Events

Monterey Bay Aquarium Trip
2026-02-28 10:30 - 16:30 (America/Los_Angeles) | Cowell College, 257 Cowell-Stevenson Road, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064
Join International Student Services and Programming (ISSP) for our annual trip to the Monterey Bay Aquarium. This will be a great time to get to know each other more while exploring an exciting and beautiful location.

The trip will be limited to 30 participants. Non-international students can also sign up, but priority will be given to those who are a part of the Global Mentorship Program and/or are international students. The cost of participation is $25 and includes a round-trip shuttle service and entry to the aquarium. Fees will be charged to your UCSC account following the event (no pre-payment is required).

We recommend bringing about $20 for lunch and souvenirs. You can also bring your own lunch/snacks if you’d prefer.

Please RSVP here by Friday, February 20th to reserve your spot!
Date: Saturday, February 28
Time: 10:30-16:30
Location: Cowell Circle, UCSC Campus
Meeting Location: Please meet at Cowell Circle between 10:15-10:30 for this exciting day trip!
The last day to cancel is Wednesday, February 25th. If you cancel beyond this date, you’ll be responsible for the $25 participation fee.
If you have any questions, please contact us at iprogramming@ucsc.edu.

Formula Slug Open House
2026-02-28 12:30 - 17:30 | Jack Baskin Engineering, Baskin Engineering 1156 High Street, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064
We’re excited to announce our Formula Slug Open House at Baskin Engineering on Saturday, February 28th.
Last season we placed 18th out of 120 teams representing UC Santa Cruz at the national FSAE competition, the result of a year spent designing, manufacturing, and testing our electric race car. The open house is an opportunity to see the work and decisions made behind the scenes, as well as a sneak peek into the changes being made on our next race car, FS-4.
RSVP FORM: https://forms.gle/VqZ2Pz8NdhSxhpt37
Itinerary:
12:30 PM – 1:00 PM: Guest Arrival & Seating
1:00 PM – 1:45 PM: Team Overview @ Jack Baskin Engineering (JBE) Auditorium
1:45 PM – 2:30 PM: Alumni Panel: Experiences Beyond FSAE @ JBE Auditorium
2:30 PM – 4:30 PM: Lab Tours, Subteam Showcases & Networking @ Baskin Courtyard
4:30 PM – 5:00 PM: Closing Remarks & Acknowledgements

March is Hummingbird Month at the UCSC Arboretum & Botanic Garden
2026-03-01 00:00 - 2026-03-31 23:59 | Arboretum, 122 Arboretum Road, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064
March is Hummingbird Month at the UCSC Arboretum & Botanic Garden
This time of year, the Arboretum hosts both Anna’s and Allen’s hummingbirds, the two most common species in Northern California. “The density of hummingbirds—the number per area in the Arboretum—is ridiculously high,” says Bruce Lyon, Professor Emeriti of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at UCSC. “You can watch them feeding on ﬂowers, you can watch their courtship, you can watch them chasing different species. It’s a great opportunity to see some pretty amazing hummingbird biology.”
In celebration of this special time of year, we invite you to visit the garden as much as possible! We will have presentations, workshops, and tours throughout the month. See our webpage for a schedule of activities and more information about hummingbirds and the abundance of plants at the Arboretum that attract them.
We will also feature hummingbird merchandise and hummingbird-attracting plants at our gift shop and nursery. Visit Norrie’s Gift & Garden Shop, Tuesdays thru Sundays from 10 – 4. For more information visit: https://arboretum.ucsc.edu/garden-shop/
All events are free with paid admission: Adults: $10, Seniors $8 and Youth 4-17 $5. Current UCSC students are free. Rain cancels outdoor activities.
Current Arboretum members are always free and enjoy other great benefits year-round! Join Today at https://arboretum.ucsc.edu/get-involved/join-us/

UCSC Family Opera—Mozart's "The Magic Flute"
2026-03-01 13:00 - 14:30 | Music Center Recital Hall, 400 McHenry Road, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064
Voice students, accompanied by Luke Shepherd on piano, perform an abridged version of Mozart’s The Magic Flute. This is a family-friendly production of Mozart’s most famous fairytale. Duration is approximately 1 hour with music and dialogue presented in English. The two matinee performances showcase two different casts.
—
ADVISORIES
– Loud noises (thunder sound effects)
– Flashing lights
—
ADMISSION
– FREE and open to the public
– Open seating (no tickets or registration required)
– First-come, first-served
—
FULL SCHEDULE OF EVENTS
– Two performance of back-to-back matinees at 1:00 p.m. and 3:00 p.m.
—
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.

