Events

ECE Seminar: Advanced Packaging as the Engine of the AI Systems Era
2026-02-02 10:40 - 11:45 (America/Los_Angeles) | Engineering 2, Engineering 2 1156 High Street, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064
Presenter: Tolga Acikalin, System and Package Architect, Lumilens
Description: The rapid rise of artificial intelligence and machine learning—most notably recent breakthroughs in large language models—is reshaping the trajectory of the semiconductor industry and ushering in a new era of system innovation. As performance scaling at the device level slows, heterogeneous integration (HI) has emerged as a foundational technology to sustain advances in computing and communication. By integrating separately manufactured components with diverse functions into a single system, HI enables new levels of functionality, performance, and efficiency that are no longer achievable through traditional scaling alone.
Realizing the full potential of heterogeneous systems demands a shift toward holistic system-level co-design, with advanced packaging assuming a central and strategic role. This talk will briefly review the evolution of packaging technologies and then focus on advanced packaging architectures that enable heterogeneous integration.Topics will include advances in 2D and 3D interconnect technologies, the introduction of novel packaging materials such as glass substrates, and the growing role of photonic links, including co-packaged optics enabled by silicon photonics. The talk will conclude with a discussion of power delivery and thermal management as system-level challenges and opportunities that will shape the next generation of high-performance, energy-efficient systems.
Bio: Tolga Acikalin received his Bachelor of Science degree in Mechanical Engineering from Middle East Technical University in Ankara, Turkey, and his Master of Science and Ph.D. degrees from Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana.
He joined Intel in 2007 as a Research and Development Engineer, working on assembly and test pathfinding projects within the Technology and Manufacturing Group in Chandler, Arizona. From 2013 to 2025, he was a Principal Engineer at Intel Labs in Santa Clara, California, where he led and influenced innovative strategies for heterogeneous system integration, spanning package- to wafer-scale solutions, with a strong emphasis on next-generation interconnect technologies. Tolga is currently a System and Package Architect at Lumilens, where he focuses on next-generation photonic interconnect solutions, ranging from near-packaged optics to co-packaged optics.
His technical interests include co-packaged optics and silicon photonics, optical and sub-THz to THz RF high-speed interconnects and the associated advanced package architectures, novel advanced packaging solutions such as glass substrates, and optical computing. Tolga has authored or co-authored more than 15 peer-reviewed journal and conference publications in leading APS, ASME, and IEEE venues, including best paper awards at IEEE RFIC and JSCC. He holds nine issued patents and more than 27 additional patent filings.
Hosted by: Professor Soumya Bose, ECE Department
Zoom Link: https://ucsc.zoom.us/j/97975378707?pwd=[REDACTED]

Statistics Seminar: Mathematical Foundations for Machine Learning from a Nonlinear Time Series Perspective
2026-02-02 12:00 - 13:00 | https://ucsc.zoom.us/j/96647674332?pwd=[REDACTED]
Presenter: Jiaqi Li, William H. Kruskal Instructor, University of Chicago
Description:Modern machine learning (ML) algorithms achieve remarkable empirical success, yet providing rigorous statistical guarantees remains a major challenge, particularly in distributional theory and online inference methods. In this talk, we will introduce a novel framework to provide mathematical foundations for ML by bringing powerful tools in nonlinear time series. First, we focus on the stochastic gradient descent (SGD) with constant learning rates. By interpreting the SGD sequence as a nonlinear AR(1) process, we can establish the geometric moment contraction (GMC) for SGD regardless of initializations. By this GMC property, we can derive refined asymptotic theory of SGD and its averaging variant, including general moment convergence, quenched central limit theorems, quenched invariance principles, and sharp Berry- Esseen bounds. Then, we extend this theoretical framework to SGD with dropout regularization, a widely used but theoretically underexplored technique in deep learning. By establishing GMC under explicit learning-rate and dimensional scaling regimes, we obtain asymptotic normality and invariance principles for dropout SGD and its averaged version. These results enable online inference, for which we introduce a fully recursive estimator of the long-run covariance matrix appearing in the limiting distributions. The proposed online confidence intervals with asymptotically correct coverage can be generalized to many other ML algorithms. Overall, viewing online learning algorithms as nonlinear time series provides a powerful toolkit for deriving statistical guarantees in modern ML, with implications for high-dimensional stochastic optimization and real-time uncertainty quantification.
Bio:Jiaqi Li is a William H. Kruskal Instructor in the Department of Statistics at the University of Chicago. She obtained her PhD in Statistics from Washington University in St. Louis in 2024. Her research focuses on developing theoretical guarantees and statistical inference methods for machine learning algorithms. She also works on time series data, especially in the high- dimensional settings with complex temporal and cross-sectional dependency structures. She also
collaborates with neuroscientists on applications in fMRI and EEG data.
Hosted by: Statistics Department
Zoom link: https://ucsc.zoom.us/j/96647674332?pwd=[REDACTED]

