Events

Summer Courses Listed for 2026
2026-03-08 00:00 - 2026-03-09 00:59, 2026-03-09 00:00 - 23:59, 2026-03-10 00:00 - 23:59, 2026-03-11 00:00 - 23:59, 2026-03-12 00:00 - 23:59, 2026-03-13 00:00 - 23:59 (America/Los_Angeles)
Summer 2026 classes are now posted at summer.ucsc.edu. Explore courses and start planning your summer schedule over winter closure! Days and times will be in the schedule of classes on March 15. Email summer@ucsc.edu with questions.

Ecology of Presence: Pathways to the Natural World
2026-03-08 12:00 - 17:00, 2026-03-09 12:00 - 17:00 | Eloise Pickard Smith Gallery, 11 Cowell Service Rd, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064
Norris Center Art + Science Graduate Fellowship Exhibition
Ecology of Presence: Pathways to the Natural World brings together the work of ten graduate students supported by the Kenneth S. Norris Center for Natural History Art + Science Fellowship, a program dedicated to creative research connecting art with the natural world. Across media – including sound, moving image, music, performance, installation, comics, social practice, photography, and storytelling – the artists in Ecology of Presence emphasize relationality and careful attention to place as essential to building relationships with environs. As accelerating environmental change and technological dependency threaten ways of belonging, the works in this exhibition maintain a steadfast commitment to interdisciplinary approaches that propose kinship with the natural world. By coming together, Art + Science Fellows artworks and social practices suggest ways of imagining human life in relation to the more-than-human world.

Random With A Purpose (RWAP) XXXlV—The Experiment
2026-03-08 14:00 - 16:00 | Second Stage, Second Stage, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064
Random With A Purpose is a popular annual student-directed and -choreographed dance showcase.
Per directors Lydia Wallman and Brennah Lyons, this year’s production, The Experiment, “serves as a platform for collaborators to develop work that does not yet exist in the physical world and to investigate elements of community and features a cast that reflects UC Santa Cruz’s diverse student population through a wide range of dance styles and perspectives.”
Admission

General admission $5–$20 “Pay What You Like”
FREE for UCSC undergrads (ticket required).
Tickets available on Eventbrite.
Doors open 30 minutes prior to the 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.

Advisories
This performance is approximately 90 minutes with a 15-minute intermission and includes: flashing lights and mature language.
Event dates

Fri. Feb. 27: 7:30 p.m.
Sat. Feb. 28: 7:30 p.m.
Sun. Mar. 1: 2:00 p.m.
Thu. Mar. 5: 7:30 p.m.
Fri. Mar. 6: 7:30 p.m.
Sat. Mar. 7: 7:30 p.m.
Sun. Mar. 8: 2:00 p.m.

Parking

Parking by permit, ParkMobile, or $11.00 cash/credit card via the on-site parking attendant
Arts parking 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.
Refer to Transportation & Parking Services for more information.

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

The Trial of Spock—An Opera Workshop
2026-03-08 16:00 - 18:00 | Music Center Recital Hall, 400 McHenry Road, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064
The creators of The Trial of Spock—An Opera In Three Acts present concert performances of five scenes from an opera-in-progress at the UC Santa Cruz Music Center Recital Hall.
Captain Christopher Pike is gravely injured. Lieutenant Spock is behaving strangely. Charged with protecting Pike in his state of extreme need,Vulcan Commodore T’or suspects that Lieutenant Spock—once Captain Pike’s science officer—is up to no good. Spock’s Captain, James T. Kirk, doesn’t see the trouble until far too late, and soon Spock holds all of them prisoner aboard a ship destined for the “forbidden planet” Talos IV. He refuses to say a word about their fate—not until his superiors agree to give him his trial. Under oath, and with strange evidence, Spock tells the story of Captain Pike’s first visit to Talos IV, where illusion and artificial experiences plunge Pike and fellow captive Vina into uncharted dimensions of their memories, and their concepts of self.
Join sopranos Nicole Koh, Sheila Willey, and Emily Sinclair; tenors Alex Boyer and Nicolas Vasquez-Gerst, baritones Joseph Calzada and Michael Kuo, and the Del Sol Quartet, as they distort the myth of Orpheus, in order to re-think our presumed relationships to freedom and reality, and its augmentations.
Music by Ben Leeds Carson; libretto by Perre DiCarlo & Ben Leeds Carson and Lincoln & Lee Taiz; with contributions from John de Lancie, based on teleplays by Gene Roddenberry.
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ADMISSION
– FREE and open to the public
– Tickets required and available online through Eventbrite
– 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 $11 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.
– UCSC affiliates must purchase their permits before arriving at the event in order to receive their discounted UCSC rate. Attendants will only sell the non-affiliate-priced permits.
– More information provided by UCSC Transportation & Parking Services (TAPS)
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FULL SCHEDULE OF EVENTS
Fri, March 8, 4:00 p.m., UC Santa Cruz Music Center Recital Hall
The Trial of Spock—An Opera Workshop
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Fri, March 13, 7:00 p.m., Kuumbwa Jazz Center
How to Live Long and Prosper—Lessons from a Star Trek Opera
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This program is open to all members of the public consistent with state and federal law.