Optional Practical Training (OPT) Awareness Week
2026-03-02 00:00 - 2026-03-06 23:59 | CA
Join us for OPT Awareness Week at UC Santa Cruz, a supportive and informative series designed to help international students learn about and confidently prepare for Optional Practical Training. You’ll learn application steps, key timelines, and employment rules while connecting with advisors and peers who are here to help you succeed. Whether you’re just starting to explore OPT or ready to apply, this week offers the tools and clarity you need to move forward with confidence.
Visit our website to explore the different workshops and sessions.

ECE 290 Seminar: Precision Nuclear Medicine: Engineering Solutions from Acquisition to Analysis
2026-03-02 10:40 - 11:45 | Engineering 2, Engineering 2 1156 High Street, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064
Presenter: Spencer L. Bowen, Assistant Professor in the Departments of Radiology and Biomedical Engineering, UT Southwestern Medical Center
Description: The Bowen Lab focuses on the development of tools for positron emission tomography (PET) and hybrid systems (e.g. PET/CT), to advance precision imaging for the care and study of oncology, neurology, and cardiology patients. Quantitative metrics from PET are integral to both patient workup and clinical research. However, current approaches to enable quantitative imaging have substantial performance limitations that can compromise study conclusions, fail to generalize across exams and scanners, expose patients to additional ionizing radiation, or necessitate invasive procedures. To address these key barriers, Dr. Bowen and his team investigate advanced acquisition techniques, image reconstruction algorithms, and post-processing methods. Their studies span from digital simulations to human subjects research. This lecture will cover recent developments by the Bowen Lab, including 1) advanced PET data correction methods for low-dose and standalone exams, 2) non-invasive fully quantitative imaging, and 3) leveraging topical sensors to detect faulty radiotracer injections.
Bio: Spencer L. Bowen, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor in the Departments of Radiology and Biomedical Engineering at UT Southwestern Medical Center. He earned his doctorate in biomedical engineering from University of California, Davis, where he developed hardware and algorithmic solutions to enable quantification with a breast PET/CT scanner. Dr. Bowen then worked as a research fellow at Massachusetts General Hospital on precision PET imaging methods for combined PET/MR. Prior to joining the UT Southwestern faculty in 2020, he served as a research assistant professor at the Fralin Biomedical Research Institute at Virginia Tech-Carilion. Dr. Bowen’s research program is funded by both industry and the NIH. His work has been featured on the cover of the Journal of Nuclear Medicine and detailed by the press.
Hosted by: Professor Soumya Bose, ECE Department
Zoom Link: https://ucsc.zoom.us/j/97975378707?pwd=[REDACTED]

CM Seminar - "From Sibelius to Game: Crafting Adaptive Music for 'Kingdom Come: Deliverance'"
2026-03-02 12:30 - 13:30 | Silicon Valley Campus, 3175 Bowers Avenue, Santa Clara, CA, 95054, United States
Presented by: Adam Sporka
Description: “This talk explores the technical and creative processes behind the music of Kingdom Come: Deliverance II, where I served as a music programmer, and soundtrack contributor. Using our proprietary Sequence Music Engine and music logic module, we authentically scored the game’s 1400s Bohemia setting with segment-based adaptive music driven by in-game variables. Our workflow centers around the notation program Sibelius and our custom tool Converdi, which streamlines the production by converting the score symbols to preliminary MIDI streams per individual VSTs and by extracting the precise timing data necessary for the segment transitions. This enabled us to spend more time on the creative aspects of music and less time on production and implementation.”
The key takeaways from the talk are as follows:
* Production should start with a complete score, and not just the MIDI exports therefrom
* Custom automation tools can streamline the music creation workflow and reduce the production time
* Resequencing is more suitable for classical and medievalesque music than layering
* Rapid music prototyping allows for early testing of adaptive music directly in the game
Bio: Adam Sporka is a software developer by trade, a musician by domain, and a scientist by approach. As a researcher, developer, and educator in game audio, he places a special focus on interactive music. He has served as the technical music director for Kingdom Come: Deliverance II (Warhorse Studios) and is the author of the Sequence Music Engine, a proprietary adaptive music middleware used in both games. As a composer, he contributed to the soundtrack of both Kingdom Come: Deliverance games, writing some of the most memorable medievalesque and early renaissance pieces on the soundtrack. Currently, he teaches game audio at the University of California, Santa Cruz. He received his Ph.D. and habilitation in human-computer interaction from the Czech Technical University (Czech Republic) and was a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Trento (Italy). He has published more than 50 articles in the proceedings of international conferences and academic journals. Adam is currently appointed as a principal engineer at Embody, a Sunnyvale-based game audio software company focused on the commercial applications of the head-related transfer function.
Hosted by: Professor Christina Chung
When: March 2, 2026 from 12:30PM to 1:30PM
Location:
IN-PERSON @ SVC 3212.
Viewing room @ UCSC Main Campus, E2-280.
LUNCH WILL BE PROVIDED AT BOTH LOCATIONS! Faculty and students are highly encouraged to attend.
Zoom info:
https://ucsc.zoom.us/j/98763397019?pwd=[REDACTED]
Meeting ID: 987 6339 7019
Passcode: [REDACTED]

