Events

Venezuela: Contradictions of Regime Change Without a Change of Regime, A Discussion with Dr. Gabriel Hetland
2026-02-26 12:00 - 13:30 (America/Los_Angeles) | Stevenson Event Center, Stevenson Service Road, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064
*UPDATE!* New date! Now on Thursday, February 26th, 12- 1:30pm at the Stevenson Event Center.
Following the January 3 US attack and kidnapping of its president, Nicolás Maduro, Venezuela has been transformed into something approaching a protectorate of the US. In this bizarre regime change without a change of regime, Maduro’s former vice president, Delcy Rodriguez, is allied -under explicitly coercive threats- with Donald Trump in his brazenly neocolonial plunder of Venezuela’s oil resources. This talk will explore the political and economic contradictions of this dangerous and unusual situation, which poses grave risks to Venezuela, Latin America and the world.
Gabriel Hetland is associate professor of Africana, Latin American, Caribbean, and Latinx Studies at SUNY Albany and author of Democracy on the Ground: Local Politics in Latin America’s Left Turn.

BME 280B Seminar: The evolution of structural variation across vertebrate genomes
2026-02-26 11:40 - 13:15 | Physical Sciences Building, Physical Sciences Building, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064
Presenter: Peter Sudmant, Assistant Professor of Integrative Biology, University of California, Berkeley
Description: Structural variants (SVs) contribute substantially to genetic variation and play vital roles in adaptation and disease. However, SVs are poorly captured by short read sequencing and thus are understudied, particularly in non-model organisms. Here, taking advantage of recently generated haplotype-resolved genome assemblies from >600 vertebrate species, we present the most comprehensive survey of the diversity of SVs and single nucleotide variants (SNVs) across the vertebrate tree of life to date.
Bio: Peter Sudmant is an Assistant Professor of Integrative Biology at the University of California Berkeley. Prior to joining UC Berkeley, Dr Sudmant completed his PhD at the University of Washington in the Lab of Dr Evan Eichler as HHMI International Fellow. Dr Sudmant went on to complete a postdoc with Christopher Burge at MIT as a Genentech fellow of the Life Sciences Research Foundation. Dr Sudmant is a recipient of the American Foundation for Aging Research Junior Faculty Award and a Hellman Fellow.
Hosted by: Professor Russ Corbett-Detig, BME Department

Course Reading Solutions and Challenges: A Half-Day Symposium — Teaching Week 2026
2026-02-26 09:00 - 13:00 | McHenry Library, 1156 High St, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064
Join us for a half-day symposium dedicated to course readings. Hear from UCSC faculty who re-envisioned the role of readings in their courses in order to improve student success and lower student course costs, followed by small group discussions on key topics including homework platforms, selecting materials, student insights on their reading experience, and what to do if students aren’t reading. Select sessions will be streamed. Lunch will be provided for in-person attendees.
Register here

Exploring Research Pathways at Baskin Engineering
2026-02-25 17:30 - 19:00 | Engineering 2, Engineering 2 1156 High Street, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064
Curious how being part of a research lab can supercharge your experience as a Baskin Engineer?
Join us for this informative event to learn about opportunities to solve open-ended problems, build deeper technical skills, and learn how to think like an engineer.
We’ll kick things off with a quick overview of the kinds of research opportunities available to undergrads and how to get started, then you’ll hear directly from students who’ve worked in research labs as undergraduates. They’ll share what they actually did day-to-day, the skills they built (technical and professional), and how research shaped their confidence, career goals, and next steps. We’ll then have pizza and networking to end the evening.
Whether you’re aiming for industry, graduate school, or just want hands-on experience that goes beyond coursework, this panel will help you understand how undergraduate research can set you apart—academically, professionally, and personally!

Register via Handshake.
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.

