Events

Osorio, S. (AM) - Image-Based Wound Infection Classification
2025-08-19 10:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | Engineering 2, Engineering 2 1156 High Street, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064
This thesis investigates the use of deep learning for classifying wound infections from photographic images, using colony-forming unit (CFU) counts as a quantitative labeling standard. Leveraging the visual information in wound photographs and the clinical relevance of bacterial burden, the study implements a multi-task U-Net architecture for both image reconstruction and binary classification in a shared-encoder framework. Three experimental conditions were explored: one using original images with positive class weighting, one incorporating data augmentation to enhance visual diversity, and one employing 5-fold cross-validation with augmentation to improve validation reliability. The non-augmented model achieved 91.7% accuracy at a threshold of 0.8, correctly identifying 4 of 5 infected cases, while Experiment 2 achieved 87.5% accuracy at a moderate threshold of 0.5 but became more conservative at higher thresholds. The third experiment reached 79.6% accuracy at a threshold of 0.3, detecting all 11 infected cases despite signs of overfitting. These results highlight the model's strong performance in minimizing false negatives, particularly in the non-augmented setting, but also reflect limitations from the small dataset, class imbalance, and reliance on a small validation set. These factors suggest results should be interpreted cautiously and motivate further study with larger datasets, improved regularization, and more varied clinical scenarios.
Event Host: Sebastian Osorio, M.S. Candidate, Scientific Computing & Applied Mathematics
Advsior: Marcella Gomez

Programming with Rust
2025-08-19 12:00
Join us in learning more about Rust, one of the fastest-growing programming languages, which continues to be ranked the most-loved language by its users. Its user base, aka “Rustaceans,” has tripled in just two years as more and more software products are being developed in Rust.
In this fast-paced virtual overview with Danesh Forouhari, we’ll talk about:

The history of Rust
Problems Rust solves
Comparing Rust to other programming languages
Benchmarking data (vs. C & Go)
The good, the bad, and the ugly of programming with Rust
Running some sample Rust code, if time permits

Speaker
Danesh Forouhari, M.S., has more than 20 years of experience in the software development industry. He teaches Python for Programmers.
This fall info session is sponsored by the UCSC Silicon Valley Professional Education Computer Programming certificate program.

Moreland, Z. (AM) - Transcriptomic and Computational Analysis of Burn and Excisional Wound Healing
2025-08-19 13:00 | Jack Baskin Engineering, Baskin Engineering 1156 High Street, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064
Accurate assessment of wound healing progress is critical for optimizing patient care and preventing complications, yet clinicians currently lack precise tools to determine where a wound stands in the healing timeline. Wound healing progresses through overlapping stages of inflammation, proliferation, and maturation, each marked by characteristic shifts in gene expression that are difficult to interpret without robust computational methods. This paper proposes to classify wound healing stages from transcriptomic data using support vector machines combined with biologically informed clustering to serve as features for the hierarchical SVM classifiers. This approach is applied to two distinct wound types: excisional wounds in pigs (21-day timeline) and burn wounds in mice (42-day timeline), enabling comparison of classification performance across different injury mechanisms. The models achieved high overall accuracy, with the burn model performing better at the classification of the stages. Both models made mistakes in distinguishing inflammation from early proliferation, highlighting the inherent biological overlap between these transitional healing stages. Overall, we find that transcriptomic-based classification can reliably identify wound healing stages across different wound types, providing a foundation for developing personalized diagnostic tools that could transform clinical wound management and improve patient outcomes.
Event Host: Zoe Moreland, M.S. Candidate, Applied Mathematics
Advisor: Marcella Gomez

Bhatia, N. (CSE) - Building Adaptive Intelligence into Wireless Sensing
2025-08-19 14:00 | Engineering 2, Engineering 2 1156 High Street, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064
WiFi-based indoor positioning is a widely researched area focused on determining the location of devices. Accurate indoor positioning has numerous applications, including asset tracking and indoor navigation. Despite advances, their adoption in practice remains limited due to several challenges such as environmental changes that cause signal fading, multipath effects, and interference, all of which reduce positioning accuracy. Moreover, telemetry data vary across WiFi device vendors, presenting distinct features and formats, while use-case requirements can also differ significantly. At present, there is no unified model capable of handling these variations effectively.
We present WiFiGPT, a decoder-only transformer-based system designed to address these variations while achieving high localization accuracy. Our experiments with WiFiGPT show that it can effectively capture subtle spatial patterns in noisy wireless telemetry, making them reliable regressors. Compared to state-of-the-art methods, our approach matches and often surpasses conventional techniques across multiple types of telemetry. Achieving sub-meter accuracy for RSSI and FTM and centimeter-level precision for CSI highlights the potential of LLM-based localization to outperform specialized methods, without the need for handcrafted signal processing or calibration. Other work includes EchoSense, which utilizes CSI to monitor vital signs such as heart rate and respiration with high accuracy.
Event Host: Nayan Bhatia, PhD Student, Computer Science & Engineering
Advisor: Katia Obraczka

