Events

Community Day: Free Admission at the Arboretum
2026-03-03 09:00 - 17:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | 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.

Mental Health First Aid Certification
2026-03-03 10:00 - 14:00
Thursday, February 19, 10:00 AM – 2:00 PM
Location: Register for the Zoom link
Be prepared to support those around you by getting certified in Mental Health First Aid. Mental Health First Aid teaches the skills needed to recognize and respond to signs and symptoms of mental health and substance use challenges, as well as how to provide someone with initial support until they are connected with appropriate professional help. In the course, you learn risk factors and warning signs for mental health and addiction concerns, strategies to help someone in crisis and non-crisis situations, and where to turn for help.
We encourage all staff and faculty to take advantage of this opportunity. Whether you work directly with students or behind the scenes, your participation in MHFA training is a crucial step in building a resilient and supportive campus community.
Register for the Zoom 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.

Ecology of Presence: Pathways to the Natural World
2026-03-03 12:00 - 17:00, 2026-03-04 12:00 - 17:00, 2026-03-05 12:00 - 17:00, 2026-03-06 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.

Drop-In Figure Drawing
2026-03-03 19:00 - 21:00 | Elena Baskin Visual Arts Center, Baskin Service Road, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064
Drop-In Draw provides a live model and room monitor. There is no formal lesson and only dry media is allowed (no paints).
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ADVISORIES
– These events contain mature content and nudity.
– Drop-In Draw is subject to the possibility of last-minute cancellation without notification, and sessions are not guaranteed.
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ADMISSION
– FREE and open to the public
– UCSC Art Department Room L-101
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SCHEDULE OF EVENTS
This series occurs weekly on Tuesday evenings during winter quarter, including the following:
Tuesday January 6, 2026, 7:00–9:00 p.m.
Tuesday January 13, 2026, 7:00–9:00 p.m.
Tuesday January 20, 2026, 7:00–9:00 p.m.
Tuesday January 27, 2026, 7:00–9:00 p.m.
Tuesday February 3, 2026, 7:00–9:00 p.m.
Tuesday February 10, 2026, 7:00–9:00 p.m.
Tuesday February 17, 2026, 7:00–9:00 p.m.
Tuesday February 24, 2026, 7:00–9:00 p.m.
Tuesday March 3, 2026, 7:00–9:00 p.m.
Additional dates to be announced for spring quarter.
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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.

UCSC Orchestra—Bravada and Tchaikovsky
2026-03-03 19:30 - 21:30 | Music Center Recital Hall, 400 McHenry Road, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064
Join the UC Santa Cruz Orchestra, conducted by Bruce Kiesling, for a winter concert, featuring Flagello’s Bravada and selections from Tchaikovsky, including the Overture–Fantasy from Romeo and Juliet and Solemn Overture from The Year 1812.
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ADMISSION
– General admission
– Free for UCSC students (ticket required).
– Tickets will be 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.
– 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.