Campus Conversations on Access: Insights from Disability Studies — Teaching Week 2026
2026-02-25 15:30 - 17:00
This panel explores ways to foster a classroom culture of inclusivity across the divisions by addressing questions of accessibility, grounded in both Disabilities Studies and in classroom experience.
RSVP here

February 25, 2026 | Works-in-Progress with Geoffrey Bowker
2026-02-25 15:00 - 17:00 | CA
Wednesday, February 25, 2026
3:00 – 5:00 PM
Humanities 1, Room 210 or Zoom (Registration)
Join SJRC scholars in Humanities 1, room 210 or on Zoom for an open discussion of works-in-progress! This is a wonderful chance to engage with one another’s ideas, and support our own internal work.
At this session, we will hear from Geoffrey Bowker, Emeritus Professor in Irvine and Science & Justice Advisor about works-in-progress and ongoing work on the death of infrastructure, AI, and underwater network cables and his collaborative comic book on Actor Network Theory. SJRC members Warren Sack and Dimitris Papadopolous will act as “warm up” discussants.
Contact Colleen Stone (colleen@ucsc.edu) or Maria Puig de la Bellacasa (puig@ucsc.edu) for the readings, including a new comic book on the graveyard of machines!
Register for Zoom here.
Geoffrey C. Bowker is Emeritus Professor at the School of Information and Computer Science, University of California at Irvine, where he directed a laboratory for Values in the Design of Information Systems and Technology. He was also Professor of and Senior Scholar in Cyberscholarship at the University of Pittsburgh School, and Executive Director, Center for Science, Technology and Society, Santa Clara. He was awarded the prestigious 4S Bernal Prize in 2024 for his distinguished, career-long contributions to the field of Science and Technology Studies (STS). His book Memory Practices in the Sciences (MIT Press 2008) won the 2007 Ludwig Fleck Prize of the Society for Social Studies of Science, and was awarded “Best Information Science Book” by the American Society for Information Science and Technology (ASIS&T).
Co-sponsored by earthecologies x technoscience conversations, History of Consciousness

Successful Slug Workshop: Productive Struggle & Study Skills
2026-02-25 14:30 - 15:30 | Academic Resources Center (ARC), 408 McHenry Road, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064
Productive Struggle & Study Skills
Wednesday, February 25, 2:45–3:30 p.m.
Location: ARCenter 203
Learn study strategies and why making it hard for yourself supports durable learning.
Successful Slug Workshop Series
Join Learning Support Services (LSS) for Successful Slug Workshops on Tuesdays at noon and Wednesdays at 2:45 p.m.
These 45-minute workshops are open to all UCSC students and offer tools and strategies to support your academic success. Each session highlights best practices for effective, long-lasting learning and is led by LSS professional staff.
To get first priority, sign up on TutorHub or simply drop in. You can also sign up on TutorHub to receive email reminders.
Learn more and sign up: learningsupport.ucsc.edu/programs/workshops/
______________________________________________________________
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.

Ecology of Presence: Pathways to the Natural World
2026-02-25 12:00 - 17:00, 2026-02-24 12:00 - 17:00, 2026-02-23 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.

CSE Colloquium: Agile and evolvable software construction in the era of rapidly evolving hardware accelerator designs
2026-02-25 11:00 - 12:15 | Engineering 2, Engineering 2 1156 High Street, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064
Presenter

Charith Mendis, Siebel School of Computing and Data Science, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Abstract

Modern AI workloads have become exceedingly abundant and important in the current computing landscape. As a result, there have been numerous software and hardware innovations aimed at accelerating these workloads. However, we observe a subtle disconnect between the software and hardware communities. Most software innovations target well-established hardware platforms such as CPUs (e.g., x86, ARM) and GPUs (e.g., NVidia GPUs), while hardware innovations produce plenty of other tensor accelerator designs (e.g., Gemmini, Feather, Trainium) each year.

We asked the question, why aren’t the software community using these accelerators or even evaluating on them? The simple yet undeniable reason is the lack of standardized software tooling compared to CPUs and GPUs. For an architecture to be used, properly designed compiler backends, correctness, and performance testing tools should be abundant (e.g., CUDA ecosystem).