Info Session: Global Seminar Art in a Globalized World: UK
2026-02-02 13:30 - 14:30
Learn more at our upcoming Information Session: Monday, February 2 at 1:30-2:30 p.m.
Register Here
Earn 6 units on a summer program on the Global Seminar: Art in a Globalized World: UK. The program is taught by Dee Hibbert-Jones, Professor of Art, Digital Art and New Media.
Quick Facts:

Location: Falmer, Brighton and Hove, United Kingdom
Courses: ART 186 Art and Globalization (6 units)
Dates: June 29-July 17, 2026
Eligibility: Open to students who are an Art Major or Minor (or with special instructor approval), have completed at least 45 units by the time of departure and have at least a 2.3 GPA.
Finances: Financial aid applies, and scholarships are available! Budget with program fees and expenses are posted on the website.
How to apply: Visit here. Applications open on December 1 and close on March 2.
Get in touch: Email your questions to globallearning@ucsc.edu

Program Description: In this studio art, students create site-responsive artworks across media created in response to our visits to museums, galleries, sites, and exhibitions in London and Brighton, UK. Studio work and research explore what it means to make art in a global art world (sculpture, drawing, zines, graphic works, animation, photography, installation, and/or performance). We will work in the new media studios at the University of Sussex, and students will live on campus at the University. This class includes art making, lectures, docent tours, museum visits, discussions, and critique by UK artists and a final gallery exhibition on campus. More information can be read here.

AM Seminar: Are Graph Learning Methods Actually Learning?
2026-02-02 16:00 - 17:00
Presenter: Seshadhri Comandur, Professor of Computer Science, UCSC
Description: There has been a lot of literature on graph machine learning over the past few years, and a bewildering array of new methods. This talk is based on a series of results making a provocative argument. Maybe many graph machine learning methods are not really that effective, and the progress we are seeing is an artifact of experimental design and measurement. I will talk about some results showing that low-dimensional embeddings with dot product similarity (arguably the most common graph ML technique) cannot capture salient aspects of real-world graphs. Follow-up work demonstrates that simple benchmarks seem to outperform fancier methods, and that there are significant shortcomings in existing accuracy measurement.
Bio: C. Seshadhri (Sesh) is a professor of Computer Science at the University of California, Santa Cruz and an Amazon scholar. Prior to joining UCSC, he was a researcher at Sandia National Labs, Livermore in the Information Security Sciences department, during 2010-2014. His primary interest is the theoretical study of algorithms, especially those with a mix of graphs and randomization. By and large, Sesh works at the boundary of theoretical computer science (TCS) and data mining. His work spans many areas: sublinear algorithms, graph algorithms, graph modeling, scalable computation, and data mining. In the theory world, his work has resolved numerous open problems in monotonicity testing and graph property testing. A number of his papers in the interface of TCS and applied algorithms have received paper awards at KDD, WWW, ICDM, SDM, and WSDM. He received the 2019 SDM/IBM Early Career Award for Excellence in Data Analytics. Sesh got his Ph.D from Princeton University and spent two years as a postdoc in IBM Almaden Labs.
Hosted by: Ashesh Chattopadhyay, Applied Mathematics Department

Grad Slam Divisional Semi-Finals
2026-02-02 17:30 - 2026-02-05 19:00 | Graduate Student Commons, 420 Hagar Drive, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064
What is Grad Slam?

Grad Slam is a communication contest hosted by the UC Santa Cruz Graduate Division that is open to all graduate students (except those who have won 1st place in a previous Grad Slam. Currently enrolled graduate students who have won 2nd or the people’s choice in a prior Grad Slam may enter again.). Participants have a maximum of three minutes to explain their graduate research or artistic endeavor to a general audience.
UCSC Divisional Semi-Finals:
February 2: Engineering
February 3: Social Sciences
February 4: Arts & Humanities
February 5: Physical and Biological Sciences
Winners will compete in the UCSC Grand Final at the Kuumbwa Jazz Center on March 7, 2026 for cash prizes:
1st place $3000, 2nd place $1500, People’s choice award $750
One student will be selected to represent UCSC at the UC-system-wise competition on April 22 in Sacramento.

Gregory O' Malley - The Escapes of David George
2026-02-02 19:00 - 20:00 | Bookshop Santa Cruz
Bookshop welcomes prize-winning historian and UC Santa Cruz professor Gregory O’Malley for a discussion about his new book The Escapes of David George: An Odyssey of Slavery, Freedom, and the American Revolution—the dramatic story of a Black man’s relentless search for freedom in Revolutionary America.
This book tells the story of David George who in 1762 at the age of 19 escaped from a plantation in Virginia thus becoming a fugitive enslaved person. Using archival records and David’s own brief account of his life, which is the earliest written testimony by a fugitive enslaved person in North America, the book tells the story of David George’s relentless search for freedom in Revolutionary-era America and presents a unique perspective on our nation’s origins, principles, and contradictions.
Piecing together archival records and David George’s own brief account of his life—the earliest written testimony by a fugitive enslaved person in North America—Gregory O’Malley presents a thrilling narrative and a unique perspective on our nation’s origins, principles, and contradictions.
Gregory E O’Malley is professor of history at UC Santa Cruz and the author of The Escapes of David George: An Odyssey of Slavery, Freedom, and the American Revolution. His first book, Final Passages: The Intercolonial Slave Trade of British America, 1619-1807, won the Forkosch, Rawley, Owsley, and Elsa Goveia awards. He is a key contributor to the SlaveVoyages.org, consulted on The 1619 Project, and lectures widely on the slave trade and related subjects.
Cosponsored by The Humanities Institute