"The Cigarette Surfboard" screening with filmmaker Ben Judkins (Kresge '17)
2026-03-08 17:00 - 21:00
Join Banana Slug alumni filmmaker Ben Judkins (Kresge ’17, film and digital media) and “ciggy board” creator Taylor Lane for a screening of their award-winning documentary, The Cigarette Surfboard (presented by the California Coastal Commission‘s Whale Tail Grant).
5:00-6:00 PM | alumni meet & greet with light refreshments
6:00-7:35 PM | film screening
7:35-8:30 PM | filmmaker discussion
8:30-9:00 PM | mingle
REGISTER
ABOUT THE FILM
After a young designer realizes that a surfboard – which he crafted from thousands of littered cigarette butts picked up off California beaches – could captivate the eyes of millions across the globe, he decides to use it as the impetus to do something more. The Cigarette Surfboards become a platform to spark ocean stewardship and the symbol of a campaign to hold Big Tobacco accountable for their toxic, plastic waste. Surfing is the medium, but the message is universal.
Small decisions and actions, like littering a cigarette butt, cumulatively can have a large impact, for better or for worse. This immersive documentary provides viewers an up close experience of the ocean through surfers’ eyes, to amplify a message of urgency and possibility regarding the ocean’s wellbeing. As our ocean faces mounting threats, and surfing continues to grow, we as surfers have a responsibility to protect it.
ABOUT THE FILMMAKER
Raised in Northern California, at age eight, Ben Judkins found an old camcorder and discovered the medium to explore and create. After years of videotaping friends skateboarding and surfing, Ben landed at the University of California, Santa Cruz, majoring in Film & Digital Media. His senior film “Marshall” earned the Dean’s Award, and also won “Best Locally-Produced Work” at the 2017 Santa Cruz Film Festival. Ben is an avid surfer who believes in the power of visual storytelling to move people to action. The Cigarette Surfboard documentary is an opportunity to inspire a generation of surfers to be stewards of the sea.

Barnstorm Presents--"Gloria" by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins
2026-03-08 19:30 - 21:00 | Theater Arts B100 Studio Theater, 453 Kerr Rd, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064, United States
Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’ Gloria is a razor-sharp comic drama about ambition, office warfare and hierarchies, where the only thing that matters is selling out to the highest bidder. This funny, trenchant and powerful play follows an ambitious group of editorial assistants at a notorious Manhattan magazine, each of whom hopes for a starry life of letters and a book deal before they turn thirty. But when an ordinary workday becomes anything but, the stakes for who will get to tell their own story become higher than ever.
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ABOUT BARNSTORM
UC Santa Cruz students experiment with and create their own innovative theater and gain a sense of operating and creating art in the Barnstorm Theater Company, a student-run theater arts production company established in 2004.
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ADVISORIES
– Ticket holders not seated at least 10 minutes before the advertised start time may forfeit their ticket/seat and no refund will be issued.
—
FULL SCHEDULE OF EVENTS
Fri. March 6: 7:30 p.m.
Sat. March 7: 2:00 p.m.
Sat. March 7: 7:30 p.m.
Sun. March 8: 2:00 p.m.
—
ADMISSION
– Tickets issued HERE through Eventbrite; Follow the Dept. of Performance, Play & Design and Barnstorm on Eventbrite for notifications and updates.
– Free for UCSC undergraduate students (ticket required).
– General admission “Pay What You Like” options $5–20
– A limited number of tickets/seats may be available at the door, even after online ticket sales end or reach full capacity.
– Doors are scheduled to open 30 minutes prior to event start time.
—
PARKING
– Parking by permit, ParkMobile, or $11 cash/credit via the on-site parking attendant (Only present March 6)
– Additional 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.
– UCSC affiliates must purchase their permits before arriving at the event in order to receive their discounted UCSC rate. Attendants will only sell the non-affiliate-priced permits.
– More information provided by UCSC Transportation & Parking Services (TAPS)
—
This program is open to all members of the public consistent with state and federal law.

