Events

Narcan Training for Faculty and Staff
2026-03-17 13:00 - 13:30 (America/Los_Angeles)
Tuesday, March 17, 1:00 PM – 1:30 PM
Register for the Zoom link.
Narcan is a life-saving opioid overdose reversal drug. Join us in this workshop as we learn the following:

How to use Narcan
When to use Narcan
Narcan FAQs
Where to find Narcan locally

Register for the Zoom link. To learn more, please visit the Narcan wellness initiative webpage. For trainings, 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.

Free Coffee, Snacks, & Conversation
2026-03-17 09:00 - 11:00 | Merrill College Office, 641 Merrill Road, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064
Enjoy a cup of coffee, cocoa, or tea, and a breakfast snack with Merrill Provost McGuinness. Stay and chat with him and Poppy the Merrill Chihuahua, or take it go.
See you outside of the Merrill College office, across from the Merrill Mailroom.

Karen Russell - The Antidote
2026-03-16 19:00 - 20:00 | Bookshop Santa Cruz
Bookshop Santa Cruz welcomes bestselling author Karen Russell (Swamplandia!) for a discussion about her latest novel The Antidote, which will be available in paperback on the night of the event. “The Antidote blends speculative and fantasy elements with rich language and vivid characters in an effort not to escape reality but to comment even more thoughtfully on it. . . . Russell’s lyrical writing dazzles on every page.” —The New York Times

Your RSVP helps us plan for your arrival and keep in touch with any changes. Thank you for registering!
The Antidote opens on Black Sunday, as a historic dust storm ravages the fictional town of Uz, Nebraska. But Uz is already collapsing—not just under the weight of the Great Depression and the dust bowl drought but beneath its own violent histories. The Antidote follows a “Prairie Witch,” whose body serves as a bank vault for peoples’ memories and secrets; a Polish wheat farmer who learns how quickly a hoarded blessing can become a curse; his orphan niece, a basketball star and witch’s apprentice in furious flight from her grief; a voluble scarecrow; and a New Deal photographer whose time-traveling camera threatens to reveal both the town’s secrets and its fate.
Karen Russell is the author of six books of fiction, including the New York Times bestsellers Swamplandia! and Vampires in the Lemon Grove. She has received MacArthur and Guggenheim Fellowships and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Born and raised in Miami, Florida, she now lives in the Bay Area with her husband, son, and daughter. The Antidote, a national bestseller and a finalist for the National Book Award, is her second novel.
This event is cosponsored by The Humanities Institute.

Teng, Z. (CM) - Visualizing Player Processes: Towards Design Guidelines for Interactive Process Visualization Tools in Game Analytics
2026-03-16 08:00 - 10:00
Game analysts face a significant challenge in understanding problem-solving and decision-making processes from the vast and complex sequential data generated by modern video games. Existing visualization tools often fail to adequately support the exploration, suffering from issues of visual clutter, inflexible cohort construction, and a lack of interactive depth. To address this gap, this dissertation adopts a Research through Design (RtD) methodology to investigate how an interactive process visualization system can be designed and developed to better support the needs of game analysts.
The research was conducted in three phases. First, an initial set of five design guidelines was identified through a breakdown analysis of existing tools and semi-structured interviews with professional game analysts. Second, these guidelines were iteratively refined through long-term, collaborative case studies with analysts working on diverse commercial games. This process not only validated the initial guidelines and surfaced one additional guideline concerning interactive inspection, but also resulted in INSPECT, an interactive process visualization prototyping system that embodies the refined guidelines. Third, the guidelines were empirically validated through two complementary user studies of the INSPECT system. A controlled experiment demonstrated that features designed according to the guidelines enabled participants to identify player strategies more efficiently than with a baseline system, while a qualitative study with professional Dota 2 coaches and players demonstrated the system’s practical value for strategic analysis and strong usability.
The primary contributions of this dissertation to the fields of game analytics and information visualization is a set of validated design guidelines for process visualization tools. This contribution provides a durable and transferable framework for the design and development of more effective, analyst-centered tools for understanding player problem-solving and decision-making processes.
Event Host: Zhaoqing Teng, Ph.D. Candidate, Computational Media
Advsior: Magy Seif El-Nasr
Zoom- https://ucsc.zoom.us/j/97624383966?pwd=[REDACTED]
Passcode-595285