In this talk, I will describe how we bridge this gap by automatically generating the necessary software tools for a large class of accelerators through the Accelerator Compiler Toolkit (ACT) ecosystem. Central to ACT is an ISA definition language, TAIDL, that for the first time standardizes the hardware-software interfaces for a large class of accelerators. Departing from the traditional approach of manually constructing test oracles, performance models, or retargetable compiler backends, we instead introduce agile and evolvable methodologies to automatically generate such necessary tooling using both formal methods and machine learning techniques for any TAIDL-defined accelerator interface. I will show how such automation enables rapid software prototyping, making rapidly evolving accelerator designs usable by the software community.

Bio

Charith Mendis is an Assistant Professor in the Siebel School of Computing and Data Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. His broad research interests are at the intersection of compilers, programming languages, and machine learning. He received his Ph.D. and Master’s from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and his B.Sc. from the University of Moratuwa. He is the recipient of the DARPA Young Faculty Award, the NSF CAREER Award, the Google ML and Systems Junior Faculty Award, the Outstanding Advisor award at UIUC, the William A. Martin Outstanding Master’s Thesis Award at MIT, and the University Gold Medal for his B.Sc. He has won numerous paper awards, including a Distinguished Paper Award at POPL, a Best Student Paper Award at the IEEE BigData conference, an honorable mention for the Best Artifact Award at SIGMOD, a Best Paper Award at ML for Systems workshop at ISCA, and an IEEE Top Picks Honorable Mention.

Hosted by: Professor Nikos Tziavelis

Location: Engineering 2, E2-180 (Refreshments such as fruit, pastries, tea, and coffee will be available for guests.)

Zoom: https://ucsc.zoom.us/j/93445911992?pwd=[REDACTED]

Liu, C. (CSE) - Enabling LLM Unlearning at Inference Time by Decomposing Detection and Intervention
2026-02-25 09:00 - 12:00
Machine unlearning addresses the “right to be forgotten” under GDPR and enables privacy, copyright, and safety compliance in large language models. Training-based unlearning can remove targeted behavior on benchmarks, but it scales poorly, can degrade utility, and can fail under adversarial prompting that recovers supposedly forgotten content. This prospectus proposes inference-time behavioral unlearning: rather than modifying weights to “erase” knowledge, we detect when a query targets forgotten content and intervene in generation so the system behaves like a model never trained on that content. We formalize this approach as Detect-Intervene Decomposition and instantiate it with three complementary methods operating at the embedding, token, and reasoning levels under different access capabilities. Comprehensive experiments across entity unlearning, hazardous knowledge removal, and copyright protection demonstrate that our methods match or exceed training-based approaches while being orders of magnitude faster and preserving model utility. As LLMs increasingly operate as services with restricted weight access, inference-time unlearning provides the only practical path for responsible AI deployment that respects privacy, safety, and legal requirements.
Event Host: Chris Liu, Ph.D. Student, Computer Science and Engineering
Advisor: Yang Liu
Zoom – https://ucsc.zoom.us/j/94799852992?pwd=[REDACTED]
Passcode – 242384

Drop-In Figure Drawing
2026-02-24 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).
—
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.
—
ADMISSION
– FREE and open to the public
– UCSC Art Department Room L-101
—
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.
—
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.

Expanding the Narrative
2026-02-24 18:30 - 20:00 | CA
Join AA/PIRC and USS on Tuesday, February 24th from 6:30-8pm at Terry Freitas Commons for a teach-in and art build exploring how different Asian communities are affected by U.S. immigration policies.
We will talk about the diversity of Asian experiences with immigration, how fictions like the “model minority myth” and “perfect immigrant narrative” harm Asian communities, and where we can move forward from here.
Free food will be provided! RSVP at bit.ly/aapirc-immigration.
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.