Swaby, A. (ECE) - Improving X-ray Medical Imaging using Amorphous Selenium as a Photoconductive Layer
2025-08-19 14:00 | Engineering 2, Engineering 2 1156 High Street, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064
The presence of coronary artery calcification is a strong predictor for future cardiovascular events where cardiac risk categories are quantified depending on calcification size. Dual-energy chest X-rays provide high contrast visualization to improve opportunistic screening for quantifying coronary artery calcifications, determining bone mineral density (i.e., osteoporosis) and characterizing lung lesions. As a dual-energy imaging modality, multilayer flat panel detectors acquire low- and high-energy X-ray images as a polyenergetic, single-exposure. Combining two detectors into a dual-layer configuration, weighted subtraction techniques in the resulting images allow for differentiation of soft tissue from the projection of the bone structures and other high attenuating materials. To improve detection of calcifications < 1 mm in size, the performance of a dual-layer X-ray detector is investigated as a means of providing the necessary μm-resolution and spectral separation for enhanced contrast between low- and high-energy X-ray images. A cascaded linear systems model is used to simulate the modulation transfer function, detective quantum efficiency, and noise power spectrum of an amorphous selenium direct conversion top detector and a cesium iodide-based indirect conversion bottom detector. As the framework for system design and optimization, a generalized task-based analysis is used to analyze how the signal projections, noise contributions, task function, and weighting factors contribute to the detectability index of the dual-layer imaging system.
Event Host: Akyl Swaby, PhD Candidate, Electrical & Computer Engineering
Advisor: Dr. Shiva Abbaszadeh

All UC Alumni Networking Mixer in Central California
2025-08-20 17:30
Alumni from all 10 University of California campuses are invited to our friendly and open networking mixer at a UC alumni-owned winery in Central California.

Project and Program Management Info Session
2025-08-20 18:00
Project Leadership with Tim Bombosch
Join Program Chair Tim Bombosch for UCSC Silicon Valley’s Project and Program Management certificate, where you'll learn from PMI®-certified experts leading teams across top Silicon Valley companies. Gain the tools and strategies to define goals, estimate costs, manage risk, and deliver successful outcomes
.
Master Real-World Management Skills
Build expertise in both traditional and agile methods—Scrum, Kanban, SAFe, and more. This program satisfies PMI® training requirements and prepares you for the PMP® and CAPM® exams while equipping you to lead teams and drive results in today’s fast-paced business environment.

This fall info session is sponsored by the Project and Program Management Certificate program.

HireUC Alumni Career Summit
2025-08-21 11:00
About the career summit
The HireUC Alumni Career Summit, in partnership with Hire Talent, is a hiring event organized for University of California (UC) alumni who are looking for early- and mid-level career opportunities. It offers a special chance for alumni to connect with employers from diverse fields and industries.

HireUC Alumni Career Fair
2025-08-21 12:00
The HireUC Alumni Career Fair is a hiring event designed for University of California alumni who are looking for early-and mid-level career opportunities. It offers a special chance for alumni to connect with employers from diverse fields and industries. Alumni from all 10 UC campuses are invited. UC alumni can attend the fair for free, but it’s important to register in advance to secure participation.
About Hire Talent

Since 2014, over 100,000+ attendees to Hire Talent Events
Created 1,000s of new careers
50% bachelors / 40% masters / 10% doctorate
Average experience of attendees: 6 years
500+ University Partners
25 Cities

Questions

Jeffrey Nortman jeff@gohiretalent.com
Patricia Nguyen, Director of Systemwide UC Santa Cruz Alumni & Diversity Initiatives patricia.nguyen@ucop.edu

Employers
If you work for a company looking to connect with alumni from the University of California graduating from various majors, degrees and career levels, please use the Employer Registration tab to get participate as a recruiter. Employer registration is open to all employers not just UC Alumni.