CSE Colloquium - Improving Efficiency and Reliability of Foundation Models in Clinical AI
2026-03-04 11:00 - 12:15 | Engineering 2, Engineering 2 1156 High Street, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064
Presenter: Vasiliki “Vicky” Bikia, PhD, Stanford Department of Biomedical Data Science and Institute for Human-Centered AI (HAI)
Abstract:
Deploying foundation models in health requires both computational efficiency and reliable generation. In this talk, I present two studies that address these dimensions separately but with a shared goal of real-world clinical deployment. The first study focuses on reduced-resolution distillation for multimodal clinical data, particularly medical imaging. As model and input sizes increase, inference cost and memory constraints become major barriers to deployment. We investigate how high-capacity teacher models can transfer structured knowledge to compact student models trained on downsampled images, using embedding-space supervision to preserve clinically meaningful representations while reducing computational footprint. The second study examines the reliability of AI-generated clinical text. Foundation models are increasingly used to produce discharge summaries and patient-facing explanations, yet fluency does not guarantee safety. We develop a structured evaluation framework grounded in clinical error taxonomies and clinician-calibrated metrics to quantify hallucinations, omissions, and semantic misalignment. Together, these studies emphasize that scalable clinical AI requires not only smaller and faster models, but also rigorous evaluation of generative reliability before deployment.
Bio:
Vasiliki Bikia is a Postdoctoral Researcher at Stanford University, affiliated with the Department of Biomedical Data Science and the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence (HAI). She received an Advanced Diploma in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, and a Ph.D. in Bioengineering from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL). Her research focuses on medical foundation models, structured representations of health data, and the evaluation of generative systems in clinical settings. Previously, she was a Machine Learning Scientist at the Mussallem Center for Biodesign at Stanford University, where she developed software pipelines to improve data accessibility and interoperability in digital health applications. Vasiliki was selected as an MIT Rising Star in EECS (2025) and as an Emerson Consequential Scholar (2025), and is actively engaged with the Silicon Valley entrepreneurial ecosystem through collaborations at the intersection of research, industry, and healthcare. She is an organizing member of the Conference on Health, Inference, and Learning (CHIL) and serves as Unconference Chair for the 2025 and 2026 editions, where she leads the design and execution of the entrepreneurship-focused track bridging academic research and real-world deployment. Her work has appeared in venues including IEEE journals, npj Digital Medicine, Nature Communications, and leading AI conferences, and she has contributed to multiple funded research proposals and clinical studies at the intersection of AI, medicine, and translational impact.
Hosted by: Professor Nikos Tziavelis
Location: Engineering 2, E2-180 (*Refreshments such as coffee, tea, fresh fruit, and pastries will be provided)
Zoom: https://ucsc.zoom.us/j/93445911992?pwd=[REDACTED]

Penguin Random House Info Session for UC Santa Cruz Undergraduates
2026-03-04 12:00 - 13:00 | https://events.ucsc.edu/event/penguin-random-house-info-session-for-uc-santa-cruz-undergraduates/
Looking to break into the publishing field? Join us for an insightful information session with an experienced recruiter at Penguin Random House!
This session is exclusively for UCSC students and will provide an overview of pathways within publishing and careers at Penguin Random House. You will learn about their dynamic internship program and get insider tips for navigating the recruitment process. Don’t miss this opportunity to ask questions and hear directly from a publishing professional!
Register here
YOU BELONG HERE
Programs and services are open to all, consistent with state and federal law, as well as the University of California’s nondiscrimination policies. Every initiative—whether a student service, faculty program, or community event—is designed to be accessible, inclusive, and respectful of all identities. To learn more, please visit UC Nondiscrimination Statement or Nondiscrimination Policy for UC Publications.
Find more Humanities Division career events and other resources at Humanities Career Engagement

Engineering Teaching Community (Faculty)
2026-03-04 12:00 - 13:00 | Jack Baskin Engineering, Baskin Engineering 1156 High Street, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064
During the chaos of a quarter, is it hard to find time to reflect and improve as an instructor? Would you like to be a part of an inclusive, supportive group of engineering instructors who do this in community? ETC is for sharing teaching experiences, classroom ideas, research on learning, and methods that support instructors and students. All are welcome, and lunch is provided. Please reach out to Jenny Quynn with questions.

Shields, S. (CM) - Procedural, Player-Centric Game Balancing
2026-03-04 13:00 - 17:00 | Merrill College, College Office, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064
Game balance is a term widely used among players, researchers, and designers of games. It is a concept that feels vitally important to how we make and play games – but when we try to define it or implement it, we seldom get the same definition twice. Balance appears differently to whoever is judging it, but as researchers and designers we still must translate this element of game design into technical practice. It also is an expensive and time-consuming subject, one that requires a constant loop of playtesting and design iteration through nearly the entirety of the game development process.
This work seeks to focus our understanding of balance while offering procedural methods to either increase speed or improve quality when performing balancing tasks in game design and research. It accomplishes this by offering a taxonomy of balance alongside a generic design framework that can be used to apply balancing strategies to any game context. It additionally provides a catalog of balancing methods, allowing designers to use common patterns to apply procedural balancing to their games. Finally, I offer three technical examples using the taxonomy and framework, putting theoretical knowledge of balance into concrete technical systems.
Balance ultimately helps us design games that make us feel fairness in our play. By sharpening and optimizing our understanding of the term, we improve the games we make and open new doors in game systems design.
Event Host: Sam Shields, Ph.D. Candidate, Computational Media
Advisor: Edward F. Melcer
Zoom- https://ucsc.zoom.us/j/98956788669?pwd=[REDACTED]
Passcode- 713173