Statistics Seminar: Decoding Phytoplankton Responses to a Changing Ocean
2026-03-02 16:00 - 17:00 | CA
Presenter: Francois Ribalet, Research Associate Professor, School of Oceanography, University of Washington
Description: François Ribalet will present new observational technologies and computational approaches for studying phytoplankton responses to ocean warming. Using SeaFlow, a custom-built automated flow cytometer deployed on over 100 research cruises, his team has collected nearly 850 billion cell measurements across global oceans. Matrix population models applied to these data reveal how temperature affects phytoplankton division rates and biomass. The research shows that Prochlorococcus, the ocean’s most abundant photosynthetic organism, experiences sharp declines in growth above 28°C. Climate projections incorporating these metabolic constraints predict a 40-60% decrease in Prochlorococcus production in tropical regions by 2100, with Synechococcus partially compensating through a 20-40% increase. These shifts between dominant phytoplankton groups will likely disrupt ocean food webs and carbon cycling, raising questions about whether tropical ecosystems can adapt to warming oceans.

Bio: François Ribalet is a research associate professor at the University of Washington studying phytoplankton and their role in ocean food webs and carbon cycling. He combines field observations with statistical models to understand how environmental changes affect the growth and community dynamics of these microscopic organisms.
Hosted by: Statistics Department

AM Seminar: The Evolving Landscape of AI for Science and Engineering: Bridging Simulation, Experiment, and Multi-scale Dynamics
2026-03-02 16:00 - 17:00 | CA
Presenter: Aditi Krishnapriyan, Assistant Professor, UC Berkeley
Description: Recent advances in large-scale scientific datasets are creating new opportunities for machine learning (ML) methods to more effectively capture scientific phenomena with greater accuracy and reach. In this talk, I will discuss how these advances are both shifting ML design paradigms and enabling new scientific inquiries. This includes investigations into understanding if neural networks can autonomously discover fundamental physical relationships from data, and demonstrating how more flexible machine learning modeling design choices enable capturing physical dynamics across multiple scales. I will also explore how generative modeling approaches rooted in statistical physics can be applied to accelerate the sampling of dynamic pathways, and as a framework to align and bridge the gap between simulated data and experimental observations.
Bio: Aditi Krishnapriyan is an Assistant Professor at UC Berkeley where she is part of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences, and Berkeley AI Research; as well as a faculty scientist in the Applied Mathematics division at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. She holds a PhD from Stanford University, supported by the DOE Computational Science Graduate Fellowship, was the Luis W. Alvarez Fellow in Computing Sciences at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and is a recipient of the Department of Energy Early Career Award and RCSA Scialog. Her research focuses on developing physics-inspired machine learning methods that bridge machine learning with physical science applications to capture phenomena across multiple length and timescales.
Hosted by: Applied Mathematics

Free Coffee, Snacks, & Conversation
2026-03-03 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.

UCSC Orchestra—Bravada and Tchaikovsky
2026-03-03 19:30 - 21:30 | Music Center Recital Hall, 400 McHenry Road, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064
Join the UC Santa Cruz Orchestra, conducted by Bruce Kiesling, for a winter concert, featuring Flagello’s Bravada and selections from Tchaikovsky, including the Overture–Fantasy from Romeo and Juliet and Solemn Overture from The Year 1812.
—
ADMISSION
– General admission
– Free for UCSC students (ticket required).
– Tickets will be 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.
– 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.