Briden, M. (CSE) - Representation Learning and Generative Forecasting for Noisy and Limited Clinical Data: Applications in Wound Healing and EEG
2025-08-21 13:00 | Engineering 2, Engineering 2 1156 High Street, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064
The rapid integration of artificial intelligence and machine learning into clinical practice has driven advances in disease classification, segmentation, and clinical decision support. However, the complexities of medical data pose a challenge to widespread adoption. The rarity of medical conditions, ethical considerations, and varying acquisition protocols leads to limited and noisy data. The time-intensive process of labeling data, the high degree of accuracy required in clinical settings, and the ill-defined nature of certain medical conditions further complicate the application and deployment of machine learning models. Likewise, high‐stakes medical decisions demand trustworthy and interpretable predictions. However, prioritizing trust and explainability is rarely a primary objective in most model designs.
This thesis addresses three key challenges in machine learning for healthcare. First, we develop methods for learning under noisy and limited medical data, focusing on representation learning strategies that improve generalization when datasets are small or contain mislabeled samples. Second, we explore the prediction of generative outcomes amid label noise and data scarcity, utilizing parameter-efficient and temporal generative models to forecast disease trajectories. Third, we advance trustworthy and explainable medical artificial intelligence by designing deep architectures that provide interpretable outputs suitable for clinical decision-making.
These challenges are addressed in the context of two complementary medical modalities: wound healing images and electroencephalogram signals. Wound healing tasks focus on predicting healing trajectories while enhancing interpretability through segmentation-based explanations and training large models in light of extreme data noise and scarcity. Electroencephalogram-based tasks emphasize representation learning and explainability for non-invasive mental state classification. These experiments demonstrate the clinical relevance of the proposed approaches and their ability to operate under challenging medical conditions across both imaging and physiological signal domains.
Event Host: Michael Briden, PhD Candidate, Computer Science & Engineering
Advisor: Narges Norouzi

Regulatory Affairs and Medical Device Quality and Design – Fall Info Session
2025-08-21 18:00
Explore medical innovation with Kiran Gulati
Join medical device and biotech expert Kiran Gulati for a closer look at UCSC Silicon Valley’s Regulatory Affairs and Medical Device Quality and Design certificates. These programs equip you to navigate global regulations and bring safe, effective products to market.
Build in-demand skills in a regulated field
Learn FDA negotiation, risk management, and quality system standards like ISO 13485 and 14971. Whether you're aiming for RAC certification or advancing your career in biotech, this session will highlight how these programs prepare you for success in the fast-moving healthcare industry.
This fall info session is sponsored by the Regulatory Affairs and Medical Device Programs.

Lei, K. (CMPM) - Designing for Meaningful Large-Scale Online Communication, Connection, and Collective Insight
2025-08-22 13:00
Digital technologies have made large-scale online interaction a central part of how people communicate, connect, and work together. Yet scaling often comes at the cost of depth, and interactions can become superficial and chaotic, drifting away from the richer interactional contexts of small-scale or in-person settings that support trust and meaningful exchange, and that make it possible for participants to respond to and build constructively on one another’s ideas. Although recent advances such as large language models have opened new possibilities for shaping online interaction, there has been relatively little exploration of how to design interaction mechanisms that take advantage of large-scale engagement while fostering interactions that are engaged, authentic, connected, and generative.

In this dissertation, I explore how large-scale online systems can be designed to support engaged and meaningful interaction at scale from three distinct angles: creating few-to-many conversation structures that enable broad participation while maintaining coherence and a high level of engagement; fostering authentic self-expression in ways that build connection; and designing mechanisms that allow participants to interpret and constructively build on one another’s contributions to generate collective insight. I begin by designing a chat-based interface that organizes conversations through multi-person conversational units, enabling one or a few mentors to effectively mentor a large-group of students. I then examine how to design a gratitude-focused online community that supports authentic and positive expressions of gratitude, cultivating positive cycles of reflection and connection. Finally, I introduce a large language model–powered survey platform that blends qualitative depth, quantitative structure, and collaborative interaction, enabling respondents to engage with and build on each other’s ideas while providing survey creators with richer and more interpretable results. My work demonstrates how technological affordances and large-scale participation can be combined to create interaction mechanisms that support the move from isolated contributions toward shared understanding, offering unique forms of engagement that small-scale or in-person settings cannot provide.
Event Host: Kehua Lei, PhD Candidate, Computational Media
Advisor: David Lee