Wellness in Action: Managing Stress in Times of Uncertainty
2026-03-09 13:00 - 13:30
Monday, February 23, 1:00 PM – 1:30 PM
Location: Register for the Zoom link
Periods of uncertainty can increase stress, reduce focus, and affect overall well-being. Participants will learn practical strategies to pause, regain perspective, and respond to stress with greater clarity. These sustainable skills build resiliency, help maintain calm, and create balance during challenging times.
The Wellness in Action series is designed to help you improve your health in a short session with simple tips you can try in your own life. In the follow-up session on Monday, March 9 from 1:00 PM – 1:30 PM, you will have the opportunity to share your experience and learn from others in the group.
Register for the Zoom link. The workshop will be recorded, and a link to the recording will be sent out after the first session. The follow up session will not be recorded.
To learn more about our events and workshops, visit the Upcoming Wellness Events page.
For questions, please contact Health and Well-being Specialist, Ashley Parker, at aseparke@ucsc.edu.

AM Seminar: Solution Discovery in Fluids with High Precision Using Neural Networks
2026-03-09 16:00 - 17:00
Presenter: Ching-Yao Lai, Assistant Professor, Stanford University
Description: I will discuss examples utilizing neural networks (NNs) to find solutions to partial differential equations (PDEs) that facilitate new discoveries. Despite being deemed universal function approximators, neural networks, in practice, struggle to fit functions with sufficient accuracy for rigorous analysis. Here, we developed multi-stage neural networks (Wang and Lai, J. Comput. Phys. 2024) that can reduce the prediction error to nearly the machine precision of double-precision floating points within a finite number of iterations. We use accurate NNs to tackle the challenge of searching for singularities in fluid equations (Wang-Lai-Gómez-Serrano-Buckmaster, Phys. Rev. Lett. 2023). Unstable singularities, especially in dimensions greater than one, are exceptionally elusive. With NNs we demonstrate the first discovery of smooth unstable self-similar singularities to unforced incompressible fluid equations (Wang et al., arXiv:2509.14185). The example illustrates how deep learning can be used to discover new and highly accurate numerical solutions to PDEs.
Bio: Ching-Yao Lai (Yao) is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Geophysics and an Affiliated Faculty of the Institute for Computational and Mathematical Engineering (ICME) at Stanford. Before joining Stanford, she was an Assistant Professor at Princeton University. She received an undergraduate degree (2013) in Physics from National Taiwan University and a PhD (2018) in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering from Princeton University. She completed her postdoctoral research at Columbia University where she received the Lamont Postdoctoral Fellowship. Her current research focuses on enhancing the representation of machine-learning models to tackle multiscale problems. She was the recipient of the 2023 Google Research Scholar Award, the 2024 Sloan Research Fellowship, and the 2025 NSF CAREER Award.
Hosted by: Applied Mathematics

Mashhadi, N. (CSE) - Compositional, Clinically Conditioned, and Confound-Aware Deep Learning for Alzheimer’s Disease Neuroimaging
2026-03-10 16:30 - 17:30
Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is a progressive neurodegenerative disorder and a leading cause of dementia. Neuroimaging and clinical biomarkers can reveal early disease changes, but building reliable machine learning models is difficult because data come from different scanners and sites, some modalities are missing, labeled cohorts are limited, and factors such as age and scanner/site effects can bias results.
This dissertation develops machine learning methods for robust, interpretable, and controllable analysis of AD-related neuroimaging data. First, I introduce a modular, graph-based framework for multimodal AD detection that treats datasets and models as nodes and directed edges that can be combined to build more complex predictors. Second, I propose a clinically conditioned 3D VAE-GAN to synthesize brain MRI, enhanced with diffusion-driven sampling in clinical feature space to improve realism and control, supporting data augmentation. Third, I present a disentangled 3D masked autoencoder (MAE) that learns separated representations for age, pathology, and scanner effects, making it possible to isolate and adjust age, pathology, or scanner effects, while remaining reliable across sites.
Together, these contributions advance practical methods for modular prediction, controllable image generation, and confound-aware representation learning in neuroimaging, with an emphasis on generalization and interpretability for clinically relevant applications.
Event Host: Najmeh Mashhadi, Ph.D. Candidate, Computer Science and Engineering
Advisor: Razvan Marinescu
Zoom- https://ucsc.zoom.us/j/98195204428?pwd=[REDACTED]
Passcode- 688069