CSE Colloquium - Improving Efficiency and Reliability of Foundation Models in Clinical AI
2026-03-04 11:00 - 12:15 | Engineering 2, Engineering 2 1156 High Street, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064
Presenter: Vasiliki “Vicky” Bikia, PhD, Stanford Department of Biomedical Data Science and Institute for Human-Centered AI (HAI)
Abstract:
Deploying foundation models in health requires both computational efficiency and reliable generation. In this talk, I present two studies that address these dimensions separately but with a shared goal of real-world clinical deployment. The first study focuses on reduced-resolution distillation for multimodal clinical data, particularly medical imaging. As model and input sizes increase, inference cost and memory constraints become major barriers to deployment. We investigate how high-capacity teacher models can transfer structured knowledge to compact student models trained on downsampled images, using embedding-space supervision to preserve clinically meaningful representations while reducing computational footprint. The second study examines the reliability of AI-generated clinical text. Foundation models are increasingly used to produce discharge summaries and patient-facing explanations, yet fluency does not guarantee safety. We develop a structured evaluation framework grounded in clinical error taxonomies and clinician-calibrated metrics to quantify hallucinations, omissions, and semantic misalignment. Together, these studies emphasize that scalable clinical AI requires not only smaller and faster models, but also rigorous evaluation of generative reliability before deployment.
Bio:
Vasiliki Bikia is a Postdoctoral Researcher at Stanford University, affiliated with the Department of Biomedical Data Science and the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence (HAI). She received an Advanced Diploma in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, and a Ph.D. in Bioengineering from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL). Her research focuses on medical foundation models, structured representations of health data, and the evaluation of generative systems in clinical settings. Previously, she was a Machine Learning Scientist at the Mussallem Center for Biodesign at Stanford University, where she developed software pipelines to improve data accessibility and interoperability in digital health applications. Vasiliki was selected as an MIT Rising Star in EECS (2025) and as an Emerson Consequential Scholar (2025), and is actively engaged with the Silicon Valley entrepreneurial ecosystem through collaborations at the intersection of research, industry, and healthcare. She is an organizing member of the Conference on Health, Inference, and Learning (CHIL) and serves as Unconference Chair for the 2025 and 2026 editions, where she leads the design and execution of the entrepreneurship-focused track bridging academic research and real-world deployment. Her work has appeared in venues including IEEE journals, npj Digital Medicine, Nature Communications, and leading AI conferences, and she has contributed to multiple funded research proposals and clinical studies at the intersection of AI, medicine, and translational impact.
Hosted by: Professor Nikos Tziavelis
Location: Engineering 2, E2-180 (*Refreshments such as coffee, tea, fresh fruit, and pastries will be provided)
Zoom: https://ucsc.zoom.us/j/93445911992?pwd=[REDACTED]

Penguin Random House Info Session for UC Santa Cruz Undergraduates
2026-03-04 12:00 - 13:00 | https://events.ucsc.edu/event/penguin-random-house-info-session-for-uc-santa-cruz-undergraduates/
Looking to break into the publishing field? Join us for an insightful information session with an experienced recruiter at Penguin Random House!
This session is exclusively for UCSC students and will provide an overview of pathways within publishing and careers at Penguin Random House. You will learn about their dynamic internship program and get insider tips for navigating the recruitment process. Don’t miss this opportunity to ask questions and hear directly from a publishing professional!
Register here
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.
Find more Humanities Division career events and other resources at Humanities Career Engagement

Shields, S. (CM) - Procedural, Player-Centric Game Balancing
2026-03-04 13:00 - 17:00 | Merrill College, College Office, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064
Game balance is a term widely used among players, researchers, and designers of games. It is a concept that feels vitally important to how we make and play games – but when we try to define it or implement it, we seldom get the same definition twice. Balance appears differently to whoever is judging it, but as researchers and designers we still must translate this element of game design into technical practice. It also is an expensive and time-consuming subject, one that requires a constant loop of playtesting and design iteration through nearly the entirety of the game development process.
This work seeks to focus our understanding of balance while offering procedural methods to either increase speed or improve quality when performing balancing tasks in game design and research. It accomplishes this by offering a taxonomy of balance alongside a generic design framework that can be used to apply balancing strategies to any game context. It additionally provides a catalog of balancing methods, allowing designers to use common patterns to apply procedural balancing to their games. Finally, I offer three technical examples using the taxonomy and framework, putting theoretical knowledge of balance into concrete technical systems.
Balance ultimately helps us design games that make us feel fairness in our play. By sharpening and optimizing our understanding of the term, we improve the games we make and open new doors in game systems design.
Event Host: Sam Shields, Ph.D. Candidate, Computational Media
Advisor: Edward F. Melcer
Zoom- https://ucsc.zoom.us/j/98956788669?pwd=[REDACTED]
Passcode- 713173