Career Success Drop-In Coaching at the Cantú Cabin - Winter 2026
2026-03-04 13:30 - 15:00 | Lionel Cantú Queer Center, Crown Lane, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064
Drop-in with Career Coach & Engagement Specialist Bridge Kennedy to discuss Career Exploration, Job Search Strategy, Interview Prep, Grad School Prep, or whatever’s on your mind related to your career success!
Time: 1:30pm – 3:00pm
Dates: Wednesdays, Weeks 7 & 9 of Winter Quarter 2026
2/18/2026 & 3/4/2026
Location: Cantú Queer Student Resource Center, Merrill College
YOU BELONG HERE
Programs and services are open to all, consistent with state and federal law, as well as the University of California’s nondiscrimination policies. Every initiative—whether a student service, faculty program, or community event—is designed to be accessible, inclusive, and respectful of all identities. To learn more, please visit UC Nondiscrimination Statement or Nondiscrimination Policy for UC Publications.

Sonic Icons: Relation, Recognition, and Revival in a Syriac World
2026-03-04 15:30 - 17:00 | Social Sciences 1, Social Sciences 1, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064
Talk Abstract: To the extent that Middle Eastern Christians register in Euro-American political imaginaries at all, they are usually invoked to make a political point about the need for Western military intervention in places like Iraq or Syria, or they are cited as an exemption to anti-Islamic immigration policies because of an assumption that their Christianity makes them easily assimilable in the so-called “Judeo-Christian” West. Sonic Icons argues that these views work against the very communities they are meant to benefit by tracking a diasporic network of Syriac Orthodox Christians—also known as Assyrians, Aramaeans, and Syriacs—in the Netherlands who intertwine religious practice with political activism to “save” Syriac Christianity from the twin threats of political violence in the Middle East and cultural assimilation in Europe.
Coming of age in a historical moment when much of their tradition has been destroyed or forgotten by war, dispossession, displacement, and genocide—their story of self-discovery is a story of survival, revival, and reinvention. Their activism is oriented toward seeking a complex form of recognition for what they understand to be the ethical core of Christian kinship in an ethnic as well as in a religious sense, despite living in societies that do not recognize this unhyphenated form of ethnoreligious identity as a politically legitimate mode of public identity. Drawing on both theological and linguistic theories of the icon, Sonic Icons rethinks foundational theoretical accounts of ethnicization, racialization, and secularization by examining how kinship gets made, claimed, and named in the global politics of minority recognition.

Speaker Bio: A cultural anthropologist by training (UCSC ’13), Dr. Sarah Bakker Kellogg is a sensory ethnographer whose research and writing documents minor traditions of knowledge, care, and relational world-making. Known for her methodological creativity, her work centers questions of reproduction, ethics, and justice at the intersection of religious studies, gender studies, migration studies, and political economy. The author of Sonic Icons: Relation, Recognition, and Revival in a Syriac World published by Fordham University Press (2025), she has also won numerous awards, research grants, and fellowships, including the SSRC’s International Dissertation Research Fellowship, the Charlotte W. Newcombe Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship, and the Wenner Gren Hunt Postdoctoral Fellowship. Her new research project is an ethnographic and historical investigation of interfaith activist traditions organized around immigration, racial reparations, and economic justice.