UCSC Jazz Big Band—with guest artist Marcus Shelby, bass
2026-03-15 15:00 - 17:00 | Music Center Recital Hall, 400 McHenry Road, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064
Join the UC Santa Cruz Jazz Big Band for a winter concert, featuring compositions by Charles Mingus, with guest artist Marcus Shelby, bass, including an original arrangement performed for the first time by the UCSC Jazz Big Band. Directed by Charles Hamilton.
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ADMISSION
– General admission.
– Free for UCSC students (ticket required).
– Tickets available here online through Eventbrite only.
– Follow the Music Dept on Eventbrite for notices and updates.
– Doors are scheduled to open 30 minutes prior to event start time.
– Ticket holders not seated at least 5 minutes before the advertised start time may forfeit their ticket/seat and no refund will be issued.
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PARKING
– Parking by permit, ParkMobile, or $11 cash/credit via the on-site parking attendant
– Arts Lot #126 is the closest parking lot to the event
– Visitors with DMV placards or plates may park for free in DMV spaces, Medical spaces, or ParkMobile spaces without additional payment, or in timed zones for longer than the posted time.
– UCSC affiliates must purchase their permits before arriving at the event in order to receive their discounted UCSC rate. Attendants will only sell the non-affiliate-priced permits.
– More information provided by UCSC Transportation & Parking Services (TAPS)
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This program is open to all members of the public consistent with state and federal law.

Barnstorm Presents—Musical Theater Cabaret
2026-03-15 14:00 - 16:00, 2026-03-14 14:00 - 15:30, 2026-03-13 19:30 - 21:00 | Theater Arts B100 Studio Theater, 453 Kerr Rd, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064, United States
Step into the spotlight with Barnstorm’s musical theater showcase—an intimate, cabaret-style evening featuring standout performances by our talented students. From beloved Broadway tunes to hidden gems, this lively celebration of song and story is not to be missed. Directed by Ella Freed.
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ABOUT BARNSTORM
UC Santa Cruz students experiment with and create their own innovative theater and gain a sense of operating and creating art in the Barnstorm Theater Company, a student-run theater arts production company established in 2004.
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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 13: 7:30 p.m.
Sat. March 14: 2:00 p.m.
Sun. March 15: 2:00 p.m.
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ADMISSION
– Tickets issued through Eventbrite; Follow the Dept. of Performance, Play & Design and Barnstorm on Eventbrite for notifications and updates.
– Free for UCSC undergraduate students (ticket required).
– General admission “Pay What You Like” options $5–20
– A limited number of tickets/seats may be available at the door, even after online ticket sales end or reach full capacity.
– Doors are scheduled to open 30 minutes prior to event start time.
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PARKING
– Parking by permit, ParkMobile, or $11 cash/credit via the on-site parking attendant
– Arts Lot #126 is the closest parking lot to the event
– Visitors with DMV placards or plates may park for free in DMV spaces, Medical spaces, or ParkMobile spaces without additional payment, or in timed zones for longer than the posted time.
– UCSC affiliates must purchase their permits before arriving at the event in order to receive their discounted UCSC rate. Attendants will only sell the non-affiliate-priced permits.
– More information provided by UCSC Transportation & Parking Services (TAPS)
—
This program is open to all members of the public consistent with state and federal law.

Cookies & LoFi Cram (finals study hall)
2026-03-15 13:00 - 23:00 | Porter/Kresge Dining Hall, 411 Porter-Kresge Rd, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064
If studying in your room or apartment is not getting you where you need to be, change up the scenery and head to Porter Dining Hall for an hour or three. Bring your book, bring your final draft, or your flash cards.
We’ll bring the cookies & coffee (and tea & hot chocolate).
If you think you would like to attend, please RSVP on the registration page. It’s not required but it does help us plan.
Sponsored and hosted by: staff at the Porter Activities Office
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.