Coffee and Convo with Provost Aims
2026-02-03 09:00 - 11:00
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.

Advance with Northeastern: Graduate Opportunities
2026-02-03 10:00 - 11:00 | https://events.ucsc.edu/event/advance-with-northeastern-graduate-opportunities/
Join the Northeastern University Bay Area recruiters for an essential information session on graduate programs offered here in the Bay Area. Our master’s degree programs in computing, engineering, public policy, game design and more professional studies are designed to fit your professional aspirations and schedule, helping you advance or change your career trajectory.
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.

George Saunders - Vigil
2026-02-03 19:00 | Rio Theater, 1205 Soquel Avenue, Santa Cruz, 95062, United States
Bookshop Santa Cruz welcomes George Saunders, recipient of the 2025 National Book Foundation’s Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, for a discussion about his wise, playful, electric novel Vigil, which takes place at the bedside of an oil company CEO in the twilight hours of his life as he is ferried from this world into the next.

Not for the first time, Jill “Doll” Blaine finds herself hurtling toward earth, reconstituting as she falls, right down to her favorite black pumps. She plummets towards her newest charge, yet another soul she must usher into the afterlife, and lands headfirst in the circular drive of his ornate mansion. She has performed this sacred duty 343 times since her own death. Her charges, as a rule, have been greatly comforted in their final moments. But this charge, she soon discovers, isn’t like the others: the powerful K. J. Boone will not be consoled, because he has nothing to regret. He lived a big, bold life, and the world is better for it. Isn’t it?
Vigil transports us, careening, through the wild final evening of an epic, complicated life. Crowds of people and animals—worldly and otherworldly, alive and dead—arrive, clamoring for a reckoning. Birds swarm the dying man’s room, a black calf grazes on the love seat, a man from a distant, drought-ravaged village materializes, two oil-business cronies from decades past show up with chilling plans for Boone’s postdeath future.
George Saunders is the author of thirteen books, including the novel Lincoln in the Bardo, which won the Man Booker Prize, and five collections of stories, including Tenth of December, which was a finalist for the National Book Award, and the recent collection Liberation Day (selected by former President Obama as one of his ten favorite books of 2022). Three of Saunders’s books—Pastoralia, Tenth of December, and Lincoln in the Bardo—were chosen for The New York Times’s list of the 100 Best Books of the 21st Century. Saunders hosts the popular Story Club on Substack, which grew out of his book on the Russian short story, A Swim in a Pond in the Rain. In 2013, he was named one of the world’s 100 Most Influential People by Time. He teaches in the creative writing program at Syracuse University.

This event is cosponsored by The Humanities Institute.

Mentors Needed: Dickens Day of Writing
2026-02-04 08:00 - 14:30 | Museum of Art & History, 705 Front St, Santa Cruz, CA, 95060, United States
The Dickens Project is seeking volunteer writing mentors for our to support Santa Cruz-area high school juniors and seniors during a one-day writing retreat and competition at the Museum of Art and History!
No prior writing or teaching experience is necessary. Anyone who enjoys working in a creative environment is welcome. For more information about The Dickens Day of Writing please visit https://teachers.ucsc.edu/dickens-day-of-writing/
To register as a mentor, please fill out the following Google form by January 31st, 2026.
https://forms.gle/qPK2bMXu7vo4bXwL9