Research Lunch & Learn: PI Eligibility and the Exception to Policy (ETP) Process
2026-03-11 12:00 - 13:00 | https://events.ucsc.edu/event/research-lunch-learn-pi-eligibility-and-the-exception-to-policy-etp-process/
Join us on March 11, 2026, 12-1 p.m. for a session led by Deirdre Beach, Executive Director of the Office of Sponsored Projects, and others as they discuss and review UCSC’s policy on Principal Investigator (PI) eligibility. This session will highlight which appointments are eligible to request an exception, when PIship is necessary to support the work, and the process for submitting an exception request for consideration.
Join: Zoom link for this session.

Global Cafe (Winter 2026)
2026-03-11 14:00 - 16:00 | Classroom Unit, Classroom Unit, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064, Select a Country:
International Student Services & Programming invites you to our monthly Global Cafe, a space for all international-minded community members to connect. Swing by for some refreshments and an opportunity to meet other international students and scholars, as well as Global Engagement staff. Feel free to drop in at any time and stay for as long as you’d like.
Our winter Global Cafe dates:

Wednesday, January 14
Wednesday, February 11
Wednesday, March 11

College Night: Made By Human Hands
2026-03-11 17:00 - 20:00 | Rachel Carson/Oakes Dining Hall
Oakes and Rachel Carson Colleges, in collaboration with UCSC Dining, present Made By Human Hands. Join us Wednesday, March 11, from 5–8 p.m. at the Rachel Carson/Oakes Dining Hall for a night of fun, community, and a special themed menu. Standard dining hall entry pricing applies, and all students, faculty, and staff are invited.
Please note: The dining hall will be closed from 2–5 p.m. for event preparation.
Learn more about College Nights at dining.ucsc.edu/events.
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You Belong Here: The programs and services described here are open to all, consistent with state and federal law, as well as the University of California’s nondiscrimination policies. Every initiative—whether a student service, faculty program, or community event—is designed to be accessible, inclusive, and respectful of all identities.
To learn more, please visit UC Nondiscrimination Statement or Nondiscrimination Policy for UC Publications.How to Use the Statement Across Communication Channels

What's new in AI?
2026-03-11 18:00 - 19:00 | Silicon Valley Campus, 3175 Bowers Avenue, Santa Clara, CA, 95054, United States
Chat with the AI chair
Lead innovation as a machine learning engineer
Want to learn what’s new in AI? Join Praveen Krishna, chair of the Artificial Intelligence Application Development certificate program, in an informal discussion about the AI topic of the month and an open Q&A. You’ll get an insider’s look at what you need to know for where you want to go. Bring your questions. Share your experience. Plan your learning.
Every 2nd Wednesday | Online
Visit our program page for a closer look at our AI App Development courses and offerings.
Register now.

Undiscovered Shakespeare: The Two Noble Kinsmen - Episode II
2026-03-11 19:00 - 23:59
Shakespeare returns to the characters and themes of A Midsummer Night’s Dream in what may have been the last play he had a hand in writing: The Two Noble Kinsmen. This time, however, the story of Theseus and Hippolyta, the disorienting experience of adolescent sexual desire, and the conflict of duties to sovereigns, parents, friends, and spouses are no laughing matter. It’s over-shadowed by the play’s source text — Chaucer’s Knight’s Tale, in which chance foils Theseus’s best efforts to create order out of chaos and meaning out of loss — and by Shakespeare’s own experience writing tragedy and tragicomedy.