Sonic Icons: Relation, Recognition, and Revival in a Syriac World
2026-03-04 15:30 - 17:00 | Social Sciences 1, Social Sciences 1, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064
Talk Abstract: To the extent that Middle Eastern Christians register in Euro-American political imaginaries at all, they are usually invoked to make a political point about the need for Western military intervention in places like Iraq or Syria, or they are cited as an exemption to anti-Islamic immigration policies because of an assumption that their Christianity makes them easily assimilable in the so-called “Judeo-Christian” West. Sonic Icons argues that these views work against the very communities they are meant to benefit by tracking a diasporic network of Syriac Orthodox Christians—also known as Assyrians, Aramaeans, and Syriacs—in the Netherlands who intertwine religious practice with political activism to “save” Syriac Christianity from the twin threats of political violence in the Middle East and cultural assimilation in Europe.
Coming of age in a historical moment when much of their tradition has been destroyed or forgotten by war, dispossession, displacement, and genocide—their story of self-discovery is a story of survival, revival, and reinvention. Their activism is oriented toward seeking a complex form of recognition for what they understand to be the ethical core of Christian kinship in an ethnic as well as in a religious sense, despite living in societies that do not recognize this unhyphenated form of ethnoreligious identity as a politically legitimate mode of public identity. Drawing on both theological and linguistic theories of the icon, Sonic Icons rethinks foundational theoretical accounts of ethnicization, racialization, and secularization by examining how kinship gets made, claimed, and named in the global politics of minority recognition.

Speaker Bio: A cultural anthropologist by training (UCSC ’13), Dr. Sarah Bakker Kellogg is a sensory ethnographer whose research and writing documents minor traditions of knowledge, care, and relational world-making. Known for her methodological creativity, her work centers questions of reproduction, ethics, and justice at the intersection of religious studies, gender studies, migration studies, and political economy. The author of Sonic Icons: Relation, Recognition, and Revival in a Syriac World published by Fordham University Press (2025), she has also won numerous awards, research grants, and fellowships, including the SSRC’s International Dissertation Research Fellowship, the Charlotte W. Newcombe Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship, and the Wenner Gren Hunt Postdoctoral Fellowship. Her new research project is an ethnographic and historical investigation of interfaith activist traditions organized around immigration, racial reparations, and economic justice.

Ways to Wellness
2026-03-04 17:30 - 19:00 | Namaste Lounge, 615 College Nine Road, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064
Join the Asian American/Pacific Islander Resource Center on Wednesday 3/4 from 5:30-7:00pm at Namaste Lounge to learn about Tai Chi and Yoga, as we highlight Asian wellness tools that can be used to help relieve stress and discuss how cultural wellness practices can help us connect to our communities. Feel free to bring your own yoga mat, towel, or blanket!
RSVP at bit.ly/aapirc-wellness
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.

Unexpected Returns: The Historic Entanglements of Fire, Settlement, and Stewardship in the Santa Cruz Mountains
2026-03-04 18:00 - 19:30 | Institute of the Arts and Sciences, 100 Panetta Ave, Santa Cruz, United States
March 4th, 2026 from 6:00 p.m. – 7:30 p.m. Miriam Greenberg and Andrew Matthews will present the findings of UCSC researchers who have spent three years studying the ecological, social, and political economic processes that have set the stage for contemporary wildfires, in what has become known as the “Wildland Urban Interface” (WUI). Come and learn about the deeper histories of indigenous burning, settler ranching, fire suppression, extractive industries and urbanization that have produced fire prone landscapes in the Santa Cruz Mountains.
This event is presented as part of An Aesthetics of Resilience, a collaborative research initiative of the Institute of the Arts and Sciences and the Friedlaender Lab at UC Santa Cruz. The project brings scientists, artists, humanists, and activists together to examine multiple experiences of vulnerability in the face of climate change and is supported by a University of California Office of the President California Climate Action Seed Grant, with additional support from the Coha Nowark Art + Science Fund.

Undiscovered Shakespeare: The Two Noble Kinsmen - Episode I
2026-03-04 19:00 - 21:00 | CA
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.

BME 280B Seminar: Artificial intelligence systems to advance engineered T cell immunotherapy designs
2026-03-05 11:40 - 13:15 | Biomedical Sciences, Biomedical Sciences Building Red Hill Road, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064
Presenter: Zinaida Good, Assistant Professor of Medicine in the Division of Immunology and Rheumatology and the Division of Computational Medicine, Stanford University
Description: T cell immunotherapies have reshaped the treatment landscape for hematologic malignancies and are rapidly extending to solid tumors, autoimmune diseases, and transplant tolerance. Yet durable benefit remains inconsistent, and toxicities remain clinically significant. The current discovery proceeds one edit at a time, and existing preclinical models do not represent patient biology, which often results in failure upon clinical translation. Overcoming these challenges to improve patient outcomes and reduce toxicities requires a systems-level understanding of the multiscale factors governing T cell function and toxicity in patients. Artificial intelligence (AI) approaches offer an exciting opportunity to tackle this problem by learning unified representations from diverse data types spanning molecular, cellular, and clinical modalities. I will provide an overview on our team’s approaches building AI systems that harness primary patient datasets to directly inform advanced T cell designs optimized for clinical outcomes, with validation in preclinical models.
Bio: Zinaida Good, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor of Medicine in the Division of Immunology and Rheumatology and the Division of Computational Medicine at Stanford University. She also serves as the Director of the Stanford Center for Cancer Cell Therapy Data Hub. The goal of her research program is to understand and enhance engineered T cell immunotherapies for cancer and immune-mediated diseases through innovative computational approaches and systems immunology. Her lab leverages innovation in machine learning and clinical multiomic datasets to build artificial intelligence systems for advanced T cell therapy design. Dr. Good earned her Ph.D. in Computational & Systems Immunology from Stanford University. Her work includes 4 first-author papers (Nature Medicine 2018 & 2022, Nature Biotechnology 2019, Trends in Immunology 2019), 18+ co-authored papers (including Nature 2019, 2022, 2024, Science 2021, Nature Methods 2016, 2022, and NEJM 2024), and an initial senior author papers (ICML 2025, NeurIPS 2025, Frontiers in Immunology 2025). Her research is supported by the NIH/NCI Pathway to Independence Award, NIH/OD Multimodal AI Initiative Award, NIH/NCI Program Project Grant, and the Weill Cancer Hub West. Dr. Good has been named an Arthur & Sandra Irving Cancer Immunology Fellow in 2022, Parker Bridge Fellow in 2023, and an AACR-Woman in Cancer Research Scholar in 2024.
Hosted by: Professor Vanessa Jonsson, BMEbe Department

