Events

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

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

UCSC Wind Ensemble
2025-11-21 19:30 - 21:30 | Music Center Recital Hall, 400 McHenry Road, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064
Join the UC Santa Cruz Wind Ensemble for a fall concert.
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ADMISSION
– General admission.
– Free for UCSC students (ticket required).
– Tickets available here online through Eventbrite only.
– Follow the Music Dept on Eventbrite for notices and updates.
– Doors are scheduled to open 30 minutes prior to event start time.
– Ticket holders not seated at least 5 minutes before the advertised start time may forfeit their ticket/seat and no refund will be issued.
—
PARKING
– Parking by permit, ParkMobile, or $5 cash/credit via the on-site parking attendant
– Arts Lot #126 is the closest parking lot to the event
– Visitors with DMV placards or plates may park for free in DMV spaces, Medical spaces, or ParkMobile spaces without additional payment, or in timed zones for longer than the posted time.
– More information provided by UCSC Transportation & Parking Services (TAPS)
—
This program is open to all members of the public consistent with state and federal law.

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

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

UCSC Chamber Singers
2025-11-22 19:30 - 21:30 | Music Center Recital Hall, 400 McHenry Road, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064
The UCSC Chamber Singers, under the direction of Michael McGushin, perform Brahms’s Liebeslieder Waltzes and Debussy’s Trois Chanson. The performance includes student soloists, and the pianists Luke Shepherd and Vlada Moran.
ADMISSION
– General admission $5–12
– Free for UCSC students (ticket required).
– Tickets available here online through Eventbrite only.
– Follow the Music Dept on Eventbrite for notices and updates.
– Doors are scheduled to open 30 minutes prior to event start time.
– Ticket holders not seated at least 5 minutes before the advertised start time may forfeit their ticket/seat and no refund will be issued.
—
PARKING
– Parking by permit, ParkMobile, or $5 cash/credit via the on-site parking attendant
– Arts Lot #126 is the closest parking lot to the event
– Visitors with DMV placards or plates may park for free in DMV spaces, Medical spaces, or ParkMobile spaces without additional payment, or in timed zones for longer than the posted time.
– More information provided by UCSC Transportation & Parking Services (TAPS)
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This program is open to all members of the public consistent with state and federal law.

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

Barn Dance at the Hay Barn
2025-11-23 15:00 - 17:00 | Hay Barn, 94 Ranch View Road, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064, United States
The UCSC Celtic Music Ensemble performs live during a beginner-friendly, gender-neutral, darn good barn dance. Attendees are invited to dance, and partners are not needed.
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ADMISSION
– Open admission; tickets/registration not required.
– FREE and open to the public.
– Donations of any amount are welcomed and appreciated to support to support live music study, performance, and events like this.
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PARKING
– Parking by permit or ParkMobile.
– Lot #170 is the closest parking lot to the event.
– Visitors with DMV placards or plates may park for free in DMV spaces, Medical spaces, or ParkMobile spaces without additional payment, or in timed zones for longer than the posted time.
– More information provided by UCSC Transportation & Parking Services (TAPS).
—
This program is open to staff, faculty, and students consistent with state and federal law.

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

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

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

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

UCSC Orchestra
2025-11-25 19:30 - 21:30 | Music Center Recital Hall, 400 McHenry Road, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064
Join the UC Santa Cruz Orchestra for a fall concert. Conducted by Bruce Kiesling. Featuring pieces Overture from Orpheus in the Underworld by Jacques Offenbach (1819-1880) and Pictures at an Exhibition (orchestrated by Maurice Ravel) by Modest Mussorgsky (1839-1881).
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ADMISSION
– General admission
– Free for UCSC students (ticket required).
– Tickets available here online through Eventbrite only.
– Follow the Music Dept on Eventbrite for notices and updates.
– Doors are scheduled to open 30 minutes prior to event start time.
– Ticket holders not seated at least 5 minutes before the advertised start time may forfeit their ticket/seat and no refund will be issued.
—
PARKING
– Parking by permit, ParkMobile, or $5 cash/credit via the on-site parking attendant
– Arts Lot #126 is the closest parking lot to the event
– Visitors with DMV placards or plates may park for free in DMV spaces, Medical spaces, or ParkMobile spaces without additional payment, or in timed zones for longer than the posted time.
– More information provided by UCSC Transportation & Parking Services (TAPS)
—
This program is open to all members of the public consistent with state and federal law.