Statistics Seminar: Statistical Inference for Multi-Modality Data in the AI Era
2026-02-04 12:00 - 13:00 | https://ucsc.zoom.us/j/91740050783?pwd=[REDACTED]
Presenter: Qi Xu, Postdoctoral Researcher, Department of Statistics & Data Science, Carnegie Mellon University
Description: Multi-modality data are increasingly common across science medicine and technology, such as imaging, text, sensors, and genomics. These modalities are often high dimensional or unstructured and naturally exhibit blockwise (nonmonotone) missingness where different samples observe different subsets of modalities. Such missingness creates a major obstacle for statistical analyses since classical methods either discard large portions of data or rely on strong modeling assumptions. Recent advances in AI make it possible to generate or predict unobserved modalities from observed ones, opening new opportunities for data integration. In this talk, I will focus on statistical inference for blockwise-missing multi-modality data, while rigorously incorporating modern AI tools. Rooted in semiparametric theory, there is a long-term open problem that theoretically optimal estimating function under non-monotone missingness is computationally intractable, even under the missing completely at random mechanism. I introduce a tractable approximation to the optimal estimating equation through a novel Restricted ANOVA hierarchY or RAY decomposition and its almost-eigen-operator property. This leads to a new class of estimators that leverage predictive or generative AI models to borrow information across datasets while remaining unbiased and asymptotically normal. Motivated by the property of the RAY estimator, we extend the RAY estimator to a class of unbiased, consistent, and computationally tractable estimators. The most efficient estimator in this class is then derived, named as Adaptive RAY estimator, which optimally integrating all available data and prediction from AI. Simulation studies and a single cell multi-omics application demonstrate that the proposed framework enables stable and efficient inference for complex multi modality data in the AI era. This is a joint work with Lorenzo Testa, Jing Lei and Kathryn Roeder, and the paper is available on arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.24158
Bio: Qi Xu is a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Statistics & Data Science at Carnegie Mellon University. His research interests lie broadly in statistics and machine learning, especially in data integration and AI for statistics, with their applications in genomics and mobile health. He received his Ph.D. from the Department of Statistics at University of California, Irvine, and the Master degree from University of Illinois Urbana Champaign, and the Bachelor degree (with honors) from Tongji University.
Hosted by: Statistics Department
Zoom link: https://ucsc.zoom.us/j/91740050783?pwd=[REDACTED]

Two Spirit Luncheon
2026-02-04 12:00 - 14:00 | College Nine and John R. Lewis Dining Hall
The American Indian Resource Center and Lionel Cantú Queer Center present: Two Spirit Luncheon! Join us on February 4th, 2026 from 12:00PM to 2:00PM at the Alumni Room in College 9 / John R. Lewis for a presentation and interactive luncheon celebrating, affirming, and raising awareness about Two Spirit identities.
Lunch will be served – RSVP is kindly requested. Please email cantu@ucsc.edu or airc@ucsc.edu for accommodations / questions.
Link to RSVP.

VMCC Series: Yiman Wang
2026-02-04 16:00 - 17:30 | Porter College, D-Building, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064
In a lecture delivered by UC Santa Cruz Professor Yiman Wang, this talk delves into Mao-era moving image culture that featured experimentation with public health, horticulture, and animal husbandry to unpack what cinematic experiments were developed, how scientific experiments were conducted, and in what ways they were intended to intertwine with the nation-wide experiment with rebuilding the new socialist human’s psyche and a new socio-political world. The talk also explores why such conjoined experiments often fell apart, what one might gain by recentering the unruly human and more-than-human “raw material” that were experimented on, and ultimately, how the environmental turn in media studies could benefit from a study of socialist trifold cinematic-scientific-socio-political experimentations.
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ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Yiman Wang (Ph.D., Graduate Program in Literature, Duke University) is Professor and Chair of Film & Digital Media at University of California, Santa Cruz. She is author of Remaking Chinese Cinema: Through the Prism of Shanghai, Hong Kong and Hollywood (University of Hawaii Press 2013), and To Be an Actress: Labor and Performance in Anna May Wong’s Cross-Media World (University of California Press 2024). She has published numerous articles in journals and edited volumes on topics of socialist environmental media, feminist media histories, ethnic border-crossing stardom, eco-cinema, Chinese cinema, independent documentary, film remakes and adaptations. She is editor of a special issue of Feminist Media Histories on Asian Feminist Media (2019), co-editor of an InFocus Dossier on Queering Asian Media in Journal of Cinema and Media Studies (2023), co-editor of Chinese Animation: Multiplicities in Motion (2025), associate editor of Journal of Chinese Cinemas, and co-editor of the Global East Asian Screen Cultures book series published by Bloomsbury.
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ADMISSION
– FREE and open to the public
– Located in Porter College Rm. D245
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PARKING
– Lot 124 & 125 are the closest parking lots to the event.
– Parking is by permit or ParkMobile.
– Refer to TAPS for more parking information.
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This program is open to all members of the public consistent with state and federal law.

Kraw Lecture: Learning Earth's Biodiversity via Space and eDNA
2026-02-04 17:30 - 19:00 | 3175 Bowers Avenue Santa Clara, CA 95054, 3175 Bowers Avenue, Santa Clara, CA, 95054, United States
The California DNA Program (CALeDNA), launched from the University of California in 2017, has been tackling the massive disconnection in scales of measuring nature from satellite-based sensing down to DNA in a gram of soil or water. Through dozens of collaborative projects around the world, CALeDNA lab scientists have harmonized different ways of observing biodiversity from microbes to plants and mammals. UC Santa Cruz’s Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, where CALeDNA is headquartered, now houses over 50,000 CALeDNA environmental sample collections, a thriving startup partnership, and an eDNA service and R&D lab that serves most national and CA state agencies that monitor nature. In this presentation, Rachel Meyer will demonstrate the challenges of connecting the microscopic to regional scales across all kingdoms of life for two central purposes: monitoring sensitive habitat change and estimating habitat ‘health’.