College Night: Gotta Catch Them All? – a Pokémon themed event exploring animal rights
2026-03-04 17:00 - 20:00 | College Nine and John R. Lewis Dining Hall
College Nine and John R. Lewis College, in collaboration with UCSC Dining, present “Gotta Catch Them All? ” – a Pokémon-themed event exploring animal rights. Join us Wednesday, March 4 from 5–8 p.m. at the College Nine/John R. Lewis Dining Hall for a night of activities, 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

Ways to Wellness
2026-03-04 17:30 - 19:00 | Namaste Lounge, 615 College Nine Road, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064
Join the Asian American/Pacific Islander Resource Center on Wednesday 3/4 from 5:30-7:00pm at Namaste Lounge to learn about Tai Chi and Yoga, as we highlight Asian wellness tools that can be used to help relieve stress and discuss how cultural wellness practices can help us connect to our communities. Feel free to bring your own yoga mat, towel, or blanket!
RSVP at bit.ly/aapirc-wellness
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 UC Santa Cruz Kraw Lecture Series presents: Unmasking cancer's complete genetic code
2026-03-04 17:30 - 19:30 | Silicon Valley Campus, 3175 Bowers Avenue, Santa Clara, CA, 95054, United States
In this Kraw lecture, Angela Brooks will discuss her work on cancer research.
Current cancer research focuses almost entirely on finding errors—mutations—in DNA. This has given us incredible tools like precision oncology, matching patients with targeted drugs. But cancer cells almost always develop drug resistance, causing treatments to fail and limiting patient survival. An often-overlooked aspect of cancer genes is the messenger RNA, which is copied from DNA, then translated into protein to do the work of the cell. Over 95% of human genes have isoforms, which are different versions of the RNA message created through a process called RNA splicing. These different messages lead to slightly different proteins, and we believe our lack of knowledge of different isoforms is a missing cause of treatment failure.

In-Person Reception: 5:30 p.m.
Lecture: 6–7 p.m.

REGISTER

Unexpected Returns: The Historic Entanglements of Fire, Settlement, and Stewardship in the Santa Cruz Mountains
2026-03-04 18:00 - 19:30 | Institute of the Arts and Sciences, 100 Panetta Ave, Santa Cruz, United States
March 4th, 2026 from 6:00 p.m. – 7:30 p.m. Miriam Greenberg and Andrew Matthews will present the findings of UCSC researchers who have spent three years studying the ecological, social, and political economic processes that have set the stage for contemporary wildfires, in what has become known as the “Wildland Urban Interface” (WUI). Come and learn about the deeper histories of indigenous burning, settler ranching, fire suppression, extractive industries and urbanization that have produced fire prone landscapes in the Santa Cruz Mountains.
This event is presented as part of An Aesthetics of Resilience, a collaborative research initiative of the Institute of the Arts and Sciences and the Friedlaender Lab at UC Santa Cruz. The project brings scientists, artists, humanists, and activists together to examine multiple experiences of vulnerability in the face of climate change and is supported by a University of California Office of the President California Climate Action Seed Grant, with additional support from the Coha Nowark Art + Science Fund.

Unexpected Returns: The Historic Entanglements of Fire, Settlement, and Stewardship in the Santa Cruz Mountains
2026-03-04 18:00 - 19:30 | Institute of the Arts and Sciences, 100 Panetta Ave, Santa Cruz, United States
Join UCSC faculty members Miriam Greenberg and Andrew Matthews as they discuss the deep regional histories of fire, from indigenous burning, settler ranching, fire suppression, and much more.

This event is part of Intersections of Climate Change, a series organized with the Friedlaender Lab in conjunction with Weather and the Whale.

ADMISSION
– FREE and open to the public
PARKING
– The entrance to the Institute of the Arts and Sciences Galleries is on Delaware Street and has an accessibility ramp.
– Convenient and free self-parking is available on Panetta Avenue and High Road, immediately adjacent to the galleries.
– Accessible parking is on High Road.
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This program is open to all members of the public consistent with state and federal law.

Undiscovered Shakespeare: The Two Noble Kinsmen - Episode I
2026-03-04 19:00 - 21:00
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.

