Events

Amplifying the History Curriculum for Multilingual Learners
2026-02-19 16:30 - 18:30 (America/Los_Angeles) | CA
Join us to discuss how teachers can “amplify” rather than “simplify” history instruction for multilingual learners (and all students) by engaging with historical texts and interactive learning opportunities. We are celebrating the publication of the 2nd edition of Amplifying the Curriculum: Designing Quality Learning Opportunities for Multilingual Learners, which includes a chapter co-authored by Professor George Bunch and HCP Director Dr. Daisy Martin.
We will focus on the History/Social Studies chapter titled, “Selecting, Preparing, and Using Multiple texts in the History Classroom, ” and consider teaching the Deportations of the 1930s. The event will include presentations and discussions about creating inclusive learning environments and advancing equity using student-centered curriculum frameworks! We will host these events at both a Santa Cruz County and Monterey County location.
DATE: FEBRUARY 19 & MARCH 18, 2026
TIME: 4:30-6:30
TWO LOCATIONS: COMMUNITY FOUNDATION SANTA CRUZ COUNTY IN APTOS & CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY MONTEREY BAY
Register for Community Foundation Santa Cruz County in Aptos Location Here (Feb. 19)
Register for California State University Monterey Bay Location Here (Mar. 18)
Free books for the first 15 registrants who attend!
This event is supported in part by a grant from the Institute for Social Transformation at the University of California, Santa Cruz

Amplifying the History Curriculum for Multilingual Learners Flyer DOWNLOAD

Slugs at Sundown: Strengthening Your Professional Brand
2026-02-19 17:30 - 19:30 | Silicon Valley Campus, 3175 Bowers Avenue, Santa Clara, CA, 95054, United States
In a constantly evolving job market, having a clear and authentic professional brand can open doors at any career stage. Join fellow Banana Slugs for a practical, engaging conversation focused on how to show up—and stand out—professionally. We’ll explore how AI-powered tools can help you efficiently tailor your resume for specific opportunities, along with best practices for sharpening your LinkedIn presence and building meaningful, genuine connections online. Whether you’re exploring a new direction, preparing for your next move, or simply refreshing your professional story, this session offers actionable takeaways you can put to use right away.
New: Complimentary headshots will be available on-site for attendees.
Thursday, February 19
5:30 – 5:45 p.m. | Check-in
5:45 – 6:45 p.m. | Welcome, Presentation, Q&A
6:45 – 7:30 p.m. | Networking
The workshop will be presented by COOP Careers, in partnership with UCSC Career Success.
Professional headshot photography by Cherlyn Wagner (Merrill, ’99).
Please register to confirm your attendance.

Graduate Council Workshop: Future of Graduate Education at UCSC
2026-02-20 11:30 - 14:00 | University Center, University Center, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064
Graduate Council will be holding a winter 2026 graduate director brown bag workshop on the future of UC Santa Cruz graduate programs
When: Friday, February 20, 2026 from 11:30am–2:00pm
Where: University Center Alumni Room (this is an in-person only event)
Who should attend: All current and former graduate program directors. Interested faculty who are not graduate directors may also RSVP to the event, but space is limited.
Format: Brown bag workshop (please bring your own lunch)
GC’s goal is to learn how graduate programs are affected by the changing financial climate and career landscapes for graduate training, and to strategize how best to adapt. The workshop will begin with opening remarks from the Senate and Graduate Division, followed by breakout groups with faculty graduate directors to strategize the changing graduate landscape within their departments. The session will culminate in a collective discussion to define potential action items.
In preparation for this workshop, we ask that you engage in conversation with your departments around the following questions:

What curricular issues, if any, are your graduate programs facing? Are creative solutions possible, such as shared courses across disciplines and/or streamlining of curriculum? Are there other partnerships across disciplines that could assist your program in delivering graduate training?
What innovations have helped to decrease time-to-degree, particularly for your doctoral programs? What resources would be required to decrease normative time in your different disciplines?
How has your program’s training mission changed over the last 5-10 years? What innovations have departments adopted to prepare students for careers? Could your program envision internship/residency as part of graduate training and/or relationships with industry, the private sector, or government organizations?
How has your program adapted to changes in admissions and/or funding? What novel admissions process ideas could help to stabilize programs? What innovations might help your programs adapt to smaller cohort sizes?
Are there any initiatives that your program is interested in piloting?
How can campus and divisional administrators provide support to help existing students through their programs? What is the administrative role in innovations that will secure the future of graduate education on our campus?