Harvest Meal
2025-11-27 13:00 - 16:00 | College Nine and John R. Lewis Dining Hall
Staying on campus for fall break? Join us for the annual Harvest Meal!
Brought to you by Dining Services and the Dean of Students Office.
Thursday, November 27
1–4 p.m.
College Nine/John R. Lewis Dining Hall
Registration required by Monday, November 24.
REGISTER HERE
All students, faculty, staff, and their guests are invited to attend.
This meal is dine-in only; to-go meals will not be available.
Celebratory menu includes vegan and gluten-free options.
Assistance available for students in need and without a meal plan.
For accommodations, email basicneeds@ucsc.edu
The following payment options are accepted at the Harvest Meal:

Unlimited Meal Plans
Slug Points or Banana Bucks ($13.65)
Flexi Dollars ($14)
Credit Card ($15.60)
Children under 3 are free with paid adult
NO CASH will be accepted
Students without a meal plan can indicate they would like assistance to attend the event on the registration form

Rainbowsgiving
2025-11-27 17:00 - 19:00 | Cantu Queer Center, Crown Lane, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064
The Cantu Queer Center is excited to host our 4th annual Rainbowsgiving, a community meal for folks who would like an alternative and inclusive gathering for Thanksgiving / 4th Thursday in November. Our hope is to provide a space for folks to connect with others in an affirming, celebratory gathering in which they can be who they are proudly. We are mindful that traveling can be pricey and that one’s home community is not always safe. We want to provide a space that is welcoming and accessible and for you!
To help us ensure we have enough food and to meet any dietary needs, please RSVP in advance. Friends, roommates, family, partners, and other loved ones welcome!

Dried Wreath Workshop
2025-11-30 10:00 | Hay Barn, 94 Ranch View Road, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064, United States
Learn how to create beautiful, long-lasting dried flower holiday wreaths with instructor Beth Benjamin. She will demonstrate the mechanics of putting everything together and will have a couple examples to guide your inspiration. Personal artistic style is highly encouraged! You’ll be able to choose from a wide selection of dried materials from the UCSC Farm and other sources. With care, your wreath will last for years. Light refreshments will be served and the atmosphere promises to be jovial, creative and social.

Register

Info Session: Global Seminar Eco-Entrepreneurship in the Netherlands
2025-12-01 11:00 - 12:00
Learn more at our upcoming Information Session: Monday, December 1, 2025 at 11:00 am-12:00 pm via Zoom.
Register Here
Earn 10 units on a summer program on the Global Seminar Eco-Entrepreneurship in the Netherlands in Amsterdam this summer. This program is taught by Nada Miljkovic, Entrepreneurship Instructor and Program Manager for UCSC’s Center for Innovation & Entrepreneurial Development.
Quick Facts:

Location: Amsterdam, Netherlands
Courses: Crown 92G: Social and Creative Entrepreneurship, GE: PE-H (5 units) and Crown 194: Eco Entrepreneurship, GE: PR-S (5 units)
Led by: Crown Lecturer, Nada Miljkovic
Eligibility: Open to students from any major who have completed 90 units by time of departure and have a minimum of a 2.3 GPA
Dates: Summer Session 2 (Exact dates to be announced)
Finances: Financial aid applies, and scholarships are available! Budget will be posted on the website when it is available.
How to apply: Visit here for instructions. Applications open on December 1 and close on March 2.
Get in touch: Email your questions to globallearning@ucsc.edu.

Program Description:
Discover how entrepreneurship can bridge the gap between the Netherlands’ thriving economy and its commitment to environmental sustainability! Based in Amsterdam, this immersive program includes exciting site visits to Rotterdam, Utrecht, and beyond. You will collaborate with local sustainability-focused entrepreneurs, exploring how innovative business models can tackle the challenges of conservation and development. Through hands-on experience and seminars in entrepreneurship and sustainability, you will gain valuable insights into creating businesses that prioritize environmental well-being. Join us to reimagine what it means to value and protect life in a modern, holistic way. Discover more here.