BME 280B Seminar: Artificial intelligence systems to advance engineered T cell immunotherapy designs
2026-03-05 11:40 - 13:15 | Biomedical Sciences, Biomedical Sciences Building Red Hill Road, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064
Presenter: Zinaida Good, Assistant Professor of Medicine in the Division of Immunology and Rheumatology and the Division of Computational Medicine, Stanford University
Description: T cell immunotherapies have reshaped the treatment landscape for hematologic malignancies and are rapidly extending to solid tumors, autoimmune diseases, and transplant tolerance. Yet durable benefit remains inconsistent, and toxicities remain clinically significant. The current discovery proceeds one edit at a time, and existing preclinical models do not represent patient biology, which often results in failure upon clinical translation. Overcoming these challenges to improve patient outcomes and reduce toxicities requires a systems-level understanding of the multiscale factors governing T cell function and toxicity in patients. Artificial intelligence (AI) approaches offer an exciting opportunity to tackle this problem by learning unified representations from diverse data types spanning molecular, cellular, and clinical modalities. I will provide an overview on our team’s approaches building AI systems that harness primary patient datasets to directly inform advanced T cell designs optimized for clinical outcomes, with validation in preclinical models.
Bio: Zinaida Good, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor of Medicine in the Division of Immunology and Rheumatology and the Division of Computational Medicine at Stanford University. She also serves as the Director of the Stanford Center for Cancer Cell Therapy Data Hub. The goal of her research program is to understand and enhance engineered T cell immunotherapies for cancer and immune-mediated diseases through innovative computational approaches and systems immunology. Her lab leverages innovation in machine learning and clinical multiomic datasets to build artificial intelligence systems for advanced T cell therapy design. Dr. Good earned her Ph.D. in Computational & Systems Immunology from Stanford University. Her work includes 4 first-author papers (Nature Medicine 2018 & 2022, Nature Biotechnology 2019, Trends in Immunology 2019), 18+ co-authored papers (including Nature 2019, 2022, 2024, Science 2021, Nature Methods 2016, 2022, and NEJM 2024), and an initial senior author papers (ICML 2025, NeurIPS 2025, Frontiers in Immunology 2025). Her research is supported by the NIH/NCI Pathway to Independence Award, NIH/OD Multimodal AI Initiative Award, NIH/NCI Program Project Grant, and the Weill Cancer Hub West. Dr. Good has been named an Arthur & Sandra Irving Cancer Immunology Fellow in 2022, Parker Bridge Fellow in 2023, and an AACR-Woman in Cancer Research Scholar in 2024.
Hosted by: Professor Vanessa Jonsson, BMEbe Department

Teach For America Information Session
2026-03-05 12:00 - 13:00
Interested in launching a career rooted in service, learning, and community impact? Join Teach For America staff members for an upcoming informational session where you’ll learn more about the paid opportunities we offer, the issue we are trying to tackle together, and how you can get involved.
Teach For America offers paid full-time and part-time roles that range from virtual tutoring, internships, summer fellowships, and full-time teaching positions in historically under-resourced schools. Participants gain valuable leadership, communication, and professional skills while supporting student success and educational equity.
During this session, you’ll learn:
– Available opportunities and role types;
– Eligibility and application timelines;
– What support Teach For America provides to participants;
– How to get involved, regardless of major;

We can provide captions for the presentation. If you have disability-related needs, please contact the Career Success office at csuccess@ucsc.edu or (831) 459-4420 as soon as possible.

YOU BELONG HERE
Programs and services are open to all, consistent with state and federal law, as well as the University of California’s nondiscrimination policies. Every initiative—whether a student service, faculty program, or community event—is designed to be accessible, inclusive, and respectful of all identities. To learn more, please visit UC Nondiscrimination Statement or Nondiscrimination Policy for UC Publications.

Contact information
James Crawford, Recruiter

Location
Jack Baskin School of Engineering (E1), 156, Santa Cruz, California, United States

Black on the Block
2026-03-05 13:00 - 14:00 | Crown Provost House, 660 Crown Service Road, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064
Join the African American Resource & Cultural Center every Thursday from 1–2 p.m., at the front of the Ethnic Resource Center for Black on the Block, a weekly tabling and engagement space.
Stop by to learn about campus resources, upcoming programs, and ways to get involved. It’s a casual, welcoming space to ask questions, make connections, and build community. All are welcome.
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.