Departments may also wish to discuss the following reports:

Future of Doctoral Programs at the University of California: Challenges, Opportunities, and Potential Paths Ahead
Systemwide Academic Senate Task Force on UC Adaptation to Disruptions (UCAD) Interim Report & Recommendations
Implementation Task Force for Inclusive Excellence in Graduate Education

Faculty may submit questions or issues they would like to discuss at the workshop through the RSVP form. Please contact Graduate Council at gc@ucsc.edu if you have any questions about the event.

Fredrickson, K. (CSE) - Practical Anonymity with Formal Resistance to Traffic Analysis
2026-02-20 14:00 - 16:00 | Engineering 2, Engineering 2 1156 High Street, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064
Anonymous communication systems hide who is talking to whom, not just what is said. However, existing systems are either vulnerable to traffic analysis attacks–attacks where adversaries observe and correlate the network traffic of users–or are forced to rely on unrealistic and unenforceable assumptions about how users behave. Worse, existing theory lacks tools to rigorously model traffic analysis attacks, much less inform whether if a system is secure against traffic analysis or how to design systems that are.
We make several contributions toward our goal of practical anonymity systems that resist traffic analysis. First, we develop the first formal framework for describing the security of systems against traffic analysis attacks, allowing us to quantitatively describe and compare the security of all existing works. Second, leveraging this framework, we develop a security definition that distinguishes between systems that are and are not susceptible to traffic analysis. We call this property input/output independence. We use this definition to prove that the dominant model of systems–synchronous systems–cannot practically provide input/output independence. We then design a new asynchronous anonymity functionality, deferred retrieval, that achieves input/output independence with far more flexible user assumptions and up to 3400 times less traffic overhead for the same latency compared to prior methods. Finally, we design and implement Sparta, a family of high-throughput, scalable instantiations of deferred retrieval using trusted execution environments and oblivious algorithms, yielding the first practical anonymity systems that are formally resistant to long-term traffic analysis.
Event Host: Kyle Fredrickson, Ph.D. Candidate, Computer Science and Engineering
Advisor: Darrell Long
Zoom – https://ucsc.zoom.us/j/98133127429?pwd=[REDACTED]
Passcode – 242206

Slugs Go Bowling
2026-02-20 19:00 - 21:00 | Boardwalk Bowl, 115 Cliff St, Santa Cruz, 95060, United States
Join the Office of Leadership and Involvement, in collaboration with the Slug Mentor Network and the Services for Transfer, Re-entry, and Resilient Scholars (STARRS) Office, for Slugs Go Bowling — a UCSC student takeover at the Santa Cruz Boardwalk Bowl!
Celebrate and connect with fellow Banana Slugs during an evening of free bowling, desserts, swag, and community-building. This event is designed to help students mingle, build connections, and learn more about campus support services in a fun, welcoming environment.
Don’t miss the chance to snap a photo with Sammy the Slug!
Date: Friday, February 20
Time: 7:00–9:00 p.m.
Location: Boardwalk Bowl 115 Cliff St, Santa Cruz, CA 95060
RSVP HERE
If you have questions or need accommodations, please email involved@ucsc.edu.
We can’t wait to see you there!
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.