AM Seminar: Denoising: A Powerful Building Block for Imaging, Inverse Problems and Machine Learning
2025-12-01 16:00 - 17:00 | https://ucsc.zoom.us/j/93681175800?pwd=[REDACTED]
Presenter: Peyman Milanfar, Distinguished Scientist, Google
Description: Denoising, the process of reducing random fluctuations in a signal to emphasize essential patterns, has been a fundamental problem of interest since the dawn of modern scientific inquiry. Recent denoising techniques, particularly in imaging, have achieved remarkable success, nearing theoretical limits by some measures. Yet, despite tens of thousands of research papers, the wide-ranging applications of denoising beyond noise removal have not been fully recognized. This is partly due to the vast and diverse literature, making a clear overview challenging. This article aims to address this gap. We present a clarifying perspective on denoisers, their structure and their desired properties. We emphasize the increasing importance of denoising and showcase its evolution into an essential building block for complex tasks in imaging, inverse problems and machine learning. Despite its long history, the community continues to uncover unexpected and groundbreaking uses for denoising, further solidifying its place as a cornerstone of scientific and engineering practice.
Bio: Peyman is a Distinguished Scientist at Google, where he leads the Computational Imaging team. Prior to this, he was a Professor of Electrical Engineering at UC Santa Cruz for 15 years, two of those as Associate Dean for Research. From 2012-2014 he was on leave at Google-x, where he helped develop the imaging pipeline for Google Glass. Over the last decade, Peyman’s team at Google has developed several core imaging technologies that are used in many products. Among these are the zoom pipeline for the Pixel phones, which includes the multi-frame super-resolution (Super Res Zoom) pipeline, and several generations of state of the art digital upscaling algorithms. Most recently, his team led the development of Pro Res Zoom, and Unblur, features launched in Pixel 10 devices and Google Photos. Peyman received his undergraduate education in electrical engineering and mathematics from the UC Berkeley, and the MS and PhD degrees in electrical engineering from MIT. He holds more than two dozen patents. He founded MotionDSP, which was acquired by Cubic Inc. Along with his students and colleagues, his research work has had deep impact in several areas of computational imaging, and applications of AI thereto – including the introduction of adaptive kernel regression to imaging; pioneering use of learning for fast, content-adaptive image upscaling (RAISR); Neural Image quality Assessment (NIMA), Regularization by Denoising (RED); and most recently (2024) Inversion by Direct Iteration (InDI). All of these works have been recognized with best paper awards. He’s been a Distinguished Lecturer of the IEEE Signal Processing Society, and is a Fellow of the IEEE “for contributions to inverse problems and super-resolution in imaging”
Hosted by: Professor Julie Simons, Applied Mathematics
Zoom link: https://ucsc.zoom.us/j/93681175800?pwd=[REDACTED]
Meeting ID: 936 8117 5800
Passcode: [REDACTED]

Women's Basketball Fundraiser at Woodstock's
2025-12-02 12:00 - 21:00 | Woodstock’s Pizza, 710 Front St, Santa Cruz, CA, 95060
Support UCSC Women’s Basketball! Join us at Woodstock’s Pizza on Dec. 2 from noon – 9 p.m. for a delicious way to give back!

How to participate: Just mention the Women’s Basketball fundraiser when ordering in person or use code UCSCWBALL for online orders.

Why it matters: 20% of all proceeds from your purchase will go directly to supporting the UCSC Women’s Basketball team—helping fund travel, gear, and program needs.

Bring your friends, grab some pizza, and help our Slugs shine this season!

Gingerbread House Decorating
2025-12-02 14:00 - 16:00
Create the house of your dreams while hangin’ with friends and Provost Aims McGuinness.

UC Santa Cruz Comprehensive Habitat Conservation Plan Informational Webinar
2025-12-02 17:30 - 18:30
Please join us to learn more about the UC Santa Cruz Comprehensive Habitat Conservation Plan (HCP).
The Campus Planning Department is hosting an upcoming informational webinar about the proposed Comprehensive Habitat Conservation Plan (HCP) for the Main Residential Campus, Westside Research Park and the Coastal Science Campus on Tuesday, December 2, 2025.
The informational webinar will provide information to the campus and community regarding the proposed Comprehensive Habitat Conservation Plan, its goals, and how it will guide future conservation and planning efforts at UC Santa Cruz. The webinar will include a presentation followed by an opportunity for participants to ask questions.