Teach For America Information Session
2026-03-05 12:00 - 13:00 | CA
Interested in launching a career rooted in service, learning, and community impact? Join Teach For America staff members for an upcoming informational session where you’ll learn more about the paid opportunities we offer, the issue we are trying to tackle together, and how you can get involved.
Teach For America offers paid full-time and part-time roles that range from virtual tutoring, internships, summer fellowships, and full-time teaching positions in historically under-resourced schools. Participants gain valuable leadership, communication, and professional skills while supporting student success and educational equity.
During this session, you’ll learn:
– Available opportunities and role types;
– Eligibility and application timelines;
– What support Teach For America provides to participants;
– How to get involved, regardless of major;

We can 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.

Contact information
James Crawford, Recruiter

Location
Jack Baskin School of Engineering (E1), 156, Santa Cruz, California, United States

Xu, Y. (CSE) - Right Place, Right Time: Accelerating Edge Computation on Modern Heterogeneous SoCs
2026-03-05 13:00 - 15:00 | Engineering 2, Engineering 2 1156 High Street, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064
Modern edge computing increasingly relies on heterogeneous System-on-Chip (SoC) architectures. These chips tightly integrate general-purpose CPUs with various specialized accelerators, including GPUs, FPGAs, and AI accelerators, all under a shared memory architecture. Although these shared-memory SoCs enable more efficient communication and data sharing between different processing units, they are notoriously difficult to program and tune due to architectural diversity across vendors and asymmetric compute capabilities within each SoC.
This dissertation introduces Redwood and BetterTogether, two frameworks that rethink CPU-accelerator collaboration on heterogeneous SoCs. Redwood targets a class of algorithms termed traverse–compute, that combine irregular tree traversals with dense leaf-level computation, e.g., Nearest-Neighbor Search and Barnes–Hut algorithm.
It addresses the efficient mapping of these algorithms onto heterogeneous systems by exploiting the architectural strengths of CPUs, GPUs, and FPGAs. BetterTogether extends this methodology to a different class of edge workloads, specifically multi-stage pipelines and neural networks commonly used in computer vision tasks. Furthermore, it introduces interference-aware analysis and scheduling techniques tailored for mobile SoCs. Finally, to broaden the scope of heterogeneous acceleration, we evaluated emerging domain-specific accelerators. We provide a preliminary analysis of Tensor Processing Units and Tensor Cores within the context of modern programming abstractions.
Event Host: Yanwen Xu, Ph.D. Candidate, Computer Science and Engineering
Advisor: Tyler Sorensen
Zoom- https://ucsc.zoom.us/j/5354629158?pwd=[REDACTED]
Passcode- 114514