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

Register Now

Regulatory Affairs Info Session
2026-02-04 18:00 - 19:00 | Silicon Valley Campus, 3175 Bowers Avenue, Santa Clara, CA, 95054, United States
Lead regulatory strategy in the evolving medical device industry.
As global regulations become increasingly complex, professionals who can navigate FDA, EU, and international requirements are in high demand. Learn how to design and execute regulatory strategies, manage premarket submissions using tools like the FDA’s eSTAR, leverage AI-driven platforms for regulatory intelligence, and ensure compliance across device lifecycles.
Speaker
Join Kiran Gulati, chair of the UCSC Silicon Valley Extension Regulatory Affairs program, for a detailed overview of how our courses provide practical, hands-on training and industry-aligned skills to advance your career in regulatory affairs, quality assurance, and medical device compliance.
Start exploring
Check out our Regulatory Affairs certificate program page for a closer look at upcoming courses and offerings.
Claim your seat.

Pre-College Program Info Session
2026-02-04 18:00 - 19:00 | Silicon Valley Campus, 3175 Bowers Avenue, Santa Clara, CA, 95054, United States
Learn more about our Pre-College Programs
Discover what’s possible in Summer 2026! Join us for a one-hour info session to learn about our Pre-College programs, including courses, eligibility, and how students can get a head start on college and career pathways.
Special offer
Receive an application fee waiver when you enroll and attend the session.
Claim your seat.

SEACoast Slow Seminar: A History of Families: Bosses, Bullies, and Dictators in the Modern Philippines
2026-02-05 11:00 - 13:00 | Humanities 1 Building, 257 Cowell-Stevenson Road, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064, United States
The Center for Southeast Asian Coastal Interactions (SEACoast) invites you to join us for our winter Slow Seminar, “A History of Families: Bosses, Bullies, and Dictators in the Modern Philippines,” on February 5, 2026 from 11:00 am – 1:00pm.
Professor Steve McKay (Sociology) will facilitate our conversation focused on a selection of classic and contemporary scholarship on regional politics in the Philippines. With the present Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. presidency and the International Criminal Court case against former president Rodrigo Duterte in mind, we look forward to a critical discussion of historical and contemporary Southeast Asian politics
Please register for the Slow Seminar by filling out this Google Form. Registered guests will receive copies of the selected readings via email.
This is a Hybrid event. Participants may join in-person or by Zoom. The Zoom link will be sent out to registered participants at least 1 hour before the event.
New to Slow Seminars? Check out SEACoast’s definition here.

Collaborative Communications Workshop with Aimee Ryan
2026-02-05 12:00 - 16:00 | Arboretum, 122 Arboretum Road, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064
Collaborative Communication Workshop Series
O.A.B.E.’s Winter 2026 Professional Development
Baskin Engineering and The Office of Access, Belonging, and Equity invite you to join us for a series of in-person workshops over two afternoons this winter quarter to come together as a community of workers and develop our skills in collaborative communication, conflict navigation, and empathic leadership with communications coach & expert Aimee Ryan.
Aimee has over 15 years of experience in mediation, conflict resolution, and team development. Her training and teaching will seek to offer a transformative learning experience designed to develop the communication skills of our faculty, staff, and researchers, to support our thriving community.
Workshop Goals:

Strengthen empathy and active listening: Learn how to listen deeply, recognize emotions and needs in conversation, and respond in ways that foster understanding rather than division.
Enhance conflict-navigation skills: Gain practical tools to engage in difficult conversations with more connection and collaboration.
Promote inclusive dialogue and depolarization: Develop a “both/and” mindset that embraces multiple perspectives.

Workshop Details
We will hold the workshops at the serene and beautiful UCSC Arboretum. Lunch will be served.
Day 1: Thursday, February 5, 2025, 12:00 pm- 4:00 pm

Foundations of Collaborative Communication
Giving & Receiving Authentic Feedback

Auto-add this session to your calendar

Day 2: Friday, February 6, 2025, 12:00 pm- 4:00 pm

Moving from Polarization to Collaboration

Collaborating Across Power Differences

Auto-add this session to your calendar

Who should attend?
The workshops are open to all Baskin Engineering faculty, staff, researchers, and postdocs who are interested in strengthening leadership, communication skills, team dynamics, synergy, and making our work environment even better than it already is!
How to participate

RSVP here before Friday, Jan 30.
Save the date now! Add to your Google Calendar using the links above
The sessions are designed as a full course. Attendees are encouraged to attend both sessions. The Day 2 workshop will only be open to attendees of Day 1.
Attendance at both sessions is required to earn the Baskin Engineering Collaborative Communication Certificate.

Seats are limited
Due to limited space, we will close registration when we reach maximum capacity.
Don’t miss this opportunity to learn how to lead with clarity, empathy, and confidence!
Please direct your questions about the workshop to Richard Raygoza at riraygoz@ucsc.edu.