Thomas Luxon is Professor of English, Emeritus at Dartmouth College, where he was also the inaugural Cheheyl Professor and Director of the Dartmouth Center for the Advancement of Learning. His teaching and scholarship focus on literature of the English Renaissance and Reformation, with a particular interest in John Milton, John Bunyan, John Dryden, and 17th-century English religion and politics. In his revelatory book, Single Imperfection: Milton, Marriage, and Friendship (Duquesne UP, 2005), Professor Luxon explores the impact of ancient theories of friendship on Milton’s conception of Reformation marriage, and during the pandemic, he contributed a lecture about the rivalry of friendship and marriage in Two Noble Kinsmen to Ian Doescher’s Shakespeare 2020 Project.
Undiscovered Shakespeare is a public arts and humanities series co-produced by Santa Cruz Shakespeare, UCSC Shakespeare Workshop, and The Humanities Institute. It brings professional actors and scholars together with the public for a staged reading and discussion of works by Shakespeare that are rarely produced.

Success as a digital content creator: From passion to profession
2026-03-12 17:30 - 18:30 | Silicon Valley Campus, 3175 Bowers Avenue, Santa Clara, CA, 95054, United States
Want to turn your creativity into a career?
This session explores how to succeed as a digital content creator — whether on YouTube, TikTok, podcasts, or blogs. Learn how to identify your niche, build an audience, monetize your content, and stay consistent without burning out. We’ll also cover tools, trends, and tips from creators who’ve made it work.

Find and focus your niche.
Grow and monetize your audience sustainably.
Use the right tools and trends to stay competitive.

This is a casual discussion with Dean Agarwal. Be sure to bring your questions and share your experience.
This event is part of the Dean Conversations: Pathways to professional success series.
Join us online or in person. Claim your seat.

UCSC Jazz Combos
2026-03-12 19:30 - 21:30 | Music Center Recital Hall, 400 McHenry Road, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064
Join the UC Santa Cruz Jazz Combos for a winter concert. Directed by Charles Hamilton.
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ADMISSION
– General admission
– Free for UCSC students (ticket required).
– Tickets available here online through Eventbrite only.
– Follow the Music Dept on Eventbrite for notices and updates.
– Doors are scheduled to open 30 minutes prior to event start time.
– Ticket holders not seated at least 5 minutes before the advertised start time may forfeit their ticket/seat and no refund will be issued.
—
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)
—
This program is open to all members of the public consistent with state and federal law.

Fan, Y. (CSE) - Building Human-Centered Multimodal AI Agents
2026-03-13 09:30 - 11:00
As multimodal artificial intelligence systems become increasingly embedded in everyday technology, there is a growing need to design human-centered AI agents that support and amplify human capabilities rather than replace them. This dissertation investigates how to build human-centered multimodal AI agents, framing human-centeredness as an agent-level objective that requires both accessible, assistive interaction and reliable, trustworthy behavior across physical and digital environments. This dissertation explores two complementary dimensions of human-centered agent design. The first focuses on enhancing accessibility through conversational and interactive agents that assist users in everyday tasks. We study both embodied and digital settings in which agents reduce physical and cognitive burdens via natural language interaction, including hands-free drone control, navigation assistance in unfamiliar environments, and interactive access to complex graphical user interfaces. The second dimension focuses on strengthening agent capability to improve reliability and trust. We investigate how agents can acquire environment-specific knowledge through autonomous exploration and how they can reason about visual information in a grounded and transparent manner, drawing inspiration from human learning and reasoning behaviors.
Event Host: Yue Fan, Ph.D. Candidate, Computer Science and Engineering
Advisor: Xin Eric Wang
Zoom- https://ucsc.zoom.us/j/99619642071?pwd=[REDACTED]
Passcode- 467959

Get Certified in CPR, First Aid, and AED!
2026-03-13 11:00 - 13:00 | Scotts Valley Center
Location: Scotts Valley Center
Register for the training.
This Adult and Pediatric First Aid/CPR/AED blended learning course equips you to recognize and care for various first aid breathing and cardiac emergencies involving adults, children, and infants. It is designed for individuals who need a certification that satisfies OSHA workplace or other regulatory requirements.
This class is taught in a blended learning format and the online portion must be completed before attending the Instructor-led skills session. A valid 2-year digital certificate for Adult and Pediatric First Aid/CPR/AED is issued upon completion.
This training will be held on-site at the Scotts Valley Center. To register, please fill out the registration link.
For more information, please visit the Occupational Health Training website.
For questions or to schedule a training for your team, please contact Occupational Health Specialist, Elizabeth Tomlinson, at ektomlin@ucsc.edu.