Dreamgirls—Presented by the African American Theater Arts Troupe (AATAT)
2026-02-20 19:30 - 21:30 | Theater Arts Mainstage, 411 Kerr Road, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064
Move into the spotlight with Dreamgirls, the electrifying musical sensation that brings the soul, sparkle, and spirit of Motown to the stage. Follow the unforgettable journey of three talented young women as they rise from hopeful dreamers to international superstars. With powerful vocals, stimulating choreography, and hits like “And I Am Telling You I’m Not Going,” this AATAT production will bursts with passion, ambition, and inspiration!
Directed by Don Williams.
Co-presented by the African American Theater Arts Troupe (AATAT) and the Department of Performance, Play & Design (PPD).
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ADMISSION
– General admission with “Pay What You Like” options.
– Free for UCSC students (ticket required).
– Tickets issued online here through Eventbrite only.
– Follow the Dept. of Performance, Play & Design on Eventbrite for notifications 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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FULL SCHEDULE OF EVENTS
Dreamgirls is a two-week production, with seven performances at UC Santa Cruz*, including the following:
– Fri., Feb. 20, 7:30 p.m.
– Sat., Feb. 21, 7:30 p.m.
– Sun., Feb. 22, 2:00 p.m. matinee
– Fri., Feb. 27, 7:30 p.m.
– Sat., Feb. 28, 2:00 p.m. matinee
– Sat., Feb. 28, 7:30 p.m.
– Sun., Mar. 1, 2:00 p.m. matinee
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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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ABOUT AATAT
For nearly 35 years, the African American Theater Arts Troupe (AATAT) at UC Santa Cruz has been a vehicle to create unity, higher visibility and greater understanding of the multicultural community at UC Santa Cruz and the greater Santa Cruz community. AATAT hope for your continued support for the next 30 years and would appreciate your support of the scholarship fund. Donations are welcome here. AATAT awards a minimum of $5,000 in scholarships to individuals participating in the program who exhibit exemplary academic performance. Since 1993, thanks to generous donors, AATAT has raised over $120,000 in annual scholarship funding.
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This program is open to all members of the public consistent with state and federal law.

Wedding Vendor Showcase and Hay Barn Open House
2026-02-21 11:00 - 15:00 | Hay Barn, 94 Ranch View Road, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064, United States
Join us for our annual Open House and Vendor Showcase at the Historic Cowell Ranch Hay Barn. Take this opportunity to experience what our local vendors have to offer, first hand.
Explore an array of talented local vendors, each showcasing their finest work in the wedding and events industry, as we gear up for the 2026 season. From breathtaking floral designs, mouth watering catering options, innovative photographers, and stunning table scapes, you’ll find everything you need to bring your wedding vision to life.
Indulge in delightful samples, engage in inspiring demonstrations, and enjoy personalized consultations. Whether you’re newly engaged, planning your next big celebration, or even if you’ve already booked your wedding at another venue, all are welcome to join us for a day of inspiration and connection.
Be sure to RSVP and mark your calendars—don’t miss this chance to experience the best in the business.
See you there!

See the full list of vendors and RSVP at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/vendor-showcase-open-house-tickets-1867525692619?aff=erelexpmlt.

UCSC Dining Competes at the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk Clam Chowder Cook-Off
2026-02-22 13:00 - 15:00 | Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk
Come support UCSC Dining as they compete in the legendary Clam Chowder Cook-Off at the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk! This two-day event is one of the country’s largest and longest-running clam chowder competitions, where talented chefs prepare and serve their best chowder recipes along the Boardwalk.
On Sunday, February 22, UCSC Dining will join professional teams in both Boston (white) and Manhattan (red) clam chowder categories. Cheer on our teams — University Chowder led by Chance Taylor (cooking up the white Boston chowder) and Redwood Chowder Heads led by Chad Glassley (cooking up red Manhattan chowder) — as they compete for top honors and People’s Choice votes.
When: Sunday, February 22, 1–3 p.m.
Where: Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk
Details: Boardwalk admission is free; tasting kits go on sale starting at 10 a.m. or you can pre-purchase your tasting kits online. (public tasting begins at 1 p.m.) and benefit Santa Cruz Parks & Recreation.

Food For Thought
2026-02-22 15:00 - 18:00 | Cardiff House, 114 Carriage House Road, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064
Join People of Color Sustainability Collective for Food for Thought! This event will be focused on food sovereignty and connecting our community with local organizations involved in related work. The event will include dinner, including presentations and discussion with impactful food justice representatives, and a hands-on food preserving workshop.

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

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

Wellness in Action: Managing Stress in Times of Uncertainty
2026-02-23 13:00 - 13:30 | CA
Monday, February 23, 1:00 PM – 1:30 PM
Location: Register for the Zoom link
Periods of uncertainty can increase stress, reduce focus, and affect overall well-being. Participants will learn practical strategies to pause, regain perspective, and respond to stress with greater clarity. These sustainable skills build resiliency, help maintain calm, and create balance during challenging times.
The Wellness in Action series is designed to help you improve your health in a short session with simple tips you can try in your own life. In the follow-up session on Monday, March 9 from 1:00 PM – 1:30 PM, you will have the opportunity to share your experience and learn from others in the group.
Register for the Zoom link. The workshop will be recorded, and a link to the recording will be sent out after the first session. The follow up session will not be recorded.
To learn more about our events and workshops, visit the Upcoming Wellness Events page.
For questions, please contact Health and Well-being Specialist, Ashley Parker, at aseparke@ucsc.edu.

