Events

Barnstorm Presents—1972: The Future of Sex
2025-11-20 19:30 - 21:30, 2025-11-21 19:30 - 21:30, 2025-11-22 19:30 - 21:30, 2025-11-23 15:00 - 17:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | Theater Arts Center, 453 Kerr Road, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064
It is 1972: an era of possibility and polyester and pubic hair. While Ziggy Stardust is on Top of the Pops, Penny is writing an essay on Lady Chatterley’s Lover, Christine is watching Deep Throat and Brian is confused. Devised by The Wardrobe Ensemble, 1972: The Future of Sex incorporates the company’s trademark theatricality, irreverent humour and ensemble ingenuity to tell the story of three couples having sex for the first time—and a country on the brink of a sexual awakening. Commissioned by Shoreditch Town Hall, the play was first seen there in 2014, before a UK tour in 2015, including performances at Bristol Old Vic and the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. It was revived at the Bristol Old Vic in 2019.
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ADMISSION
– General admission “Pay What You Like” options $5–20
– Free for UCSC undergraduate students (ticket required).
– Tickets issued through Eventbrite; 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.
– Ticket holders not seated at least 10 minutes before the advertised start time may forfeit their ticket/seat and no refund will be issued.
– A limited number of tickets/seats may be available at the door, even after online ticket sales end or reach full capacity.
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FULL SCHEDULE OF EVENTS
This production runs for two weekends and includes six performances:
Fri. Nov. 14: 7:30 p.m.
Sat. Nov. 15: 7:30 p.m.
Sun. Nov. 16: 3:00 p.m.
Thu. Nov. 20: 7:30 p.m.
Fri. Nov. 21: 7:30 p.m.
Sat. Nov. 22: 7:30 p.m.
Sun. Nov. 23: 3:00 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.

Operation Unplug! Pledge to Leave Campus Sustainability this Winter Break
2025-11-21 00:00 - 2025-12-20 23:59, 2025-11-22 00:00 - 2025-12-21 23:59, 2025-11-23 00:00 - 2025-12-22 23:59, 2025-11-24 00:00 - 2025-12-23 23:59 | CA
UCSC Energy Management and the Sustainability Office are leading the first annual “Operation Unplug” campaign to conserve energy (and reduce greenhouse gas emissions) during winter break. Before leaving your residence hall, apartment, or office, please unplug any fridges or minifridges, computers and/or monitors, power strips, and all other energy intensive appliances or equipment! Take the pledge and/or upload a photo of what you unplugged to the campaign’s google form for raffle entries to win one of two $50 gift certificates. Recruit your friends and coworkers for an additional entry each and try to be the winning building (the building with the most participants is guaranteed one raffle winner)! Operation Unplug is open to all students, staff, and faculty. Be the slug that pulls the plug!

Road Trip! Light in the American West, from Baja to the Yukon
2025-11-21 12:00 - 17:00, 2025-11-22 12:00 - 17:00, 2025-11-24 12:00 - 17:00 | Eloise Pickard Smith Gallery, 11 Cowell Service Rd, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064
The photographs in this exhibition, made between 2004 and 2025, span across the American West from the Baja California Peninsula in Mexico to The Yukon territory in Canada. Paul Schoellhamer’s (Cowell ‘69) color photographs invite us to travel with him and reflect on our relationship to land, the light that shapes it, and the freedom – contested but essential – to move across it.
The exhibition draws on voices across time and perspective that frame the American landscape as more than a stage for beauty and awe. For Chief Satanta of the Kiowa Nation, to roam the land freely was life itself. For N. Scott Momaday, land must be “believed to be seen.” For Eliot Porter, light and reflection imparted magic to Glen Canyon’s waters. For Wallace Stegner, saving natural places meant saving fragments of our collective sanity. For Brook M. Thompson, the Klamath River is recognized with personhood. Alongside these perspectives, Paul’s images press us to see public land not as scenery to extract or aestheticize, but as sustenance and history. Land is alive and contested. To see closely is not to linger on a romanticized vision of the American landscape, but to reckon with responsibility: how we safeguard access, how we imagine “wildness,” and how we hold space for futures beyond our own. For Paul, this exhibition is a call for students to encounter land and light firsthand and let those encounters be their teachers.
Opening Reception
October 4, 2025
1-4pm
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Join us every Friday for Art Fridays.
No experience necessary. Supplies and snacks provided.