Workplace Mental Health Training for Supervisors and Managers
2026-02-05 12:30 - 15:00
The Office of Risk Services has partnered with OHSU’s Oregon Institute of Occupational Health Services to provide mental health support training to UCSC supervisors and managers.
This evidence based program teaches leaders:

To identify employee mental health struggles
Appropriate ways to respond to employee warning signs
Practical strategies to reduce employee stress

Employees whose managers and supervisors were trained in this program report:

Reduced anger and loneliness
Improved feelings of support from manager
Increased feelings of team cohesion

This training is open to all supervisors and managers at UCSC. Our next training session will take place on Thursday, January 15, and will comprise the following:

A self paced online training session
A live, virtual one hour session
A two-week voluntary virtual check in

If you would like to participate in this training on Thursday, February 5 from 12:30 PM – 3:00 PM please fill out this form. Please note that space is limited. Folks added to the waitlist will be given priority for our next training session.
To learn more, please visit the Workplace Mental Health Training for Supervisors and Managers website.
If you have any questions about this training, please reach out to Jessica Bulleri, Campus Health and Well-being Manager, at jbulleri@ucsc.edu.

Info Session: Global Seminar Mediterranean France in Marseille
2026-02-05 14:00 - 15:00
Learn more at our upcoming Information Session: Thursday, February 5, 2026, from 2:00-3:00 p.m. via Zoom.
Register Here
Earn 10 units on a summer program on the Global Seminar Mediterranean France in Marseille this summer. This program is taught by Muriam Davis, Associate Professor of History, and Thomas Serres, Associate Professor of Politics.
Quick Facts:

Locations: Marseille, France
Course:
His 170 C: France and its Empire in the 20th century (5 credits)
POLI 166: Politics of Migration (5 credits)
Led by: Muriam Davis and Thomas Serres
Eligibility: Good academic and disciplinary standing, Min Age: 18, Minimum GPA- 2.3 cumulative GPA or higher at the time of application and every quarter prior to departure, 45 units completed by the time of departure
Dates: Summer Session 1 (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: Students will study French history and politics in Marseille, a port city that has a rich tradition of immigration, activism, and cultural production. By meeting with urbanists, musicians, activists, historians, and filmmakers, they will reflect on how the diverse communities have shaped French culture and politics. They will also study the lingering effects of French colonialism and immigration policy through visits to the many museums and archives located in and around Marseille. Read about Marseille here or watch this Anthony Bourdain clip here.

UC Santa Cruz NAI Chapter: From Campus to Commerce Winter Event
2026-02-05 16:00 - 18:00 | Merrill Cultural Center, 200 McLaughlin Dr, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064
Join us for an engaging gathering at the intersection of breakthrough science and real-world impact featuring:

​A fireside chat with accomplished inventor and NAI Fellow David Schaffer – UC Berkeley Professor of Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering, Director of QB3, and Director of Bakar BioEnginuity Hub – with a conversation exploring translational research and commercialization successes as well as approaches to lab management and mentorship that encourage a culture of innovation impact
​Induction of new chapter inventor and honorary members
​Networking with chapter leaders and fellow campus inventors

Looking at School, Fear, and Possibilities: Imagining Futures Under Authoritarian Rule
2026-02-05 17:00 - 18:00
Please join us in a conversation around School, Fear, & Possibilities: Imagining Futures Under Authoritarian Rule, featuring two guest speakers: Manuel Espinoza Ph.D, Muhammad Khalifa!

Title: School, Fear, & Possibilities: Imagining Futures Under Authoritarian Rule Talk
Guest speakers: Manuel Espinoza & Muhammad Khalifa.
Date: Thursday, February 5th, 2026, 5-6PM
Location: McHenry 0266 or via Zoom (Meeting ID: 933 0685 4982; Passcode: [REDACTED]
Please complete this RSVP form if you plan to attend
Feb 5th guest speakers
Learn about Manuel Espinoza
Manuel is a child of desegregation and a Chicano ethnographer working in the scholarly tradition that emerged during the 20th-century struggle against racism in the U.S. As the Director and Co-founder of the Right2Learn Dignity Lab, now in its 15th year, Manuel works with an undergraduate and graduate research collective to develop two interconnected strands of research: 1) an inquiry into the historical and legal origins of educational rights and 2) a social interactional method for studying the manifestations of dignity in educational activity. Presently, the Dignity Lab is working to amend the “education clause” of the Colorado Constitution. Manuel has shared his expertise by contributing content on dignity in schools to the Cultivating Compassion for Ourselves and Others digital certificate.

Learn about Muhammad Khalifa
His research examines how urban school leaders enact culturally responsive leadership and anti-oppressive schooling practices. He is a leading expert on equity audits for school districts. He was previously a teacher and administrator in Detroit Public Schools, and he has also contributed to community-informed education projects in Africa, Latin America, and Asia in various capacities. He formerly held the endowed Beck Chair of Ideas in Education at the University of Minnesota. He has contributed to education, development, or research programs in several contexts.

