multimodal thinking, where generated visual states represent the system’s current understanding and support iterative refinement.
Together, this dissertation demonstrates the success and potential of human-inspired Inner Monologue mechanisms for improving complex multi-step reasoning in AI systems.
Event Host: Diji Yang, Ph.D. Candidate, Computer Science & Engineering
Advisor: Yi Zhang
Zoom: https://ucsc.zoom.us/j/99915235963?pwd=[REDACTED]
Passcode: [REDACTED]