Sep 26 Snail Mail/Postcards
Oct 3 Souvenir Keychains
Oct 10 Stamp Magnets
Oct 17 Cyanotype Totebags/Pouches/Pencil cases
Oct 24 Candy Around The World Linocuts
Oct 31 Abstract Felt Collages
Nov 7 Phone Photos/Buttons
Nov 14 Travel Related Patches With Upcycled Materials
Nov 21 Thanksgiving Break! No Art Friday
Nov 28 Unexpected Landscape Surrealist Collage

Please note that the date and the project is subject to change.

Ramollari, H. (ECE) - An Optofluidic Spectrometer and Applications in Biosensing
2025-11-21 12:30 - 14:00 | Engineering 2, Engineering 2 1156 High Street, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064
Miniaturized spectrometers have the potential to replace bulky and expensive benchtop models. We have previously demonstrated a multimode interference (MMI) waveguide-based spectrometer that achieves high performance while minimizing its footprint.
In this talk, the integration of the MMI spectrometer into an optofluidic device is proposed. This integration opens up applications such as the detection of single particle fluorescence spectra and absorption spectra.
Moreover, adding a metasurface to the spectrometer waveguide is expected to enhance the sensitivity of single particle detection and simplify the analysis methods.
Finally, to improve the MMI waveguide spectrometer a new nanophotonic platform is proposed.
Event Host: Helio Ramollari, Ph.D. Student, Electrical Engineering
Advisor: Holger Schmidt
Zoom- https://ucsc.zoom.us/j/99623652977?pwd=[REDACTED]
Passcode- 576057

Torres, S. (ECE) - An Integrated Platform for Real-time Monitoring and Support of 3D Tissue Growth
2025-11-21 14:00 - 16:00
Organoids are three-dimensional tissue cultures that model real organs and serve as valuable tools for studying development, disease, and treatment response. Traditional methods, which rely on manual handling and incubators, limit consistency and real-time monitoring. To address these issues, we developed a modular microfluidic platform that integrates automated feeding, live fluorescence imaging, and environmental control without the need for a standard incubator. The core of the system is a vertically oriented PDMS-glass chip that enables precise media delivery and continuous imaging of small 3D structures such as organoids. Using fluorescent dyes to mimic molecules, such as nutrients or drugs, we tracked their movement through tissue in real time without invasive sensors. This setup maintains metabolic stability and provides detailed insight into molecular transport, which improves applications in disease modeling, drug testing, and personalized medicine.

Event Host- Sebastián Torres, Ph.D. Candidate, Electrical & Computer Engineering
Advisor: Mircea Teodorescu

Zoom- https://ucsc.zoom.us/j/2333595627?pwd=[REDACTED]
Passcode- 579836

Fall Academic Senate Meeting
2025-11-21 14:30 - 17:00 | Stevenson Event Center, Stevenson Service Road, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064
Agenda and information coming soon.

Trans Day of Remembrance Vigil: The Sound of Holding On
2025-11-21 17:30 - 20:30 | Resource Center for Nonviolence, 612 Ocean Street, Santa Cruz, CA
A healing evening featuring trans/nonbinary artists, dancers, and musicians to honor the trans and nonbinary lives lost to violence in the last 12 months—short reception to follow. Allies welcome. Attendees encouraged to contribute to the altar dedicated to trans lives.
RSVP in advance.
You Belong Here: The programs and services described here are open to all, consistent with state and federal law, as well as the University of California’s nondiscrimination policies. Every initiative—whether a student service, faculty program, or community event—is designed to be accessible, inclusive, and respectful of all identities.
To learn more, please visit UC Nondiscrimination Statement or Nondiscrimination Policy for UC Publications.