Hawthorne, N. (ECE) - An Out-of-the-Incubator Platform for Fluorescent Neural Monitoring and Stimulation Experiments
2025-08-25 09:00
Live-cell fluorescence microscopy enables high-resolution, non-invasive imaging and optical stimulation of biological processes, yet existing systems are often prohibitively expensive, mechanically complex, and poorly suited for wide field-of-view, high-speed, multi-channel experiments—particularly those involving optogenetics. To address these limitations, I developed a low-cost, modular fluorescence microscope constructed from 3D-printed mechanical components and off-the-shelf optics. I also contributed to the engineering of the incubator to support long-term live-cell imaging. The platform accommodates multi-channel fluorescence imaging with simultaneous optogenetic stimulation, features configurable optical paths for different fluorophores, offers motorized positioning via a 3-axis manipulator, enables dual-camera alignment for concurrent imaging, and incorporates integrated brightfield capability.
The system’s performance was demonstrated by imaging mScarlet and GCaMP6f fluorescence in live human forebrain organoids, enabling visualization of single neurons and calcium dynamics. This thesis presents a detailed evaluation of the microscope’s optical, mechanical, and electronic subsystems, alongside biological validation using both the microscope and stage-top incubator. An in-well media perfusion device is proposed to further enhance tissue spheroid experiments. All 3D-print files and component specifications are provided to facilitate replication and adaptation by future researchers. The resulting open and modular platform offers a cost-effective, high-performance alternative for advanced fluorescence microscopy and optogenetic studies, improving tissue culture monitoring and experimental throughput while identifying remaining challenges and opportunities for further innovation in the field.
Event Host: Nico Hawthorne, Ph.D. Candidate, Electrical & Computer Engineering

Learn to build AI Applications
2025-08-25 18:00
Explore the future of AI with Praveen Krishna
Join Program Chair and AI expert Praveen Krishna for an insider’s look at the University of California’s first certificate in AI Application Development. Learn about the growing number of jobs involving AI, the skills you'll need to build a competitive resume, and the UCSC Silicon Valley classes that will support your development.

Get career-ready AI skills
Taught by Silicon Valley leaders, this program helps you master machine learning, advanced AI techniques, and portfolio-building projects. Whether you're in tech, research, or career transition, this certificate gives you the skills to stand out in a fast-growing field. Don’t miss this chance to learn from the expert guiding the future of AI talent.
This info session event is sponsored by the AI Application Development Certificate program.

Jobscan for Job Seekers: Tools to Help You Get Hired
2025-08-26 17:30
Make your resume work smarter with Jobscan

Learn how to create tailored resumes and cover letters using Jobscan’s free AI-powered tools. In this hands-on session, you’ll discover how to optimize your application materials for specific job postings, track the positions you’ve applied to, and make the most of Jobscan’s features to stay organized and stand out in your job search.
This session is open exclusively to UCSC and UCSC Extension students.

Educational Therapy – Free fall Info Session
2025-08-26 18:00
Transform learning with Sharmila Roy
Join Educational Therapy program chair Sharmila Roy for a thoughtful program overview and hear how the uniquely designed curriculum empowers educators and professionals to make a lasting impact– in the classroom and beyond. As one of the few AET-approved programs, you’ll learn to assess learning challenges and apply effective, research-based interventions.
Empower students and build your practice
Gain skills to support students with learning differences like dyslexia, ADHD, and autism using therapeutic and educational strategies. Whether you're working in schools or starting a private practice, this program helps you create individualized plans that foster meaningful progress.
This fall info session is sponsored by the Educational Therapy certificate program.