AI and Security 101
2026-02-24 17:00 - 18:15 | Engineering 2, Engineering 2 1156 High Street, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064
Join us for an informative conversation with Neta Haiby, Head of Product | AI Security at Microsoft!
Artificial Intelligence is transforming both cyber defense and cyber offense. It creates unique risks in how we build, deploy, and operate AI apps and Agents. This session examines how AI can be attacked or misused – through techniques such as jailbreaks, intent breaking, and supply-chain compromise and discusses practical defense strategies, including guardrails, access controls, monitoring, and evaluation.
Designed for students interested in cybersecurity and AI, this session emphasizes a practical understanding of AI security.
Attendees will also receive resources to help them further explore and get started in the field!
Don’t miss this highly informative event!
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.

Teaching Symposium — Teaching Week 2026
2026-02-24 14:45 - 17:30 | Merrill Cultural Center, 200 McLaughlin Dr, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064
This is the kick-off event for Teaching Week 2026. The symposium will showcase the work of instructors (including grads, lecturers, senate faculty) presenting on a teaching innovation, activity, program, or scholarly work. Presentation modalities include posters and short spoken presentations.
Application to Present
RSVP here to attend

Arts Division - Application and Interview Skills That Will Get You A Great Job!
2026-02-24 12:00 - 13:00 | https://ucsc.zoom.us/j/2614256373?pwd=[REDACTED]
Having a stand-out application and exceptional interview skills are essential for landing a great job! Join us for this fast-paced and interactive one-hour online workshop where we’ll explore how to submit an application that makes an employer WANT to interview you, as well as top-notch tips and techniques to prepare for and answer interview questions with intentionality, confidence, and skill.
We will 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.

Successful Slug Workshop: Time Management
2026-02-24 12:00 - 13:00 | Academic Resources Center (ARC), 408 McHenry Road, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064
Time Management
Tuesday, February 24, 12:00-12:45 p.m.
Location: ARCenter 203
Learn the ways you can manage your time and avoid procrastination/burnout.
Successful Slug Workshop Series
Join Learning Support Services (LSS) for Successful Slug Workshops on Tuesdays at noon and Wednesdays at 2:45 p.m.
These 45-minute workshops are open to all UCSC students and offer tools and strategies to support your academic success. Each session highlights best practices for effective, long-lasting learning and is led by LSS professional staff.
To get first priority, sign up on TutorHub or simply drop in. You can also sign up on TutorHub to receive email reminders.
Learn more and sign up: learningsupport.ucsc.edu/programs/workshops/
______________________________________________________________
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.

Disability Resource Center Open House
2026-02-24 11:00 - 14:00 | Kerr Hall, Kerr Hall Kerr Road, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064
Join us at the UCSC Disability Resource Center (DRC) for an Open House.
Meet DRC staff, learn about disability services on campus, and tour our space in Kerr Hall. Lunch will be provided.
Date: Tuesday, February 24
Time: 11:00 a.m.–2:00 p.m.
Location: Kerr Hall, Basement Level, Room 54
Questions? Email drc@ucsc.edu.

Transform Your Future Pop-Up (Cookies Included!)
2026-02-24 10:30 - 11:30 | Jack Baskin Engineering, Baskin Engineering 1156 High Street, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064
Join Baskin Engineering to celebrate National Engineers Week with a sweet stop at the Transform Your Future Pop-Up (Cookies Included!) 🍪☕
This year’s Engineers Week theme, Transform Your Future, is a powerful reminder that engineering doesn’t just shape our world—it shapes our opportunities, our communities, and the futures we can imagine for ourselves.
Swing by the BE Courtyard to grab cookies, coffee, and BE swag (first come, first served!) and take a moment to celebrate how you are transforming your future.
📅 Date: Tuesday, February 24⏰ Time: 10:30 a.m.📍 Location: BE Courtyard
We hope to see you there!

Coffee and Convo with Provost Aims
2026-02-24 09:00 - 11:00 | CA
Stay for the engaging conversation or grab it to go. Either way, it’s hot and free. Featuring Alta Organic Roasting Company coffee, a fair trade locally women owned company.