The SpongeBob Musical
2025-11-21 19:30 - 21:30, 2025-11-22 14:00 - 17:00, 2025-11-22 19:30 - 21:30, 2025-11-23 14:00 - 17:00 | Theater Arts Mainstage, 411 Kerr Road, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064
The SpongeBob Musical is a Broadway production based on the popular animated series, SpongeBob SquarePants. It premiered in Chicago in 2016 and then debuted on Broadway in 2017, receiving 12 Tony Award nominations. The musical tells the story of SpongeBob and his friends in Bikini Bottom as they face the potential destruction of their town by a volcano, with songs written by David Bowie, Cyndi Lauper, The Flaming Lips, and more.
Directed by Rebecca Wear, assistant professor
Musical Direction by Luke Shepherd, lecturer
Choreography by Cid Pearlman, lecturer
Read more about this production on Lookout Santa Cruz.
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AUDIENCE ADVISORIES
– 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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ADMISSION
– Free for UCSC undergrads (ticket required).
– General admission “Pay What You Like” tickets $5–25
– Tickets issued online through Eventbrite only.
– 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.
—
FULL SCHEDULE OF EVENTS
This is a two-week production with nine performances, including :
Fri. Nov. 14: 7:30 p.m.
Sat. Nov. 15: 2:00 p.m. & 7:30 p.m.
Sun. Nov. 16: 2:00 p.m.
Thu. Nov. 20: 7:30 p.m.
Fri. Nov. 21: 7:30 p.m.
Sat. Nov. 22: 2:00 p.m. & 7:30 p.m.
Sun. Nov. 23: 2:00 p.m.
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PARKING
– Parking by permit, ParkMobile, or $5 cash/credit via the on-site parking attendant
– 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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DONATIONS welcome!
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UCSC Wind Ensemble
2025-11-21 19:30 - 21:30 | Music Center Recital Hall, 400 McHenry Road, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064
Join the UC Santa Cruz Wind Ensemble for a fall concert.
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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.
—
PARKING
– Parking by permit, ParkMobile, or $5 cash/credit via the on-site parking attendant
– 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.

Holiday Gift & Wreath Sale Fundraiser
2025-11-22 10:00 - 16:00 | Arboretum, 122 Arboretum Road, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064
Holiday Gift & Wreath Sale Fundraiser
at the UCSC Arboretum and Botanic Garden

Saturday, November 22, 10am – 4pm
Early entrance for Arboretum members: 9am-10am
Staff will be available to sign up new members at 8:45am
The Arboretum is located at
120 Arboretum Rd., Santa Cruz, CA 95064
midway between the entrances to the UCSC Campus
Featuring handmade holiday gifts and decorations unlike anything you’ve seen!
Arboretum artists have been busy for months creating stunning succulent and dried flower wreaths and works of art for this enchanting Arboretum fundraiser. This is the only collection you will find that draws from the Arboretum’s rare and extraordinary collection of amazing plants!
These items make the perfect gifts and decorations that will last throughout the holidays. In addition to beautiful wreaths and fantastic centerpieces made from Arboretum blossoms and foliage, offerings will include succulent and tillandsia driftwood pieces and terrariums; stunning items created by local artisan woodworkers, dish gardens of all sizes, and more!
The UC Santa Cruz Arboretum is a 60-year-old treasure and beloved destination for the central coast and local community that seeks to inspire stewardship of the world’s biodiversity through research, education, and the conservation of rare, endangered, and extraordinary plants.
arboretum.ucsc.edu

UCSC Chamber Singers
2025-11-22 19:30 - 21:30 | Music Center Recital Hall, 400 McHenry Road, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064
The UCSC Chamber Singers, under the direction of Michael McGushin, perform Brahms’s Liebeslieder Waltzes and Debussy’s Trois Chanson. The performance includes student soloists, and the pianists Luke Shepherd and Vlada Moran.
ADMISSION
– General admission $5–12
– 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.
—
PARKING
– Parking by permit, ParkMobile, or $5 cash/credit via the on-site parking attendant
– 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.