OLLI at UCSC Sunday Speaker Meeting
2026-03-15 10:00 - 12:00 | Colleges Nine and John R. Lewis College Multi-purpose Room, 615 College Nine Road, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064
OLLI at UCSC Hosts Bruce Lyon, Professor, Ecology & Evolutionary Biology
The Osher Lifelong Learning Institute (OLLI) at UC Santa Cruz invites the public to an in-person presentation from 10:00 to noon on Sunday, March 15th, in the Colleges Nine/Lewis Multipurpose Room at UCSC.
Join us for a social hour and a presentation titled, Sparrows in the Mist: Complex Winter Social Behavior in a Little Brown Bird.
Ornithologists often study breeding birds, and as a result, the winter ecology and social behavior of migratory birds is relatively understudied. A 22-year study of a population of golden-crowned sparrows that winter in the Arboretum of the University of California, Santa Cruz was conducted. Each sparrow was given a unique combination of color bands, which allowed us to identify individual birds in the wild and monitor their behavior and survival. Given that they survive migration and breeding, individual sparrows return winter after winter to the arboretum and flock together with the same individuals as in previous years. We used innovative social network methods to understand the patterns of social organization and discovered remarkable social complexity in these birds that is similar in some ways to the societies of mammals, including primates.
Professor Lyon seeks to understand the ecological and evolutionary basis of reproductive strategies and social behavior in animals, particularly reproductive parasitism, parental care, and mating systems. One focus is to understand patterns of cooperation and reproductive parasitism in birds and insects. His passion for photography has also been very useful in his research.
OLLI at UCSC is a community of adults from diverse educational, occupational, and geographic backgrounds who are devoted to the pursuit of learning. This event is free and open to the public. Bring a friend. Coffee and nibbles will be served.
For directions and free parking information, visit: https://olli.ucsc.edu/monthly-gatherings/location-directions-and-parking/
Free and open to the public

Presented by the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute (OLLI) at UC Santa Cruz.

Summer Live in the Schedule of Classes
2026-03-15 00:00 - 23:59
The Summer Session Schedule of Classes goes live today. Explore course descriptions, prerequisites, and meeting times to start planning early for summer enrollment. Email summer@ucsc.edu with questions or call 831-459-5373.

UCSC Chamber Singers
2026-03-14 19:30 - 21:30 | Music Center Recital Hall, 400 McHenry Road, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064
The UCSC Chamber Singers present a winter concert under the direction of Michael McGushin.
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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 $11 cash/credit via the on-site parking attendant
– Arts Lot #126 is the closest parking lot to the event
– Visitors with DMV placards or plates may park for free in DMV spaces, Medical spaces, or ParkMobile spaces without additional payment, or in timed zones for longer than the posted time.
– UCSC affiliates must purchase their permits before arriving at the event in order to receive their discounted UCSC rate. Attendants will only sell the non-affiliate-priced permits.
– More information provided by UCSC Transportation & Parking Services (TAPS)
—
This program is open to all members of the public consistent with state and federal law.

Wildlife Photography from Hummingbirds to Elephants - a photo presentation by Kevin Lohman
2026-03-14 13:00 - 14:30
Join Kevin for “Wildlife Photography from Hummingbirds to Elephants” at the UC Santa Cruz Arboretum & Botanic Garden in the Horticulture 2 Meeting Hall. He will offer tips for photographing hummingbirds, share beautiful images taken at the arboretum, and present highlights from his wildlife photography across Monterey Bay and from his travels around the globe.
Kevin Lohman is an award-winning wildlife photographer based in Santa Cruz, California. One of his hummingbird photographs taken at the UC Santa Cruz Arboretum & Botanic Garden is among several of his images featured locally on a Santa Cruz METRO wildlife bus as part of the “One Ride at a Time” conservation campaign. His work has been published by National Geographic (online) and Outdoor Photographer, and recognized in major competitions including the Audubon Photography Awards and Nature’s Best International Photography Awards. Lohman actively supports conservation organizations through the donation and use of his photography.
The event is free with paid admission. UCSC students and faculty receive free admission to the Arboretum. Public admission costs are: Adults $10, Seniors $8, and Youth (4-17) $5.