Event: UC Santa Cruz Comprehensive HCP Informational Webinar
Date & Time: Tuesday, December 2, 2025 at 5:30 pm
Location: Online (Zoom link provided once registered)
Registration: HCP Webinar

Megha Majumdar - A Guardian and a Thief
2025-12-02 19:00 - 20:00 | Bookshop Santa Cruz
Bookshop Santa Cruz welcomes Megha Majumdar (A Burning) who will share her electrifying new novel that has recently been long-listed for the National Book Award and received starred reviews from Kirkus, Publishers Weekly, and Booklist. A Guardian and a Thief, a piercing and propulsive tour de force, is set in a near-future Kolkata, India, ravaged by climate change and food scarcity, in which two families trying to protect their children must battle one another.
RSVP here!
Megha Majumdar is the author of the New York Times bestselling novel A Burning, which was nominated for the National Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle’s John Leonard Prize, and the American Library Association’s Andrew Carnegie Medal. It was named one of the best books of the year by media including The Washington Post, The New York Times, NPR, The Atlantic, Vogue, and TIME Magazine. A 2022 Whiting Award winner, she was born and raised in Kolkata, India, and holds degrees in anthropology from Harvard and Johns Hopkins. She is the former editor in chief of Catapult Books, and lives in New York. A Guardian and A Thief is her second novel.
More information at: Bookshop Santa Cruz – Megha Majumdar
Co-sponsored by The Humanities Institute at UC Santa Cruz.

NLP MS Virtual Information Session
2025-12-02 19:00 - 20:00
Interested in a career in generative AI? Join us Dec. 2 from 7 – 8 PM for our Virtual Information Session. Learn more about our program, based at the UCSC Silicon Valley Campus, where you can earn your NLP MS in as little as 15 months. We offer:

Application fee waivers for UCSC students and alumni
Full and partial scholarships
Dedicated careers services support
Internship and research opportunities

Registration required: bit.ly/4nYyssJ

Free Coffee, Tea, & More with Merrill Provost Aims McGuinness
2025-12-03 09:00 - 11:00
Grab a free cup of locally owned coffee and chat with Provost Aims at Coffee with the Provost! Most Wednesdays through the quarter from 9–11 a.m.
Meet us for coffee, tea, breakfast snacks and good conversation outside the Merrill College Office, across from the mailroom.

When Less is More: Applications of Type-Based Underapproximate Reasoning
2025-12-03 11:00 - 12:30 | Engineering 2, Engineering 2 1156 High Street, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064
Presenter: Suresh Jagganathan, Purdue University

Abstract:
Unlike program verifiers, symbolic execution and property-based testing tools underapproximate program behavior: they aim to report only real bugs (no false positives), at the cost of potentially missing some (false negatives). Recent work has sought to place such tools on a more formal footing, primarily through the development of incorrectness logics that capture a program’s ‘must’ rather than ‘may’ behavior. This talk explores how to transplant these ideas of underapproximation into an expressive refinement type system. Our development enables us to:

(a) Typecheck the completeness of property-based testing (PBT) generators, ensuring that a well-typed generator produces all values (i.e., fully covers) its output type;

(b) Synthesize effectful generators by extending the type system to model underapproximations of sequences of effects rather than just values; and

(c) Guide symbolic execution in effectful functional programs, prioritizing execution paths capable of falsifying data structure safety properties.

Our results demonstrate that viewing types through the lens of underapproximation offers a principled foundation for designing, implementing, and reasoning about program analyzers and test generators, significantly improving their reliability and practical utility in the process.

Bio:
Suresh Jagannathan is the Samuel D. Conte Professor of Computer Science at Purdue University. His interests span functional programming, program verification, distributed and concurrent systems, and trustworthy machine learning. In recent years, he has spent time as an Amazon Scholar, a program manager at the Information Innovoation Office (I2O) at DARPA, and a visiting researcher at the University of Cambridge. He serves an Associate Editor of ACM TOPLAS, and has served as both General and PC Chair of POPL (ACM Symposium on Programming Languages).

Hosted by: Professor Mohsen Lesani

Location: E2-180
*Refreshments such as coffee and pastries will be provided

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

Marketing Yourself In The Arts Industry
2025-12-03 12:00 - 13:00
Join the Arts Division and Career Success for a fast-paced, interactive online workshop on how to market yourself in the Arts—the event will cover personal branding, transferable skills, networking, gig work and more, giving you clear action steps to stand out in Arts-related careers and beyond.
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ADMISSION
– FREE for UCSC students
– Registration required here
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This program is open to all UC Santa Cruz affiliates consistent with state and federal law.