Right Livelihood Community Organizing Workshop
2026-02-23 18:00 - 20:00 | CA
On SuperBowl weekend, students part of the Right Livelihood Student Club, YDSA, and other communities organized a successful local rally against ICE operations, showing solidarity with Americans and the global consciousness against current agendas of militarism, capitalism, and imperialism.
The Right Livelihood Community Organizing Workshop focuses on issues that students want to strategize. A nice dinner will be supplied by Pretty Good Advice as we look for ways the student community can continue to rise up in solidarity with humanity. RSVP in bio.
This is more than a space to discuss anti-ICE tactics, but a workshop where you can pick whatever issue you care about to plan a campaign on.
Click here to RSVP.

College Night: Camp Snoopy
2026-02-23 17:00 - 20:00 | Crown/Merrill Dining Hall
Merrill College, in collaboration with UCSC Dining, present Peanuts (not the food) college night. Join us Monday, February 23, from 5–8 p.m. at the Crown/Merrill 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.
__________________________________________________________________________________________________
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

Bay Tree Building Renovation Information Session
2026-02-23 17:00 - 18:00 | https://events.ucsc.edu/event/bay-tree-building-renovation-information-session/
Drop in to learn more about the Bay Tree Building Renovation and campus resources for meeting rooms, tabling, and events during the renovation.
Date: February 23
Time: 5–6 p.m. via Zoom (Zoom link)
__________________________________________________________________________________________________
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.

Statistics Seminar: Rotated Mean-Field Variational Inference and Iterative Gaussianization
2026-02-23 16:00 - 17:00 | CA
Presenter: Sifan Liu, Assistant Professor, Department of Statistical Science, Duke University
Description:Mean-field variational inference (MFVI) approximates a target distribution with a product distribution in the standard coordinate system, offering a scalable approach to Bayesian inference but often severely underestimating uncertainty due to neglected dependence. We show that MFVI can be greatly improved when performed along carefully chosen principal component axes rather than the standard coordinates. The principal components are obtained from a cross-covariance matrix of the target’s score function and identify orthogonal directions that capture the dominant discrepancies between the target distribution and a Gaussian reference. Performing MFVI in a rotated system defines a rotation followed by a coordinatewise transformation that moves the target closer to Gaussian. Iterating this procedure yields a sequence of transformations that progressively Gaussianize the target. The resulting algorithm provides a computationally efficient construction of normalizing flows, requiring only MFVI sub-problems and avoiding large-scale optimization. In posterior sampling tasks, we demonstrate that the proposed method greatly outperforms standard MFVI while achieving accuracy comparable to normalizing flows at a much lower computational cost.
Bio: Sifan Liu is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Statistical Science at Duke University. She was previously a research scientist at the Flatiron Institute and received her Ph.D. in Statistics from Stanford University. Her research interests include sampling, generative modeling, and selective inference.
Hosted by: Statistics Department

AM Seminar: Multiscale Modeling of Cellular Membranes and Oncogenic Proteins
2026-02-23 16:00 - 17:00 | CA
Presenter: Liam Stanton, Professor, San Jose State University
Description: In this talk, I will present a multiscale model for cellular membranes, which is trained on molecular dynamics simulations. The model is constructed within the formalism of dynamic density functional theory and can be extended to include features such as the presence of proteins and membrane deformations. This new framework has enabled simulations that can access length-scales on the order of microns and time-scales on the order of seconds, all while maintaining near fidelity to the underlying molecular interactions. Such scales are significant for accessing biological processes associated with signaling pathways within cells and experimentally relevant regimes. As applications, we consider the cellular interactions of two membrane proteins of biological interest: G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs) and RAS-RAF complexes, the latter being implicated in roughly 30% of human cancers.
Bio: Dr. Stanton received his PhD in Applied Mathematics from Northwestern University in 2009. He went on to do a postdoc at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), where he later became a staff scientist at the Center for Applied Scientific Computing. In 2018, he joined the faculty at San Jose State University in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics, where he is now an associate professor and a recent recipient of the Dean’s Scholar Award in Research Excellence. Dr. Stanton’s current research interests are in the multiscale modeling of non-equilibrium, many-body systems. In particular, he focuses on areas such as fusion energy, biophysical systems and statistical mechanics.
Hosted by: Applied Mathematics