Planting for Hummingbirds
2026-03-14 12:00 - 14:00
Would you like to attract hummingbirds to your garden? Join us on the patio at Norrie’s Gift & Garden Shop where UC Master Gardeners will host a pop-up information booth to offer advice and answer questions about the best Arboretum plants to attract hummingbirds.
Flowers really are the best hummingbird feeders and these tiny birds are attracted to many of the Arboretum’s high-nectar-producing blossoms. We will provide handouts about which Arboretum plants are best to make your garden abuzz year-round. We’ll also have fun facts about these aerial acrobats and will raffle off a beautiful plant from our nursery – a nectar producer that is a favorite of hummingbirds.
Come celebrate the wonders of our local hummingbirds and stock up on plants for your home garden.

Non-Toxic Gopher Control workshop
2026-03-14 09:00 - 12:00 | Hay Barn, 94 Ranch View Road, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064, United States
Gophers! Every backyard gardener’s nemesis. Join Anastatia Foster for this informative class on effective gopher control methods that are safe for humans and the environment.
Gophers and other vertebrate pests take a huge toll in agriculture as well as your own backyard; as much as 10 to 50% of crops can be lost to animal pests. This workshop will cover innovative methods and tools to reduce crop damage by managing pest populations in several ways. The most effective lethal traps and techniques will be presented along with exclusion barriers, integrating pest predators, and crop rotation.

UCSC Concert Choir
2026-03-13 19:30 - 21:30 | Music Center Recital Hall, 400 McHenry Road, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064
UCSC Concert Choir performs in a winter quarter concert, “Contrast,” with music by Chris Pratorius, Einojuhanni Rautavarra, and Juhi Bansal. Featured is “Contraponientes,” by Pratorius, a 30-minute piece for choir, three flutes, harp, and cello. a song cycle for choir on texts by Federico Garcia Llorca. “The Rautavaara” also features Llorca texts, while the Bansal reflects some of the pastoral imagery of the Llorca texts. Ensemble directed by Nathaniel Berman with guest conductor Lukáš Janata.
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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 $11 cash/credit via the on-site parking attendant
– Arts Lot #126 is the closest parking lot to the event
– Visitors with DMV placards or plates may park for free in DMV spaces, Medical spaces, or ParkMobile spaces without additional payment, or in timed zones for longer than the posted time.
– UCSC affiliates must purchase their permits before arriving at the event in order to receive their discounted UCSC rate. Attendants will only sell the non-affiliate-priced permits.
– More information provided by UCSC Transportation & Parking Services (TAPS)
—
This program is open to all members of the public consistent with state and federal law.

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

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

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

Winter 2026 Open Studios
2026-03-13 12:00 - 16:00 | Elena Baskin Visual Arts Center, Baskin Service Road, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064
Art Department students exhibit their art work throughout studios and classrooms at the Elena Baskin Visual Arts Center at UC Santa Cruz. The Open Studios event features student art work in a variety of media, including:
– Drawing
– Painting
– Print media
– Sculpture
– Photography
– Environmental art
– Electronic art/new media
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ADMISSION
FREE and open to the public.
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PARKING
– Parking by permit, ParkMobile, or $11 cash/credit via the on-site parking attendant
– Arts Lot #126 is the closest parking lot to the event
– Visitors with DMV placards or plates may park for free in DMV spaces, Medical spaces, or ParkMobile spaces without additional payment, or in timed zones for longer than the posted time.
– UCSC affiliates must purchase their permits before arriving at the event in order to receive their discounted UCSC rate. Attendants will only sell the non-affiliate-priced permits.
– More information provided by UCSC Transportation & Parking Services (TAPS)
—
This program is open to all members of the public consistent with state and federal law.