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

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

Bay Tree Building Renovation Information Session
2026-02-23 17:00 - 18:00 | https://events.ucsc.edu/event/bay-tree-building-renovation-information-session/
Drop in to learn more about the Bay Tree Building Renovation and campus resources for meeting rooms, tabling, and events during the renovation.
Date: February 23
Time: 5–6 p.m. via Zoom (Zoom link)
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You Belong Here: The programs and services described here are open to all, consistent with state and federal law, as well as the University of California’s nondiscrimination policies. Every initiative—whether a student service, faculty program, or community event—is designed to be accessible, inclusive, and respectful of all identities.
To learn more, please visit UC Nondiscrimination Statement or Nondiscrimination Policy for UC Publications.

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

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

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

Arts Division - Application and Interview Skills That Will Get You A Great Job!
2026-02-24 12:00 - 13:00 | https://ucsc.zoom.us/j/2614256373?pwd=[REDACTED]
Having a stand-out application and exceptional interview skills are essential for landing a great job! Join us for this fast-paced and interactive one-hour online workshop where we’ll explore how to submit an application that makes an employer WANT to interview you, as well as top-notch tips and techniques to prepare for and answer interview questions with intentionality, confidence, and skill.
We will provide captions for the presentation. If you have disability-related needs, please contact the Career Success office at csuccess@ucsc.edu or (831) 459-4420 as soon as possible.
YOU BELONG HERE
Programs and services are open to all, consistent with state and federal law, as well as the University of California’s nondiscrimination policies. Every initiative—whether a student service, faculty program, or community event—is designed to be accessible, inclusive, and respectful of all identities. To learn more, please visit UC Nondiscrimination Statement or Nondiscrimination Policy for UC Publications.

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

AI and Security 101
2026-02-24 17:00 - 18:15 | Engineering 2, Engineering 2 1156 High Street, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064
Join us for an informative conversation with Neta Haiby, Head of Product | AI Security at Microsoft!
Artificial Intelligence is transforming both cyber defense and cyber offense. It creates unique risks in how we build, deploy, and operate AI apps and Agents. This session examines how AI can be attacked or misused – through techniques such as jailbreaks, intent breaking, and supply-chain compromise and discusses practical defense strategies, including guardrails, access controls, monitoring, and evaluation.
Designed for students interested in cybersecurity and AI, this session emphasizes a practical understanding of AI security.
Attendees will also receive resources to help them further explore and get started in the field!
Don’t miss this highly informative event!
YOU BELONG HERE
Programs and services are open to all, consistent with state and federal law, as well as the University of California’s nondiscrimination policies. Every initiative—whether a student service, faculty program, or community event—is designed to be accessible, inclusive, and respectful of all identities. To learn more, please visit UC Nondiscrimination Statement or Nondiscrimination Policy for UC Publications.

Expanding the Narrative
2026-02-24 18:30 - 20:00 | CA
Join AA/PIRC and USS on Tuesday, February 24th from 6:30-8pm at Terry Freitas Commons for a teach-in and art build exploring how different Asian communities are affected by U.S. immigration policies.
We will talk about the diversity of Asian experiences with immigration, how fictions like the “model minority myth” and “perfect immigrant narrative” harm Asian communities, and where we can move forward from here.
Free food will be provided! RSVP at bit.ly/aapirc-immigration.
You Belong Here: The programs and services described here are open to all, consistent with state and federal law, as well as the University of California’s nondiscrimination policies. Every initiative—whether a student service, faculty program, or community event—is designed to be accessible, inclusive, and respectful of all identities.
To learn more, please visit UC Nondiscrimination Statement or Nondiscrimination Policy for UC Publications.

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

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

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

Abstract

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

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

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

Bio

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

Hosted by: Professor Nikos Tziavelis

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

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

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

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

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

Register via Handshake.
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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.

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

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

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