Campus Clean-Up Day 2025
2025-11-23 11:00 - 13:00 | Porter College, D-Building, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064
Please join us for a student-run Sustainability Office Campus CleanUp! Our meet-up spot will be in front of the Porter Squiggle! We’ll be picking up litter, beautifying our campus, and celebrating with some snacks and prizes. Bring a friend, and help us save the planet!
Link to RSVP: https://forms.gle/4t7cWRHy5Bw15FVm9
Instagram Flyer with information: https://www.instagram.com/p/DQqFu3_iQF3/

Santa Cruz Pickwick Club presents: Bleak House
2025-11-23 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.

Barn Dance at the Hay Barn
2025-11-23 15:00 - 17:00 | Hay Barn, 94 Ranch View Road, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064, United States
The UCSC Celtic Music Ensemble performs live during a beginner-friendly, gender-neutral, darn good barn dance. Attendees are invited to dance, and partners are not needed.
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ADMISSION
– Open admission; tickets/registration not required.
– FREE and open to the public.
– Donations of any amount are welcomed and appreciated to support to support live music study, performance, and events like this.
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PARKING
– Parking by permit or ParkMobile.
– Lot #170 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 staff, faculty, and students consistent with state and federal law.

Chen, Q. (CSE) - New Approximation and Online Algorithms using Novel Combinatorial Structures
2025-11-24 09:30 - 11:30
Most optimization problems face the challenge of computing an optimum solution requiring superpolynomial time. In particular, they are classified as NP-hard problems that have no polynomial-time algorithm to date. Instead, computer scientists turn to find an approximate solution and create numerous elegant algorithms. However, in the modern era, computational environments have changed drastically, and we are not able to afford to design new algorithms for each new problem via repeated trial and error. Therefore, systematic ways to understand the possibilities and limitations of these problems are desired. This dissertation studies several central combinatorial optimization problems, focusing on understanding the key structural obstacles and developing unified frameworks. Mainly, we study two types of combinatorial optimization problems:
(1) Scheduling. The problem is associated with limited resources, and our target is to find an allocation method to complete all jobs over time that minimizes the overall budget cost.
(2) Network Design. Different from scheduling problems. In this problem, we aim to find a minimum-cost topological network that supports routing for demanding communications.
Our first work is focused on a group-to-group survivable network design problem that generalizes the classic point-to-point network to support routing between any pair of subsets of nodes. Previous research stops at limited faults, and the difficulty comes from the way to compress the graph into a tree. We propose a new framework via capacitated tree embeddings against arbitrary faults in the network, which gives the first polylogarithmic approximation algorithm. Further, this framework captures nearly all the recent models proposed in the area.
In contrast to the offline optimization problems mentioned above, online algorithms are natural adaptations that have been found in tremendous real applications. In online algorithms, the algorithm wants to compete against arbitrary uncertainty, which means the instance is unknown at first and revealed over time. We study various scheduling problems and focus on some important metrics – average flow time, which measures the average time a job stays in the system from its arrival to completion. Real-world demands give online scheduling problems enormously different settings. Computer scientists need to repeat errors and trials to find a provably good solution. We find the key required combinatorial property is supermodularity for the residual objective, which measures the average completion time for all alive jobs assuming they have the same arrival time. Further, we relate supermodularity with gross-substitute/linear-substitute (GS/LS), which is a well-studied definition in economics. Finally, we propose a meta-algorithm that solves all captured problems in one shot.
Event Host: Qingyun Chen, Ph.D. Student, Computer Science and Engineering
Advisor: Sungjin Im
Zoom- https://ucsc.zoom.us/j/94376536164?pwd=[REDACTED]