Winter 2026 Open Studios
2026-03-13 12:00 - 16:00 | Elena Baskin Visual Arts Center, Baskin Service Road, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064
Art Department students exhibit their art work throughout studios and classrooms at the Elena Baskin Visual Arts Center at UC Santa Cruz. The Open Studios event features student art work in a variety of media, including:
– Drawing
– Painting
– Print media
– Sculpture
– Photography
– Environmental art
– Electronic art/new media
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ADMISSION
FREE and open to the public.
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PARKING
– Parking by permit, ParkMobile, or $11 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.
– UCSC affiliates must purchase their permits before arriving at the event in order to receive their discounted UCSC rate. Attendants will only sell the non-affiliate-priced permits.
– More information provided by UCSC Transportation & Parking Services (TAPS)
—
This program is open to all members of the public consistent with state and federal law.

Wang, H. (CSE) - Accelerating RTL Simulation with Specialized Graph Partitioners
2026-03-13 14:00 - 15:00 | Jack Baskin Engineering, Baskin Engineering 1156 High Street, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064
Register transfer level (RTL) simulation is an invaluable tool for developing, debugging, verifying, and validating hardware designs. However, the performance of RTL simulation has long been a limiting factor in industry. Despite the inherent parallelism of hardware, current RTL simulators have not achieved practical performance gains due to fundamental challenges in communication, synchronization, memory bandwidth, and architectural mapping.
This dissertation addresses the RTL simulation performance problem from three complementary perspectives: optimizing simulation latency through parallelism, improving aggregate throughput via deduplication, and enabling efficient GPU acceleration with RTL-native semantics.
First, we present RepCut, a parallel RTL simulation methodology that uses replication-aided partitioning to cut circuits into balanced partitions with minimal overlaps. By replicating the overlaps, RepCut eliminates problematic data dependences between partitions and significantly reduces synchronization overhead. RepCut achieves superlinear speedups of up to 27.10x using 24 threads with only a 3.81% replication cost.
Second, we introduce Simulation Deduplication, a technique that exploits the extensive reuse of building blocks in modern hardware designs. By generating shared code for duplicated instances and carefully co-scheduling their execution, we reduce the instruction cache footprint and memory bandwidth pressure. This approach achieves up to 1.95x speedup for single simulations and 2.09x improvement in overall batch simulation throughput.
Third, we present Toucan, a GPU-accelerated RTL simulation framework that preserves RTL semantics rather than flattening designs to gate-level netlists. By leveraging native GPU arithmetic operations and introducing warp-level micro-partitioning with shuffle-based communication, Toucan achieves efficient mapping of irregular circuit topologies to GPU SIMT architectures while maintaining fast compilation times. Toucan achieves up to 4.73x speedup over the state-of-the-art GPU RTL simulator on large multi-core designs.
Together, these three approaches provide a comprehensive solution to RTL simulation performance optimization, demonstrating significant improvements over state-of-the-art commercial and open-source simulators across multiple hardware platforms and design scales.
Event Host: Haoyuan Wang, Ph.D. Candidate, Computer Science and Engineering
Advisor: Jose Renau
Zoom- https://ucsc.zoom.us/j/94044618343?pwd=[REDACTED]
Passcode- 574772

Questions that Matter - How to Live Long and Prosper: Lessons from a Star Trek Opera
2026-03-13 19:00 | Kuumbwa Jazz Center, 320-2 Cedar St, Santa Cruz, 95060, United States
What do we need to live a fulfilling life? This essential question of the humanities feels especially pressing now, on the precipice of profound changes to our planet, our bodies, and our sense of human exceptionality. Join us for a conversation — and a music-and-drama masterclass — about speculative fiction from the Star Trek world, the myth of Orpheus, and what the operatic form can teach us about intelligence, humanity, and the good life.

This event follows the “The Trial of Spock — An Opera Workshop” on March 8th. The opera creators will present five scenes from an opera-in-progress by Ben Leeds Carson, Perre DiCarlo, and Lincoln and Lee Taiz. With co-authors John DeLancey, Camilla Hawthorne, and Michael Chemers.
Questions That Matter is a public humanities series developed by The Humanities Institute and the community of Santa Cruz. It brings together, in conversation, two or more UC Santa Cruz scholars with community residents and students to explore questions that matter to all of us.