Career Success Drop-In Coaching at the EOP Office - Winter 2026
2026-02-23 13:30 - 15:00 | Academic Resources Center (ARC), 408 McHenry Road, 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: Mondays, Weeks 2, 4, 6, & 8 of Winter Quarter 2026
1/12, 1/26, 2/9, 2/23
Location: Academic Resource Center, EOP Lounge
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.

Wellness in Action: Managing Stress in Times of Uncertainty
2026-02-23 13:00 - 13:30 | CA
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.

ECE 290 Seminar: High-Frequency Circuits for Next-Generation Communication: From Beyond-5G mm-Wave MIMO to Co-Packaged Optics
2026-02-23 10:40 - 11:45 | Engineering 2, Engineering 2 1156 High Street, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064
Presenter: Susnata Mondal, Research Scientist, Intel
Description:
Rapid growth in wireless connectivity, cloud computing, and AI infrastructure is driving an urgent need for communication systems that can deliver higher data rates with improved energy efficiency. Meeting these demands requires advances in high-frequency circuit design across both wireless and wireline domains, spanning millimeter-wave radios to optical interconnects.
This seminar will present recent developments in two complementary directions. The first focuses on millimeter-wave MIMO systems for beyond-5G communication. Conventional phased arrays are typically limited to single-stream beamforming, while fully digital solutions, although flexible, incur significant power and area overhead. Emerging hybrid architectures enable multi-stream, multi-band operation with improved spectral efficiency by combining RF and baseband beamforming, supporting carrier aggregation, adaptive spatial processing, and full-duplex operation. Prototype systems have demonstrated scalable multi-antenna transceivers operating across 28/37 GHz bands, integrating RF front-ends, beamforming networks, and system-level signal processing.
The second direction addresses high-performance computing interconnects, where electrical links increasingly struggle with loss and energy efficiency at high data rates. Co-packaged optics offers a promising alternative by placing optical engines in close proximity to compute and switch chips, improving link efficiency. The seminar will discuss circuit and system innovations enabling scalable optical I/O, including equalization, clocking, and high-linearity design techniques for high-speed optical links, along with recent prototype demonstrations achieving high data rates with low energy per bit.
Bio: Susnata Mondal received the B.Tech. and M.Tech. degrees in E&ECE from IIT Kharagpur in 2015 and the Ph.D. degree in ECE from Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, in 2020. Since then, he has been a Research Scientist at Intel, Hillsboro, working on co-packaged optics and high-speed I/O. He has authored several lead-author papers in ISSCC and JSSC and holds 18 U.S. patents. He is a Technical Program Committee member of RFIC and an Associate Editor for TCAS-I, TCAS-II, and SSCL. His honors include the SSCS Predoctoral Achievement Award, the Best Ph.D. Thesis Award from CMU ECE, and selection as an SSCS Rising Star.
Hosted by: Professor Soumya Bose, ECE Department
Zoom: https://ucsc.zoom.us/j/97975378707?pwd=[REDACTED]

Food For Thought
2026-02-22 15:00 - 18:00 | Cardiff House, 114 Carriage House Road, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064
Join the People of Color Sustainability Collective for a fun, community-centered day of activities, shared food, and meaningful conversation. This gathering creates an informal, educational space for the UCSC community to connect with one another while exploring themes within environmentalism, with an emphasis on inclusive sustainability.
Food for Thought will focus on food sovereignty and strengthening relationships with local organizations leading food justice work. The evening will include a shared dinner, presentations and discussion with community leaders in food justice, and a hands-on food preservation workshop to build practical skills and collective knowledge.