Rakshit, G. (CSE) -Improving Question Answering through Figurativeness Understanding, Semantic Representation and Multi-Agent Conflict Resolution
2025-08-27 11:00 | Engineering 2, Engineering 2 1156 High Street, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064
Open-domain question answering (ODQA) systems come with diverse challenges — ranging from resolving conflicting information to interpreting figurative expressions and representing meaning in a human-understandable form. This dissertation presents three complementary contributions toward building more robust and interpretable QA systems.
First, we investigate QA model performance on figurative language. Introducing FigurativeQA, a benchmark of yes/no questions with figurative and literal contexts, we demonstrate that popular BERT-based QA systems underperform significantly on figurative text. However, prompting-based approaches like ChatGPT with chain-of-thought reasoning can mitigate this gap, particularly when figurative contexts are automatically simplified.
Second, we present ASQ, a novel tool for automatically generating question-answer meaning representations (QMR) from Abstract Meaning Representation (AMR) graphs. ASQ enables scalable and linguistically grounded QA dataset construction, bridging traditional formal semantics with natural language interfaces. We show that ASQ-generated questions exhibit high content fidelity and overlap with existing crowd-annotated resources like QAMR.
Finally, we explore how large language models (LLMs) handle conflicting evidence in ODQA, proposing a multi-agent framework where answers generated by different models are evaluated through a verification step. Experiments using the QACC dataset and state-of-the-art LLMs (GPT-4o, Claude 4, DeepSeek-R1) reveal that model diversity enhances answer quality, though requiring explanations during verification does not always lead to improvements.
Together, these contributions advance the interpretability, robustness, and accuracy of QA systems.
Event Host: Geetanjali Rakshit, Ph.D Candidate, Computer Science & Engineering

Leavitt, J. (BMEB) - Evolutionary Dynamics, Functional Adaptations in Stress Response, and Direct Detection of tRNA modifications in Archaea
2025-08-27 12:00 | Biomedical Sciences Building, 575 McLaughlin Drive
Transfer RNA (tRNA) modifications are essential for structural integrity, decoding fidelity, and stress adaptation, yet their dynamics across phylogenetically distinct archaeal species and their functional roles during stress remain incompletely understood. This dissertation aims to address some of these gaps through a multi-scale investigation that spans the evolutionary dynamics, stress-responsive functions, and direct detection of archaeal tRNA modifications. The first chapter maps this unexplored landscape by applying Ordered Two-Template Relay sequencing (OTTR-seq) across nine archaeal species from diverse and extreme environments. This comparative analysis revealed previously unrecognized, coordinated modification patterns, including mutually exclusive methylation patterns in the acceptor stem of hyperthermophiles. Additional comparisons revealed co-evolution of tRNA modifying enzymes, demonstrating how their domain architectures and substrate specificities have diverged to shape lineage-specific adaptations. Building on these evolutionary observations, the second chapter investigates the functional role of tRNA modifications in the stress responses of the model halophile Haloferax volcanii. This work reveals how tRNA modification dynamics might balance structural stability against flexibility to manage stress, focusing on N2,N2-dimethylguanosine (m22G) at position 26. By integrating tRNA sequencing, proteomics, and codon usage data within a linear mixed-effects model, this work quantifies how the m22G modification status fine-tunes the translation of specific, codon-biased genes, establishing it as a modulator of the adaptive stress response. Addressing limitations of reverse-transcription (RT)-based sequencing methods for detecting modifications, the final chapter explores the use of direct RNA nanopore sequencing. The focus is on archaeosine (G+), a modification unique to Archaea that is inaccessible to RT-based sequencing methods. The resulting custom model accurately detects archaeosine in its native species. However, cross-species comparisons reveal significant challenges with species-specific overfitting, providing insights into development of universally applicable modification callers.
Event Host: Jesse Leavitt, Ph.D Candidate, Biomolecular Engineering & Bioinformatics

Shanks, C. (BMEB) - Development and Application of Local Ancestry Methods for Population Genomics
2025-08-28 11:00 | Biomedical Sciences Building, 575 McLaughlin Drive
Local ancestry methods classify the segments of DNA inherited from a specific ancestry (e.g., African, East Asian, European), improving analyses of admixed populations. Aim 1 applies ancestry-specific analysis to more than 1000 whole genome sequences across Polynesia, revealing strong bottlenecks in the voyagers who settled both Hawaiʻi and Rapa Nui, and confirming frequencies of Mendelian disease–causing variants in French Polynesia not found even in large-scale biobanks. Conventional local ancestry methods are only accurate for deeply diverged populations and recent admixture events. In aim 2 I present ARGMix, a new deep-learning approach incorporating ancestral recombination graphs (ARGs), which contains the inferred history of coalescent events with recombination. This method classifies the local ancestry of present day Europeans as originating from early European farmers and hunter gather ancestries. As an application I find evidence of continuity between Ötzi the Iceman and present-day Europeans of similar geography. I further propose to apply ARGMix to trace the TCC/TTC mutational pulse strongest in Europeans across geography and time. In aim 3 I present a method incorporating these ancient local ancestries to improve polygenic risk scores in the UK biobank.
Event Host: Cole Shanks, Ph.D Student, Biomolecular Engineering & Bioinformatics