Planting Oceania and Healing Communities
2026-03-05 13:30 - 15:00 | Namaste Lounge, 615 College Nine Road, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064
Planting Oceania is a Oceanian/Indigenous Pacific Islander community organization that plants traditional foods in two gardens located at Filoli Historic House and Gardens in Woodside and at the UC Giltract Farms in Albany. Members of Planting Oceania will share stories about growing plants and stewarding the Land as an important cultural practice for building Oceania/Pacific Islander communities in California. Panelists will discuss being good guests and building good relations with Native California tribal leaders and communities — the Indigenous stewards of the Land — protocols they center in their land-based work.
Speakers: Windsor Taro (Belauan), John Holt (Kanaka Maoli/Native Hawaiian), Loa Niumeitolu (Tongan), Fuifuilupe Niumeitolu (Tongan), Andria Takesy (Belauan and Chuukese), Leila Tamale (Tongan), & Sitiveni Heimuli (Tongan)
Sponsored by: Rachel Carson College, Center for Racial Justice, Critical Race Ethnic Studies, Asian American/ Pacific Islander Resource Center, American Indian Resource Center, People of Color Sustainable Collective, & Mauna Kea Protectors
For more info fniumeit@ucsc.edu
You Belong Here: The programs and services described here are open to all, consistent with state and federal law, as well as the University of California’s nondiscrimination policies. Every initiative—whether a student service, faculty program, or community event—is designed to be accessible, inclusive, and respectful of all identities.
To learn more, please visit UC Nondiscrimination Statement or Nondiscrimination Policy for UC Publications.

Traveling Film Southasia - Film Screening Festival Launch
2026-03-05 17:00 - 19:00 | Communications Building, 7487 Red Hill Road, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064
Located in Communications 150, Studio C
Join the Center for South Asian Studies (CSAS) for a celebratory film screening event to launch Travelling Film Southasia, a mobile film festival highlighting 19 exceptional nonfiction productions of the last two years, originally screened at Film Southasia 2024 in Kathmandu. This year’s festival encapsulates a range of experiences on the Subcontinent with films from Nepal, Bangladesh, India, Pakistan and Myanmar, including CSAS Faculty Director Dolly Kikon’s recent film, Abundance.
Film Southasia (FSA) is a biennial festival that began in 1997 with the goal of popularizing documentary films so that they entertain, inform, and change lives. In addition to the festival that takes place in Kathmandu every two years, FSA organizes screenings, discussions, and workshops to promote Southasian non-fiction within the Subcontinent and around the world. Film Southasia believes that film is a powerful medium that not only helps better represent the region internationally, but also contributes immensely to introspection and to initiatives that bring change at the local level.
For more information: Traveling FSA 2025.
After the March 5 film festival launch event, the festival films will be available for streaming until March 20. Link and instructions for viewing to follow.
This event is open to all students, faculty, staff, and members of the public consistent with University policy and state and federal law.
Presented by the Center for South Asian Studies and co-sponsored by the Department of Film and Digital Media and The Humanities Institute.

Weather and the Whale Book Launch and Closing Party
2026-03-06 17:00 - 19:00 | Institute of the Arts and Sciences, 100 Panetta Ave, Santa Cruz, United States
March 6, 2026 5:00 p.m. – 7:00 p.m. The IAS will host a Celebration of the release of the Weather and the Whale catalog with an after-hours viewing of the exhibition and a conversation with three of the exhibition collaborators and catalog contributors: Guillermo Delgado-P, Kailani Polzak and Zac Zimmer.
Distributed by University of Minnesota Press, Weather and the Whale is an exciting interdisciplinary catalog combining artworks, critical and creative texts, and new scientific research about whales and other marine mammals to both sound a warning of the irreversible consequences of the collapsing climate and offer alternative possibilities for living during these challenging times.

Lila Downs in Quarry Amphitheatre (March 6th)
2026-03-06 19:00 - 22:00 | Upper Quarry Amphitheater, 15 McLaughlin Drive, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064
Tickets are on sale at quarryamphitheater.com, starting at $67.50 for general admission, and $118.26 VIP seating.

Born in 1968, Lila Downs is one of Latin America’s most influential voices, an artist with a singular sound and magnetic stage presence. Rooted in Oaxaca and shaped between Mexico and the United States, she weaves Mexican tradition with jazz, cumbia, folk, and contemporary rhythms. Her music is both celebration and conscience; she’ll turn the redwood backdrop into a gathering—intimate, fearless, and deeply human—where culture is honored, stories are reclaimed, and audiences are invited to feel, dance, and remember.

CANCELLED—UCSC Wind Ensemble—Spirits and Legends
2026-03-06 19:30 - 21:30 | Music Center Recital Hall, 400 McHenry Road, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064
Event update: this event is cancelled as of 6:30PM on Friday, March 6. Ticket holders will receive refunds automatically via Eventbrite. Please contact artsevents@ucsc.edu with questions or concerns.
—
UCSC Wind Ensemble presents Spirits and Legends; a concert featuring music for Wind Ensemble on themes of past or present legends or spirit journeys. Featuring music from “Spirited Away” by Joe Hisaishi, “The Dream of Angus” by Rolf Rudin, “Sound and Smoke” by Viet Cuong, and music by Carlos Chavez, Julie Giroux, and Richard Wagner.
—
ADMISSION
– General admission.
– Free for UCSC students (ticket required).
– Tickets available online through Eventbrite only HERE.
– 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.