We hope you can join us in this conversation with Manuel and Muhammad!

Carl Deppe Memorial Lecture with Dr. Kara Cooney
2026-02-05 17:30 - 19:30 | Hay Barn, 94 Ranch View Road, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064, United States
The UCSC Ancient Studies Program presents the Carl Deppe Memorial Lecture, taking place February 5th at the Cowell Ranch Hay Barn (reception to follow). Kara Cooney will present her lecture “When Women Ruled the World”. Doors open at 5:30pm, program begins at 5:45pm.

Kara Cooney is a professor of ancient Egyptian art and architecture and chair of the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures at the University of California, Los Angeles. Specializing in social history, gender studies, and economies of the ancient world, she received her PhD in Egyptology from Johns Hopkins University. Her books include The Woman Who Would Be King: Hatshepsut’s Rise to Power in Ancient Egypt, When Women Ruled the World: Six Queens of Egypt, and The Good Kings: Absolute Power in Ancient Egypt and the Modern World. Her latest books include Recycling for Death: Coffin Reuse in Ancient Egypt and the Theban Royal Caches, Ancient Egyptian Society: Challenging Assumptions, Exploring Approaches, and Coffin Commerce.

Safety Planning for ICE Raids at Work
2026-02-05 18:00 - 19:30
February 5, 2026 | 6PM-7:30PM *ONLINE*
How can workers stay safe on the job amidst increased immigration enforcement and raids that target our workplaces?
Register below to join UC Berkeley’s Labor Occupational Health Program and UC Santa Cruz’s Center for Labor and Community for this hands-on, interactive workshop to develop a worker-led safety plan for ICE raids at work. A calendar invitation and Zoom link will be sent out prior to the event.
In this workshop you will:

Hear directly from rank-and-file teachers and nurses about the steps they took to make a safety plan with coworkers to prevent ICE access to their workplaces and protect targeted workers and community members.
Talk through steps to create a safety plan for your workplace.
Learn how to enforce workplace health and safety laws and immigration laws (AB 450, etc.)
Prepare to act even when your employer will not.

Register Here.
Planificación de Seguridad Ante Redadas de ICE en el Lugar de Trabajo
5 de febrero de 2026 | 6:00-7:30PM *EN LÍNEA*
¿Cómo pueden los trabajadores mantenerse seguros en el trabajo ante el aumento de las redadas y la intensificación de las operaciones de control migratorio en nuestros lugares de trabajo?
Regístrese a continuación para participar en este taller práctico e interactivo, organizado por el Programa de Salud Ocupacional Laboral de UC Berkeley y el Centro de Labor y Comunidad de UC Santa Cruz, donde desarrollará un plan de seguridad liderado por los trabajadores para hacer frente a las redadas de ICE en el trabajo. Se enviará una invitación de calendario y el enlace de Zoom antes del evento.
En este taller usted podrá:

Escuchar directamente a maestros y enfermeros sobre las medidas que tomaron para crear un plan de seguridad con sus compañeros de trabajo para impedir el acceso de ICE a sus lugares de trabajo y proteger a los trabajadores y miembros de la comunidad afectados.
Hablar sobre los pasos para crear un plan de seguridad para su lugar de trabajo.
Aprender a hacer cumplir las leyes de salud y seguridad laboral y las leyes de inmigración (AB 450, etc.).
Prepararse para actuar incluso cuando su empleador no lo haga.

Registrese Aqui

Info Session: Global Seminar Food Study, Field Study in London
2026-02-06 10:00 - 11:00
Learn more at our upcoming Information Session: Friday, February 6 at 10:00-11:00 a.m. via Zoom.
Register Here
Earn 12 units on a summer program on the Global Seminar: Food Study Field Study in London this summer. This program is taught by Melissa L. Caldwell, Professor of Anthropology and Anthropology Instructor Rikki Brown. It is a great opportunity to fulfill Anthropology requirements and/or units towards graduation!
Quick Facts:

Location: London, United Kingdom
Courses: ANTH 161 Anthropology of Food – 6 units (satisfies PE-H); and ANTH 151 Workshop in Ethnography – 6 units
Led by: Professor Melissa L. Caldwell and Instructor Rikki Brown
Eligibility: Open to students from any major who have completed 45 units by time of departure and have a minimum of a 2.3 GPA
Dates: July 27-August 29, 2026
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: How do anthropologists learn about a place? Using contemporary ethnographic methods, they cultivate their senses to see, hear, touch, smell, and taste the stories and worlds around them. In this dual course summer program taught by a UCSC Anthropology Professor, London will become a living laboratory to learn how anthropologists study and practice ethnographic methods, with a focus on how and why food is an especially important gateway to understanding culture, power, exchange, memory, identity, histories of colonialism, and postcolonial futures. Immersive learning activities will provide exceptional opportunities to experience London’s multicultural food traditions firsthand. Discover more here.