Faculty & Staff Health and Well-being: Create Calm: Stress Management Tools to Support Well-being
2025-08-28 12:00
Now more than ever, we need to be equipped with tools and strategies to adapt to stressors both in the workplace and in our personal lives. In this workshop, you will learn simple, science-backed techniques including breathwork, mindfulness, and self-reflection to help manage stress and build better resilience for the future. Then you will discover how a holistic approach utilizing everyday healthy habits can help to proactively support mental well-being and create more space for calm.
To register, please fill out the registration link. This presentation will be recorded and made available after the meeting.
For more information about upcoming workshops and events, please visit the Wellness Event Calendar.
For questions, please contact Health and Well-being Specialist, Ashley Parker, at aseparke@ucsc.edu.

Networking Tools for Your Career
2025-08-28 17:30
Learn how to grow your professional connections using the UCSC Silicon Valley Extension LinkedIn Alumni Tool. In this interactive session, you’ll discover smart strategies for expanding your network, reaching out with confidence, and asking for informational interviews that lead to real insights—and real opportunities.
This session is open exclusively to UCSC and UCSC Extension students.
Learn more career tips.

Data Science and Data Analytics – Fall Info Session
2025-08-28 18:00
Master Data with Instructor Partha Padmanabhan
Join us for a conversation with Partha Padmanabhan, Chair of our Data Science and Data Analytics programs, and discover how our DSDA certificate is built to help professionals translate data into smart, strategic business decisions. Get an inside look at the tools, techniques, and real-world AI applications shaping today's fast-moving analytics landscape.
Choose Your Path: Science or Engineering
Whether you're analyzing data or building the systems behind it, you can specialize in Data Science or Data Engineering and earn a digital badge. This program prepares analysts, scientists, and IT professionals to thrive in a data-driven world.
Speaker
Meet Parthasarathy Padmanabhan, M.B.A., principal software engineer at one of Silicon Valley’s leading technology companies, and get your questions answered. Parthasarathy brings more than 25 years of experience in information technology to his role and has worked in data modeling for more than 10 years. He teaches "Data Analysis" and "Business Intelligence Solutions," and began serving as chair of the Data Science and Data Analytics Advisory Board in 2020.
This fall info session is sponsored by the Data Science and Data Analytics Program.

AI Workshop: Model Context Protocol
2025-08-29 10:00 | Silicon Valley Campus, 3175 Bowers Avenue, Santa Clara, CA, 95054, United States
Welcome to our immersive AI technology workshop series. During these sessions you will be introduced to new and established AI tools that will help you create and manipulate content in new and powerful ways. Each session is led by an industry expert who will guide you through the material and share its real-world implications.
Learning Outcomes
By the end of this hybrid-style workshop, you'll be able to:

Explain the core principles and motivations behind the Model Context Protocol (MCP), including its role in AI Agentic system communication and AI model integration.
Identify the structure and components of an MCP message and understand how context is preserved and passed across tasks or AI agents.
Implement simple MCP interactions in a controlled setting using real-world tools and libraries.
Evaluate the strengths and limitations of MCP in current AI Agentic system architectures, including scalability and interoperability.

Topics Include

MCP Basics: What is Model Context Protocol and why does it matter in AI pipelines and agent interoperability?
Message Anatomy: Structure, metadata, tokens, and temporal context.
Live Demo: Walking through an MCP message lifecycle-create, modify, pass, and interpret.
Hands-On Lab: Building a mini MCP-based interaction (e.g., agent-to-agent communication or contextual memory pass).
Challenges & Use Cases: Real-world applications, common pitfalls, and current limitations.

Prerequisites: Knowledge of LLM and AI Agents.
Note: Please bring a laptop and have Google, GitHub and Hugging Face accounts to participate in hands-on exercises.

[SOLD OUT] Avocado Production Workshop: From Planting to Harvest
2025-08-30 10:00
Join us for a workshop focused on successfully growing avocados in the greater Santa Cruz area. We'll cover the particulars of avocado care, with an emphasis on variety selection for the Central Coast, A-B flowering types, pollination demystification, soils and site selection, irrigation, fertilizers, pruning, and seasonal care. There will also be a troubleshooting / Q&A segment to provide all levels of the avocado-obsessed with the information necessary to set you on your way toward monstrous avocado harvests, as well as a seasonal tasting of around a half dozen varieties to help find which variety might be perfect for you.