Questions that Matter – How to Live Long and Prosper: Lessons from a Star Trek Opera
2026-03-13 19:00 | Kuumbwa Jazz Center, 320-2 Cedar St, Santa Cruz, 95060, United States
What do we need to live a fulfilling life? This essential question of the humanities feels especially pressing now, on the precipice of profound changes to our planet, our bodies, and our sense of human exceptionality. Join us for a conversation — and a music-and-drama masterclass — about speculative fiction from the Star Trek world, the myth of Orpheus, and what the operatic form can teach us about intelligence, humanity, and the good life. Featuring UC Santa Cruz Faculty: Ben Leeds Carson (Professor of Music), Camilla A. Hawthorne (Associate Professor of Sociology), Perre DiCarlo, and Pranav Anand (THI Faculty Director and Professor of Linguistics).

Those attending Questions That Matter may be interested in the “The Trial of Spock — An Opera Workshop” on March 8th. This workshop is a rare opportunity for Trekkies and opera lovers to attend a recording of five scenes of an opera-in-progress: The Trial of Spock, with members of the San Francisco and San Jose Opera companies accompanied by San Francisco’s Del Sol Quartet.
Questions That Matter is a public humanities series developed by The Humanities Institute and the community of Santa Cruz. It brings together, in conversation, two or more UC Santa Cruz scholars with community residents and students to explore questions that matter to all of us.

Barnstorm Presents—Musical Theater Cabaret
2026-03-13 19:30 - 21:00 | Theater Arts B100 Studio Theater, 453 Kerr Rd, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064, United States
Step into the spotlight with Barnstorm’s musical theater showcase—an intimate, cabaret-style evening featuring standout performances by our talented students. From beloved Broadway tunes to hidden gems, this lively celebration of song and story is not to be missed. Directed by Ella Freed.
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ABOUT BARNSTORM
UC Santa Cruz students experiment with and create their own innovative theater and gain a sense of operating and creating art in the Barnstorm Theater Company, a student-run theater arts production company established in 2004.
—
ADVISORIES
– Ticket holders not seated at least 10 minutes before the advertised start time may forfeit their ticket/seat and no refund will be issued.
—
FULL SCHEDULE OF EVENTS
Fri. March 13: 7:30 p.m.
Sat. March 14: 2:00 p.m.
Sun. March 15: 2:00 p.m.
—
ADMISSION
– Tickets issued through Eventbrite; Follow the Dept. of Performance, Play & Design and Barnstorm on Eventbrite for notifications and updates.
– Free for UCSC undergraduate students (ticket required).
– General admission “Pay What You Like” options $5–20
– A limited number of tickets/seats may be available at the door, even after online ticket sales end or reach full capacity.
– Doors are scheduled to open 30 minutes prior to event start time.
—
PARKING
– Parking by permit, ParkMobile, or $11 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.
– UCSC affiliates must purchase their permits before arriving at the event in order to receive their discounted UCSC rate. Attendants will only sell the non-affiliate-priced permits.
– More information provided by UCSC Transportation & Parking Services (TAPS)
—
This program is open to all members of the public consistent with state and federal law.

UCSC Concert Choir
2026-03-13 19:30 - 21:30 | Music Center Recital Hall, 400 McHenry Road, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064
UCSC Concert Choir Performs music by Chris Pratorius, Einojuhanni Rautavarra, and Juhi Bansal. Featured is “Contraponientes,” by Pratorius, a 30-minute piece for choir, three flutes, harp, and cello–a song cycle for choir on texts by Federico Garcia Llorca. “The Rautavaara” also features Llorca texts, while the Bansal reflects some of the pastoral imagery of the Llorca texts. Directed by Nathaniel Berman,
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ADMISSION
– General admission.
– Free for UCSC students (ticket required).
– Tickets available here online through Eventbrite only.
– Follow the Music Dept on Eventbrite for notices and updates.
– Doors are scheduled to open 30 minutes prior to event start time.
– Ticket holders not seated at least 5 minutes before the advertised start time may forfeit their ticket/seat and no refund will be issued.
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PARKING
– Parking by permit, ParkMobile, or $11 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.
– UCSC affiliates must purchase their permits before arriving at the event in order to receive their discounted UCSC rate. Attendants will only sell the non-affiliate-priced permits.
– 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.