Johnstone, J. (AM) - The Effects of Asymmetry on Overshooting and Magnetic Pumping from Compressible Convection Zones
2026-02-06 11:00 - 12:00 | Engineering 2, Engineering 2 1156 High Street, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064
We present a comprehensive numerical investigation examining how vertical asymmetry in compressible convection affects overshooting and the transport of large-scale magnetic fields from convective to stably stratified regions. Using three-dimensional direct numerical simulations, we systematically vary the superadiabaticity and stratification of a convective layer to control the vertical asymmetry of the flow and analyze its influence on overshooting depth and magnetic pumping efficiency. We extend previous work by Tobias et al. (2001) and draw guidance from the asymmetry regimes identified by John & Schumacher (2023), investigating whether similar asymmetric convecting regimes emerge in our overshooting model that incorporates a stably stratified region below. We find that vertical asymmetry increases significantly with stratification at a moderate, fixed Rayleigh number, while superadiabaticity contributes primarily through enhanced downflow velocities, with both combined leading to increasing overshooting depths reaching approximately 0.46 − 0.7 pressure scale heights. Magnetic pumping efficiency initially increases with stratification but unexpectedly decreases at higher stratification, despite increasing overshooting depths. We find that this behavior arises from the increasing thermal and magnetic diffusivities that result from increasing stratification at fixed Ra. When instead either holding these diffusivities constant or increasing Ra sufficiently, we find that then both overshooting and magnetic pumping depths both decrease with increasing stratification. This behavior is explained by a change of dynamical state from one of laminar downflows to one of turbulent downflowing plumes leading to a high degree of turbulent mixing and entrainment. We thus find two distinct regimes that might be described as a microscopically diffusive regime and a turbulently diffusive one. These results suggest that, in the highly turbulent regime expected in the Sun, magnetic pumping efficiency may decrease with increasing stratification due to enhanced turbulent entrainment, with important implications for solar dynamo theory and the transport of large-scale magnetic fields in the solar interior.

Event Host: Jason Johnstone, Ph.D. Student, Applied Mathematics
Advisor: Nic Brummell
Zoom- https://ucsc.zoom.us/j/5428987373?pwd=[REDACTED]
Passcode- 778899

Waste Fest: a Sustainability Office event
2026-02-06 12:00 - 15:00 | Porter College Quad
The UCSC Sustainability Office is excited to announce Waste Fest, a fun, interactive event focused on reducing waste on campus! 🌱♻️ Join us for free food, tabling from campus organizations, free thrifting, and a book swap, plus learn about waste sorting, reuse, and sustainable living at UCSC. Come hang out, grab some goodies, and discover how you can help make our campus more zero-waste. We can’t wait to see you there!
⭐️ RSVP here: https://forms.gle/V63uVeKWsunrjy5XA
For any questions please email: dsanai@ucsc.edu or khallac@ucsc.edu

GDAC Portfolio Workshop
2026-02-06 12:15 - 13:00 | Cultural Center – Merrill College, 641 Merrill Rd, Santa Cruz, 95064, United States
Workshop

Part of the GDA Conference on campus – come and learn best practices for creating a portfolio to use in the gaming industry!

KNOW OUR POLICIES
Job postings and employer announcements are made without endorsement, direct or implied, by Career Success or UCSC. Career Success educates students about various opportunities and ensures equity of access to campus recruiting activities for all employers who abide by our Employer Policies. Individual students are encouraged to determine which employers align with their diverse talents, values, and interests.

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.
Online Safety Tips
UC Santa Cruz Career Success〡Hahn 125
Email Career Success: csuccess@ucsc.edu
Visit Career Success Website: https://careers.ucsc.edu

Interview Preparation Workshop
2026-02-06 13:00 - 14:30 | Career Success Student Lounge (125 Hahn), 1156 High Street, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064, United States
Ready to sharpen your interview skills?
Join Career Success for an interactive workshop on Interview Best Practices, followed by Mock Interview Practice!
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.

International Grad Workers Chat Lounge
2026-02-06 13:00 - 16:00 | Graduate Student Commons, 420 Hagar Drive, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064
Come by the Graduate Student Commons on Friday, 2/6, and Tuesday, 2/10 afternoon to grab snacks and chat with fellow international grads. Join our grad peer mentors to discuss specific topics related to international workers, such as informed decision-making through step-by-step information about bargaining, voting (SAV), and striking. They’ll also hold space for questions and concerns you may have.
Time: Friday, 2/6 and Tuesday, 2/10 from 1:00 – 4:00 PM
Place: Graduate Student Commons – Fireside Lounge & Room 204
RSVP here. You are also welcome to submit anonymous questions/concerns.
Refreshments will be provided. Feel free to drop by individually or with friends anytime during these afternoons. Looking forward to seeing you there!