Friends of Juristac UCSC Chapter Meeting
2025-12-03 17:30 - 18:30 | College 9 /John R. Lewis Community Room, College Ten Road, Santa Cruz, 95064, United States
Join the UCSC chapter of Friends of Juristac at our next meeting on Wednesday, December 3, 5:30–6:30 p.m. at the College Nine/John R. Lewis Community Room. Stand with the Amah Mutsun Tribal Band in saying NO to sand and gravel mining at Juristac.
At this meeting we’ll be learning how to table to gather support for the cause and making art.
Learn more at protectjuristac.org
Location: the College Nine/John R. Lewis Community Room (map) is located behind Social Sciences 2 in the College Nine/JRL apartments community.
This event is hosted by The CoCo (College Nine & John R. Lewis College CoCurricular Programs Office).
Questions? Please email coco@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.How to Use the Statement Across Communication Channels

Learn about the Educational Therapy Certificate Program
2025-12-03 18:00 - 19:00
Transform learning.
Join Educational Therapy certificate program chair Sharmila Roy for a thoughtful program overview and hear how the uniquely designed curriculum empowers educators and professionals to make a lasting impact– in the classroom and beyond. As one of the few AET-approved programs, you’ll learn to assess learning challenges and apply effective, research-based interventions.
Empower students and build your practice
Gain skills to support students with learning differences like dyslexia, ADHD, and autism using therapeutic and educational strategies. Whether you’re working in schools or starting a private practice, this program helps you create individualized plans that foster meaningful progress.
Program organizer
This fall info session is sponsored by the Educational Therapy certificate program, a program approved by the Association of Educational Therapists.
Claim your seat- register today!

BME 280B Seminar: Gali Bai & David Haussler
2025-12-04 11:40 - 13:15 | Physical Sciences Building, Physical Sciences Building, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064
Presenter 1: Gali Bai, BME/PBSE Doctoral Candidate, Brooks Lab, UC Santa Cruz
Title 1: Dissecting the contribution of chromatin accessibility to RNA transcription and processing with long-read sequencing
Description: Although all cells in an organism share the same genomic sequence, transcriptional programs vary dramatically across cell types. This diversity is governed by epigenetic regulation involving the coordinated activities of chromatin remodelers, histone modifiers, and histone chaperones that precisely modulate chromatin accessibility. While previous studies have shown that chromatin accessibility at DNase I–hypersensitive sites such as promoters and enhancers is closely associated with gene expression, much less is known about how chromatin influences transcription and RNA processing. To study how chromatin regulates RNA processing, we perturbed yeast chromatin accessibility by deleting two highly conserved chromatin remodelers ISW1 and CHD1. With Oxford Nanopore long-read sequencing, we profiled nascent RNA, full-length mRNA, and chromatin fibers in wild-type and chd1 isw1 double-mutant yeast cells. Loss of ISW1 and CHD1 led to increased chromatin accessibility within intragenic regions, accompanied by aberrant transcription initiation. Leveraging long-read data, we associated distinct chromatin states with specific RNA processing events and isoform expression outcomes. Despite a similar level of chromatin perturbations across the genome, genes with low baseline expression showed extensive transcriptional reprogramming, whereas highly expressed genes remained largely unaffected. These discrepancies can be partially explained by differences in the enrichment of transcription initiation motifs. In intron-containing genes, loss of ISW1 and CHD1 reduced splicing efficiency and increased intron retention, likely due to disrupted RNAPII elongation in the double mutant. Together, our findings highlight the crucial role of ATP-dependent chromatin remodelers in maintaining nucleosome organization and coordinating co-transcriptional RNA processing.
Presenter 2: David Haussler, Distinguished Professor, UC Santa Cruz
Title 2: Brain Organoids
Bio: Haussler received his PhD in computer science from the University of Colorado at Boulder. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a fellow of AAAS and AAAI. He has won a number of awards, including the 2015 Dan David Prize, the 2011 Weldon Memorial Prize from University of Oxford, the 2009 ASHG Curt Stern Award in Human Genetics, the 2008 Senior Scientist Accomplishment Award from the International Society for Computational Biology, the 2005 Dickson Prize for Science from Carnegie Mellon University, and the 2003 ACM/AAAI Allen Newell Award in Artificial Intelligence.
Hosted by: Professor Josh Stuart, BME Department