UCSC Grad Slam Final - March 7th
2026-03-07 18:30 - 21:00 | Kuumbwa Jazz Center, 320-2 Cedar St, Santa Cruz, 95060, United States
What is Grad Slam?

Three Minutes. One Slide. Thousands of Dollars in Prizes!
Grad Slam is a communication contest hosted by the UC Santa Cruz Graduate Division that highlights graduate student research. Participants have a maximum of three minutes to explain their graduate research or artistic endeavor to a general audience.
First Place, Grad Slam Champion: $3000
Second Place: $1500
People’s Choice*: $750
*decided by text message voting, one vote per audience member, both those in person and watching the live stream
Come join the fun and vote for your favorite presentation.
Saturday, March 7th at the Kuumbwa Jazz Center. Doors open at 6:30, talks begin at 7PM
All ten UC Grad Slam champions, 1 from each campus, compete in the UC Office of the President’s Grad Slam. The UC system-wide Grad Slam will take place on Wednesday, April 22, at the UC Center Sacramento.

After Hours: MIKE Live at the Quarry (Student-Only Concert)
2026-03-07 19:00 - 22:00 | Upper Quarry Amphitheater, 15 McLaughlin Drive, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064
MIKE headlines an exclusive hip hop concert for UC Santa Cruz students on Saturday, March 7 at the Quarry Amphitheater. Presented by the Division of Student Affairs and Success (DSAS) Leadership and Involvement Team, this event is part of the new After Hours series, created to expand opportunities for student connection, creativity, and engagement beyond traditional campus hours.
Special guest Lil Kayla opens the show.
Doors: 7 p.m. | Show: 8 p.m.
Tickets: $10 (UCSC students only, while supplies last)
Location: Quarry Amphitheater
Follow @ucsc.dsas on Instagram for updates.
Questions: involved@ucsc.edu

You Belong Here: The programs and services described here are open to all, consistent with state and federal law, as well as the University of California’s nondiscrimination policies. Every initiative—whether a student service, faculty program, or community event—is designed to be accessible, inclusive, and respectful of all identities.
To learn more, please visit UC Nondiscrimination Statement or Nondiscrimination Policy for UC Publications.

Family-friendly and Bilingual Bird Walk at the UCSC Arboretum
2026-03-08 10:00 - 12:00 | Arboretum, 122 Arboretum Road, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064
Beginner Bird Walk / Paseando con los Pájaritos
Join the Bird School Project as they help kick-off the celebrations for Hummingbird Month in the beautiful gardens of the UCSC Arboretum & Botanic Garden. This bird walk is beginner and family-friendly. Bring binoculars if you have them, if not, binoculars or a monocular will be provided for you during the walk. The group will meet up at the entrance of the Australianum Garden right next to the large cypress tree in the middle of the parking lot. A Bird School Instructor will be leading the walk and will alternate speaking English and Spanish as needed. We encourage you to arrive at least 15 minutes early if you need to borrow binoculars.
Únase a la Escuela de Aves para celebrar el Mes del Colibrí. Este paseo de aves es para principiantes y apto para familias. Traiga binoculares si los tiene, si no, se le proporcionarán binoculares o un monocular durante la caminata. El grupo se reunirá en la entrada del Jardín Australia, justo al lado del gran ciprés en el medio del estacionamiento. Un instructor de la Escuela de Aves liderará la caminata y alternará hablando en inglés y español según sea necesario. Le recomendamos que llegue al menos 15 minutos antes si necesita pedir prestados binoculares.
Event is free with paid admission. Adults $10, Seniors $8, Youth 4-17 $5
Beginner and family-friendly bird walk at the UCSC Arboretum by the Santa Cruz Bird School Project in English and Spanish.

Jewels in the garden: A Darwinian natural history of humming birds with UCSC Professor Emeritus Bruce Lyon
2026-03-08 13:00 - 14:30 | Arboretum, 122 Arboretum Road, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064
This presentation promises to be a super fun exploration of hummingbird natural history, evolution, and social behavior, full of fascinating scientific information and colorful images of local and exotic hummingbirds from here and abroad. Though now officially a Professor Emeritus of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at UC Santa Cruz, we are lucky that Dr. Bruce Lyon has little inclination to stop studying bird ecology and evolution in ‘retirement’! During his rich career teaching and conducting research, Bruce’s work continues to include the Lyon Lab’s 18+ year-long project studying golden-crowned sparrows at the Arboretum.
Bruce will give his entertaining presentation and slideshow in the Arboretum’s Hort 2 Meeting Hall and then take interested folks outside to one of the Arboretum’s “hummingbird hotspots” for an informal (humming)-birdwatching session and Q&A.