Xu, Y. (CSE) - Right Place, Right Time: Accelerating Edge Computation on Modern Heterogeneous SoCs
2026-03-05 13:00 - 15:00 | Engineering 2, Engineering 2 1156 High Street, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064
Modern edge computing increasingly relies on heterogeneous System-on-Chip (SoC) architectures. These chips tightly integrate general-purpose CPUs with various specialized accelerators, including GPUs, FPGAs, and AI accelerators, all under a shared memory architecture. Although these shared-memory SoCs enable more efficient communication and data sharing between different processing units, they are notoriously difficult to program and tune due to architectural diversity across vendors and asymmetric compute capabilities within each SoC.
This dissertation introduces Redwood and BetterTogether, two frameworks that rethink CPU-accelerator collaboration on heterogeneous SoCs. Redwood targets a class of algorithms termed traverse–compute, that combine irregular tree traversals with dense leaf-level computation, e.g., Nearest-Neighbor Search and Barnes–Hut algorithm.
It addresses the efficient mapping of these algorithms onto heterogeneous systems by exploiting the architectural strengths of CPUs, GPUs, and FPGAs. BetterTogether extends this methodology to a different class of edge workloads, specifically multi-stage pipelines and neural networks commonly used in computer vision tasks. Furthermore, it introduces interference-aware analysis and scheduling techniques tailored for mobile SoCs. Finally, to broaden the scope of heterogeneous acceleration, we evaluated emerging domain-specific accelerators. We provide a preliminary analysis of Tensor Processing Units and Tensor Cores within the context of modern programming abstractions.
Event Host: Yanwen Xu, Ph.D. Candidate, Computer Science and Engineering
Advisor: Tyler Sorensen
Zoom- https://ucsc.zoom.us/j/5354629158?pwd=[REDACTED]
Passcode- 114514

Planting Oceania and Healing Communities
2026-03-05 13:30 - 15:00 | Namaste Lounge, 615 College Nine Road, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064
Planting Oceania is a Oceanian/Indigenous Pacific Islander community organization that plants traditional foods in two gardens located at Filoli Historic House and Gardens in Woodside and at the UC Giltract Farms in Albany. Members of Planting Oceania will share stories about growing plants and stewarding the Land as an important cultural practice for building Oceania/Pacific Islander communities in California. Panelists will discuss being good guests and building good relations with Native California tribal leaders and communities — the Indigenous stewards of the Land — protocols they center in their land-based work.
Speakers: Windsor Taro (Belauan), John Holt (Kanaka Maoli/Native Hawaiian), Loa Niumeitolu (Tongan), Fuifuilupe Niumeitolu (Tongan), Andria Takesy (Belauan and Chuukese), Leila Tamale (Tongan), & Sitiveni Heimuli (Tongan)
Sponsored by: Rachel Carson College, Center for Racial Justice, Critical Race Ethnic Studies, Asian American/ Pacific Islander Resource Center, American Indian Resource Center, People of Color Sustainable Collective, & Mauna Kea Protectors
For more info fniumeit@ucsc.edu
You Belong Here: The programs and services described here are open to all, consistent with state and federal law, as well as the University of California’s nondiscrimination policies. Every initiative—whether a student service, faculty program, or community event—is designed to be accessible, inclusive, and respectful of all identities.
To learn more, please visit UC Nondiscrimination Statement or Nondiscrimination Policy for UC Publications.