Pemulai ke Nanga Jela/Return to Nanga Jela
2025-12-04 12:00 - 13:30 | Humanities 1 Building, 257 Cowell-Stevenson Road, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064, United States
About the Talk: The history of hinterland communities is largely written in remote landscapes that today are often targeted for infrastructural development that forcibly relocates existing residents and transforms the land, obliterating those histories, and weakening communities.
In 1984/5 the Iban longhouse at Nanga Jela on Sarawak’s Engkari River in Malaysian Borneo, along with twenty-one other communities and a land area of 8500 ha disappeared because of the building of the Batang Ai Hydroelectric Dam and the creation of a 33 sq mile reservoir. With the drowning of these houses, lands, forests, and of multiple rivers and streams, the history of one of the longest-occupied and most historically rich Iban territories in Sarawak was gone. Many of the 3000 people who were displaced moved to government-created resettlement areas. Some left for other parts of Sarawak, and their descendants scattered around the world. All of those who were forced to leave their Batang Ai and Engkari homelands found their livelihoods completely transformed; none were free to pursue the rice agriculture and forest- and river-centered lives that they had known since their childhoods.
Three decades after this event, the ex-residents and descendants of Nanga Jela engaged in a process of reconstructing that submerged history and reconstituting an Engkari and Nanga Jela identity. Rescuing and sharing what images exist of the longhouse and its surrounding land- and waterscapes, collecting oral histories, geographical memories, genealogies, and a plethora of other local data, and employing multiple social media tools, the increasingly diverse, geographically dispersed community is regaining its history, knowledge of the lost land- and riverscapes, and its identity.
A team comprising Bobby Anak Nyegang and Itin Anak Langit, both born in Nanga Jela, and Christine Padoch, an anthropologist who spent more than two years in the longhouse, led the effort to assemble these and other materials into an image-rich bilingual (English and Iban) book that would be accessible to all in the Nanga Jela community, as well as a community-based archive. In this presentation, Padoch will discuss that complex process of writing the book, recently published as Pemulai ke NangaJela/Return to Nanga Jela and creating an archive together with the longhouse community to provide present and future descendants of the great longhouse on the Engkari River a written history of a landscape and a livelihood that has disappeared.
About the Speakers:
Christine Padoch is a Senior Curator Emerita in the Center for Plants, People and Culture of the New York Botanical Garden. From 2011 to 2017 she was the Director of Research on Forests and Human Well-Being at the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR). An anthropologist by training, she has spent about 50 years carrying out research on smallholder patterns of forest management, agriculture, and agroforestry in the humid tropics, principally in Southeast Asia and Amazonia. Previous to her position at CIFOR, Padoch was the Matthew Calbraith Perry Curator of Economic Botany at the NYBG. She is the author or editor of a dozen books and of approximately 100 scientific articles and book chapters. Christine Padoch has served as a scientific advisor to many international projects and has been a member of the boards of several international research institutions, including the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR), the Amazon Institute for Environmental Research (IPAM), and the Earth Innovation Institute (EII). She holds a Ph.D. from Columbia University.
Nancy Lee Peluso is Professor of Environmental Social Science and Resource Policy in the College of Natural Resources and the Program Director of the Berkeley Workshop in Environmental Politics, housed in the Institute of International Studies. She serves as a faculty member in the Society and Environment Division of the Department of Environmental Science, Policy and Management, where she teaches courses in Political Ecology. Her research since the 1980s has focused on Forest Politics and Agrarian Change in Southeast Asia, primarily in Indonesia. She has done field research in various parts of Indonesia—West and Central Java, East and West Kalimantan and in Sarawak, Malaysia. Her work addresses questions of property rights and access to resources, forest policy and politics, histories of land use change, and agrarian and environmental violence. She is the author or editor of three books: Rich Forests, Poor People: Resource Control and Resistance in Java (UC Press, 1992 – still available); Borneo in Transition: People, Forests, Conservation and Development (Oxford Press, 1996 and 2003, ed. with Christine Padoch); and Violent Environments (Cornell Press, 2001, ed. with Michael Watts.), and nearly fifty journal articles and book chapters. Professor Peluso speaks or reads four languages besides English. In 2003, she was awarded a Harry Frank Guggenheim Fellowship and is finishing a book manuscript tentatively titled, “Ways of Seeing Borneo: Landscape, Territory, and Violence”. She is currently working on a comparative study on the formation of “political forests” in Malaysia, Indonesia, and Thailand as well as a book examining the entanglements of violence and territoriality in landscape history in West Kalimantan.

Week 10 Wellness: Healing Support for Finals Stress
2025-12-04 12:00 - 15:00 | Mary Holmes Fireside Lounge, 11 Cowell Service Rd, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064
Join us for a moment of pause and restoration as you prepare for finals
Hosted by the Division of Student Affairs and Success in collaboration with On the Margins

Free snacks and comfort food
Make your own self care kit
Astrological readings
Group Reiki
Massage

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To learn more, please visit UC Nondiscrimination Statement or Nondiscrimination Policy for UC Publications.