Community Day: Free Admission at the Arboretum
2025-09-02 09:00 - 17:00 | Arboretum, 122 Arboretum Road, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064
The first Tuesday of each month, the Arboretum is open without charge to visitors. See dates and times UC Santa Cruz Arboretum & Botanic Garden is open. NOTE: Due to limited parking at the Arboretum and the popularity of Community Day, we greatly encourage visitors to carpool, bike, walk or use public transportation as much as possible.

Seminar Featuring Dr. Robert Blasiak, Sept 3 at 11 am
2025-09-03 11:00 | Coastal Biology Building, 130 McAllister Way, Santa Cruz, CA, 95060
Please join us for a special seminar with Dr. Robert Blasiak on Wednesday, Sept 3 at 11 am. Dr. Blasiak is an Associate Professor at the Stockholm Resilience Centre at Stockholm University. The seminar will be held in person at CBB Rm 110 and on Zoom (details below).
Talk Title:
The peacebuilding potential of international ocean science cooperation
Abstract:
A historical perspective provides a rich catalogue of examples of ocean science collaboration flourishing even in parts of the world facing a perfect storm of geopolitical tensions, overlapping and rapidly expanding ocean uses, unresolved maritime boundaries, and outright conflict. How do these collaborations emerge? How do they persist? And how can we understand their capacity to mitigate conflict? This talk will draw on environmental peacebuilding literature to suggest that such collaborations are a meaningful contribution to a more peaceful world, and will open into a discussion of how to build and foster collaboration in a polarized world.
To join by Zoom, please register here: https://ucsc.zoom.us/meeting/register/fQ8g_axCRX6gff7DUtP3aA

What to Expect as a Science Student in Your First Year
2025-09-03 17:00
This comprehensive session covers what you need to know to feel prepared for your first year in the sciences. We’ll explore course formats (lectures, labs, tutorials), academic expectations, time management strategies, and support systems. Learn how to navigate challenges and make the most of your university experience, both inside and outside the classroom. To receive a Zoom link, register here.

Human Resource Management Info Session
2025-09-03 18:00
Build Stronger Teams and a Smarter HR Strategy

What does it take to grow and lead high-performing teams in today’s AI-enhanced workplace? Hear from Philip Ziman, chair of the Human Resource Management certificate program at UCSC Silicon Valley Extension. Learn about the practical, people-focused program designed for current and aspiring HR professionals.
Topics

Connect HR strategy with business outcomes
Use people analytics to inform decision-making
Sharpen your skills in talent acquisition, leadership development, and employee engagement.

Earn HRCI and SHRM recertification credit + PDUs in a program that is both career-ready and future-focused.
This fall info session is hosted by the at UCSC Silicon Valley Extension.

Marketing Management Info Session
2025-09-04 18:00
Customer-Driven Marketing: Build the Skills Today’s Marketers Need
In a world where buyers expect personalization, speed, and relevance, staying ahead means mastering modern, AI-enhanced marketing strategies. Explore how UCSC Silicon Valley’s Marketing Management certificate helps you align marketing and sales, harness the power of social selling, and launch data-driven, multi-channel campaigns that truly connect with your audience.
Shape Your Career, Your Way
With electives in digital marketing and strategy, you can tailor your learning to sharpen skills in campaign execution, data analysis, and brand communication. Discover how to integrate cutting-edge tools and programmatic approaches to increase your marketing impact in an ever-evolving landscape.
Marketing Management program chair Ly Pham, a seasoned marketing executive with deep insight into what today’s professionals need to succeed will lead this fall info session.

Using AI in UX: Explore the latest tools
2025-09-05 18:00
Creating the Experience: UX, AI, and Responsive Design
Join us for a dynamic UX info session that blends creativity, technology, and collaboration. Discover how UX and AI work together, explore the principles of user-centered design, and see how advanced CSS brings responsive, visually stunning interfaces to life.
We’ll highlight 3 engaging courses

Collaborative Design: Enhancing UX with AI
an introduction to tools like Figma and Miro in agile team settings
User Experience Design Fundamentals
a look at design thinking and strategies for creating impactful products
Designing with Cascading Style Sheets, Advanced
showcasing techniques for sleek, mobile-ready websites.

Whether you’re exploring UX for the first time or expanding your knowledge, this event will spark new ideas and possibilities.
This virtual info session series event is sponsored by the User Experience and Web Design Certificate program at UCSC Silicon Valley Extension.