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

Moghadam, M. (CE) - Constraint-Aware Scene Understanding and Trajectory Generation Using Deep Reinforcement Learning for Autonomous Vehicles
2026-03-13 10:00 - 12:00 | Engineering 2, Engineering 2 1156 High Street, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064
Advanced driver-assistance systems (ADAS) are commonly organized as modular pipelines that transform raw sensor measurements into low-level actuation commands through perception, planning, and control. While learning-based methods have achieved state-of-the-art performance in perception and environment modeling, the planning layer remains a key bottleneck for reliable autonomy. Highway driving in particular requires long-horizon reasoning and socially aware interaction with multiple actors, while also producing smooth and dynamically feasible motion that can be tracked by classical controllers.
This thesis focuses on scene understanding and planning for highway driving. We study the problem through two complementary simulation environments: the high-fidelity CARLA simulator for motion planning and continuous trajectory generation under realistic vehicle dynamics and road geometry, and the lightweight HighwayEnv simulator for interaction-rich behavior planning at high episode throughput.
We present three planning contributions that increase autonomy. First, we introduce a modular hierarchical planning framework in Frenet space that combines long-term decision-making with short-term trajectory optimization. The approach includes a corridor-based dynamic obstacle avoidance strategy that generates spatiotemporal polynomial trajectories and supports diverse driving styles through interpretable parameter tuning. Second, we propose an end-to-end continuous deep reinforcement learning approach that unifies decision-making and motion planning into a single policy that outputs continuous polynomial trajectories in the Frenet frame. A spatiotemporal observation tensor and a temporal convolutional backbone enable the learned planner to exploit interaction history and outperform optimization-based and discrete RL baselines in CARLA. Third, we develop an interaction-aware behavior planning neural network architecture that couples trajectory prediction with high-level decision-making via a social pooling scene encoder built on actor histories and an ego-centered BEV representation. This unified design improves RL social awareness, safety, and overall driving performance in multi-agent highway scenarios in HighwayEnv.
Across extensive simulation studies, the results show that constraint-aware representations and learning-based policies can improve planning quality beyond hand-crafted objectives, especially when the policy is equipped with spatiotemporal social context while retaining classical feedback control for stable trajectory tracking. Finally, we provide supporting simulation and evaluation infrastructure, including observation tensor and neural network designs, BEV utilities, and scalable training and testing pipelines, to enable reproducible research on learning-based planning in interactive traffic.
Event Host: Majid Moghadam, Ph.D. Candidate, Computer Engineering
Advisor: Gabriel Elkaim
Zoom- https://ucsc.zoom.us/j/95848602314?pwd=[REDACTED]
Passcode- 325939

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

UCSC Jazz Combos
2026-03-12 19:30 - 21:30 | Music Center Recital Hall, 400 McHenry Road, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064
Join the UC Santa Cruz Jazz Combos for a winter concert. Directed by Charles Hamilton.
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ADMISSION
– General admission
– Free for UCSC students (ticket required).
– Tickets available here online through Eventbrite only.
– Follow the Music Dept on Eventbrite for notices and updates.
– Doors are scheduled to open 30 minutes prior to event start time.
– Ticket holders not seated at least 5 minutes before the advertised start time may forfeit their ticket/seat and no refund will be issued.
—
PARKING
– Parking by permit or ParkMobile
– Arts Lot #126 is the closest parking lot to the event
– Visitors with DMV placards or plates may park for free in DMV spaces, Medical spaces, or ParkMobile spaces without additional payment, or in timed zones for longer than the posted time.
– More information provided by UCSC Transportation & Parking Services (TAPS)
—
This program is open to all members of the public consistent with state and federal law.

Your path to medical school starts here.
2026-03-12 18:00 - 19:00 | Silicon Valley Campus, 3175 Bowers Avenue, Santa Clara, CA, 95054, United States
Are you considering medical school and seeking a clear, supportive path forward?
Join the University of California, Santa Cruz, for a free online informational session to learn more about our Summer 2026 Premed Postbacc Cohort Programs. This session is designed for students and graduates who are serious about pursuing a career in health care and want expert guidance through the medical school preparation and application process.
During this session, you’ll learn how the UCSC Premed Postbacc Program provides a structured, cohort-based experience—offered in Silicon Valley and Marina on the Central Coast—to help students strengthen their academic foundation, prepare for medical school, and apply with confidence.
Claim your seat.