ECE 290 Seminar: Fundamental Nanopower Analog Circuits
2025-11-24 10:40 - 11:45 | CA
Presenter: Joey Sankman, Analog/Power Designer, Analog Devices
Description: With the rising interest in edge computing, and the addition of AI/ML functionality, nanopower circuits are in great demand to reduce the quiescent power consumption of remote sensors. In this tutorial, fundamental building blocks for nanopower circuits will be covered, including startup-less low-voltage references, low-frequency clocks, and LDO regulators. Attendees can expect a deep dive into fundamental and practical analog techniques to design nanopower systems.
Bio: Joey Sankman received the B.S. degree from the University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, and Ph.D. degree from the University of Texas at Dallas, TX in electrical engineering in 2010 and 2014, respectively. At the University of Texas at Dallas, his research included energy harvesting circuits and systems as well as high-performance switch mode power converters. He is currently an analog/power designer at Analog Devices, Principal Member of Technical Staff, working on automotive PMICs. Previously, he was an Analog R&D Engineer working on audio amplifiers, ultra-low power circuits, and radhard gate drivers at Kilby Labs, TI, Dallas, TX. He was the recipient of the U.S. National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship and the 2011 Texas Instruments/Semiconductor Research Corporation Graduate Fellowship. He has authored or co-authored 20 publications in various IEEE journals and conferences. He currently serves on the IEEE ISSCC power subcommittee.
Hosted by: Professor Soumya Bose, ECE Department
Zoom Link: https://ucsc.zoom.us/j/97975378707?pwd=[REDACTED]

Boundaries & Communication: International Grad Student Circle
2025-11-24 13:00 - 15:00 | Graduate Student Commons, 420 Hagar Drive, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064
Boundaries & Communication: International Grad Student Circle
Date: Monday, November 24
Time: 1–3 p.m.
Location: Graduate Student Commons (above Cafe Iveta in Quarry Plaza)
Description: Join CARE, International Student Services & Programs, and the Grad Student Commons for lunch and conversation about boundaries, culture, and healthy professional relationships. This event centers international graduate students and is a space for all UCSC graduate students to come together and have conversations about culture, communication, & professional boundaries. Catered lunch from At Thai Recipe will be provided, and RSVP is encouraged! For any questions or accommodation requests, please email care_pec@ucsc.edu
RSVP: tinyurl.com/GradCircle25

AM Seminar: Linear Stochastic Emulators of the Ocean Circulation based on Balanced Truncation: A Caution, perhaps, for Machine Learning?
2025-11-24 16:00 - 17:00 | CA
Presenter: Professor Andy Moore, UCSC Ocean Sciences
Description: Linear inverse models have enjoyed considerable popularity in the geosciences, particularly in the arena of climate research and climate prediction, for several decades as a straightforward approach to dimension reduction and streamlining computational efficiency. The most common approach is to truncate the system by retaining the leading Empirical Orthogonal Functions (EOFs) which represent the left singular vectors of the transition matrix. While singular value decomposition is the best low rank approximation of the transition matrix, ignoring information contained in the right singular vectors, as is commonly done in linear inverse models, has consequences for the dynamics that approximate the system. Dimension reduction based on balanced truncation simultaneously preserves information from the right and left singular vectors. This talk will review some of these ideas and present examples from the ocean. Since EOF decomposition is quite commonly used for dimension reduction in some machine learning approaches, there may be some lessons here for the machine learning community to consider.
Bio: Professor at UCSC since 2016.
Hosted by: Professor Julie Simons

Crown/Merrill Peer Advising: Drop-in Zoom
2025-11-24 19:30 - 21:00 | https://events.ucsc.edu/event/crown-merrill-peer-advising-presents-drop-in-zoom/2025-11-24/
Questions about Winter enrollment? Drop into the Peer Advisors’ Zoom to get some Minty Cool advise!