Traveling Film Southasia - Film Screening Festival Launch
2026-03-05 17:00 - 19:00 | Communications Building, 7487 Red Hill Road, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064
Located in Communications 150, Studio C
Join the Center for South Asian Studies (CSAS) for a celebratory film screening event to launch Travelling Film Southasia, a mobile film festival highlighting 19 exceptional nonfiction productions of the last two years, originally screened at Film Southasia 2024 in Kathmandu. This year’s festival encapsulates a range of experiences on the Subcontinent with films from Nepal, Bangladesh, India, Pakistan and Myanmar, including CSAS Faculty Director Dolly Kikon’s recent film, Abundance.
Film Southasia (FSA) is a biennial festival that began in 1997 with the goal of popularizing documentary films so that they entertain, inform, and change lives. In addition to the festival that takes place in Kathmandu every two years, FSA organizes screenings, discussions, and workshops to promote Southasian non-fiction within the Subcontinent and around the world. Film Southasia believes that film is a powerful medium that not only helps better represent the region internationally, but also contributes immensely to introspection and to initiatives that bring change at the local level.
For more information: Traveling FSA 2025.
After the March 5 film festival launch event, the festival films will be available for streaming until March 20. Link and instructions for viewing to follow.
This event is open to all students, faculty, staff, and members of the public consistent with University policy and state and federal law.
Presented by the Center for South Asian Studies and co-sponsored by the Department of Film and Digital Media and The Humanities Institute.

Random With A Purpose (RWAP) XXXlV—The Experiment
2026-03-05 19:30 - 21:00 | 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.

Barnstorm Presents--"Gloria," by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins
2026-03-06 06:30 - 07:30 | 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.
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FULL SCHEDULE OF EVENTS
Fri. March 6: 7:30 p.m.
Sat. March 7: 2:00 p.m. matinee
Sat. March 7: 7:30 p.m.
Sun. March 8: 2:00 p.m. matinee
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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.
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PARKING
– Parking by permit, ParkMobile, or $11 cash/credit via the on-site parking attendant when present (no attendant will be present for the Sat. March 7 matinee).
– 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).
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This program is open to all members of the public consistent with state and federal law.

Weather and the Whale Book Launch and Closing Party
2026-03-06 17:00 - 19:00 | Institute of the Arts and Sciences, 100 Panetta Ave, Santa Cruz, United States
March 6, 2026 5:00 p.m. – 7:00 p.m. The IAS will host a Celebration of the release of the Weather and the Whale catalog with an after-hours viewing of the exhibition and a conversation with three of the exhibition collaborators and catalog contributors: Guillermo Delgado-P, Kailani Polzak and Zac Zimmer.
Distributed by University of Minnesota Press, Weather and the Whale is an exciting interdisciplinary catalog combining artworks, critical and creative texts, and new scientific research about whales and other marine mammals to both sound a warning of the irreversible consequences of the collapsing climate and offer alternative possibilities for living during these challenging times.

Science in the Neighborhood: Transforming Pacific salmon recovery, from genes to ecosystems
2026-03-06 18:00 - 19:30 | Coastal Biology Building, 130 McAllister Way, Santa Cruz, CA, 95060
Science In the Neighborhood
A public lecture series hosted quarterly by the UC Santa Cruz Science Division
Transforming Pacific salmon recovery, from genes to ecosystems
Presentation by Eric Palkovacs, Professor, UC Santa Cruz
Q&A with Bryan Gaensler, Dean of Science, UC Santa Cruz
Register here.
An endangered Central California Coast coho salmon from the Scott Creek recovery program that UCSC operates in collaboration with NOAA. Photo credit: Joel Sartore / National Geographic Photo Ark.
For millennia, Pacific salmon have been integral to the health of coastal ecosystems and human communities from California to Alaska. Salmon are ecological and cultural keystone species, connecting marine and freshwater food webs and supporting thriving fisheries. Yet, wild salmon have declined precipitously due to a combination of factors including dams, harvest, hatcheries, water use—and now, climate change.
Professor Palkovacs, who leads UC Santa Cruz’s Institute of Marine Sciences and Fisheries Collaborative Program, will describe transformative approaches to recover wild salmon populations by connecting novel insights from the level of genes to ecosystems. Learn how this integrative research program can provide insights to transform the future for wild Pacific salmon and the ecosystems and fisheries they support.
The event is in-person only. Register here.
March 6, 2026 | 6:00–7:30 p.m.
Coastal Biology Building. Rm. 110
UC Santa Cruz Coastal Campus
130 McAllister Way
Santa Cruz, CA 95060
The screenshot below shows where to find the entrance of the Coastal Biology Building.