[HSI Equity Talk] Beyond Invisibility: Reimagining Servingness to Support Undocumented Transfer Students
2026-03-12 15:30 - 17:00 | https://events.ucsc.edu/event/hsi-equity-talk-beyond-invisibility-reimagining-servingness-to-support-undocumented-transfer-students/
Presenters: Valeria Alonso Blanco, Dr. Saskias Casanova, and Jesus Morales
This interactive talk draws on a qualitative study conducted with undocumented Latinx transfer students at a California four-year HSI. Using focus groups and reflexive thematic analysis, we examined how these students perceive and experience institutional support, belonging, and barriers related to their intersectional identities. This session is designed around three goals: (1) assessing what staff and administrators currently know about undocumented students on campus, particularly undocumented transfer students; (2) building shared knowledge through our research findings and student voices; and (3) connecting participants to existing campus resources and identifying concrete opportunities for cross-departmental collaboration. We will share key resources and actionable strategies for holistically serving undocumented transfer students.
Please register online. The Zoom information and a calendar invitation will be sent to those who RSVP.
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.

BME 280B Seminar: Modulating Insulin Receptor Through New Ligands
2026-03-12 11:40 - 13:15 | Physical Sciences Building, Physical Sciences Building, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064
Presenter: Danny Chou, Associate Professor of Pediatrics, Stanford University
Description: Since its discovery in 1921, insulin has been at the forefront of scientific breakthroughs. From its amino acid sequencing to the revelation of its three‐dimensional structure, the progress in insulin research has spurred significant therapeutic breakthroughs. In recent years, protein engineering has introduced innovative chemical and enzymatic methods for insulin modification, fostering the development of therapeutics with tailored pharmacological profiles. In this seminar, I will highlight the use of new ligands to modulate insulin receptors and discuss how they continue to shape the future trajectory of insulin research.
Bio: Danny Chou is an Associate Professor of Pediatrics and by courtesy, of Chemical & Systems Biology at Stanford University. He is an affinity group leader at Stanford Diabetes Research Center. His research interests lie in the intersection of peptide therapeutics and metabolic diseases. He started his independent career as an assistant professor of biochemistry at University of Utah in 2014. He moved his lab to Stanford University in 2020 and continued their pursuit of using peptide and protein chemistry to develop therapeutics to address unmet needs.
Hosted by: Professor Andy Yeh, BME Department

HCI Build Demo Day
2026-03-12 11:00 - 15:30 | Event Hall, 3175 Bowers Ave, Santa Clara, 95054, United States
Welcome to HCI Build Demo Day!
Get ready to dive into an exciting in-person event where HCI builders come together to showcase their projects. In Intro to Build at UCSC Silicon Valley Campus, we build with two realms of technologies – digital and physical. HCI 202A will showcase their creative apps they made with React Native and HCI 202B will have an exhibition of the interactive physical prototypes they made with Arduino.
Light refreshments are provided at the event, and it is free for all to attend!

Agenda
11:00 AM – 1:15 PM

Mobile Programming Demo

1:30 PM – 3:00 PM
Physical Computing Demo

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

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

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

College Night: Made By Human Hands
2026-03-11 17:00 - 20:00 | Rachel Carson/Oakes Dining Hall
Oakes and Rachel Carson Colleges, in collaboration with UCSC Dining, present Made By Human Hands. Join us Wednesday, March 11, from 5–8 p.m. at the Rachel Carson/Oakes Dining Hall for a night of fun, community, and a special themed menu. Standard dining hall entry pricing applies, and all students, faculty, and staff are invited.
Please note: The dining hall will be closed from 2–5 p.m. for event preparation.
Learn more about College Nights at dining.ucsc.edu/events.
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To learn more, please visit UC Nondiscrimination Statement or Nondiscrimination Policy for UC Publications.How to Use the Statement Across Communication Channels
