Events

Summer Courses Listed for 2026
2026-03-05 00:00 - 23:59, 2026-03-06 00:00 - 23:59, 2026-03-07 00:00 - 23:59, 2026-03-08 00:00 - 2026-03-09 00:59, 2026-03-09 00:00 - 23:59 (America/Los_Angeles)
Summer 2026 classes are now posted at summer.ucsc.edu. Explore courses and start planning your summer schedule over winter closure! Days and times will be in the schedule of classes on March 15. Email summer@ucsc.edu with questions.

Ecology of Presence: Pathways to the Natural World
2026-03-05 12:00 - 17:00, 2026-03-06 12:00 - 17:00, 2026-03-07 12:00 - 17:00, 2026-03-08 12:00 - 17:00, 2026-03-09 12:00 - 17:00 | Eloise Pickard Smith Gallery, 11 Cowell Service Rd, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064
Norris Center Art + Science Graduate Fellowship Exhibition
Ecology of Presence: Pathways to the Natural World brings together the work of ten graduate students supported by the Kenneth S. Norris Center for Natural History Art + Science Fellowship, a program dedicated to creative research connecting art with the natural world. Across media – including sound, moving image, music, performance, installation, comics, social practice, photography, and storytelling – the artists in Ecology of Presence emphasize relationality and careful attention to place as essential to building relationships with environs. As accelerating environmental change and technological dependency threaten ways of belonging, the works in this exhibition maintain a steadfast commitment to interdisciplinary approaches that propose kinship with the natural world. By coming together, Art + Science Fellows artworks and social practices suggest ways of imagining human life in relation to the more-than-human world.

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

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.

Random With A Purpose (RWAP) XXXlV—The Experiment
2026-03-05 19:30 - 21:00, 2026-03-06 19:30 - 21:00, 2026-03-07 19:30 - 21:00, 2026-03-08 14:00 - 16:00 | Second Stage, Second Stage, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064
Random With A Purpose is a popular annual student-directed and -choreographed dance showcase.
Per directors Lydia Wallman and Brennah Lyons, this year’s production, The Experiment, “serves as a platform for collaborators to develop work that does not yet exist in the physical world and to investigate elements of community and features a cast that reflects UC Santa Cruz’s diverse student population through a wide range of dance styles and perspectives.”
Admission

General admission $5–$20 “Pay What You Like”
FREE for UCSC undergrads (ticket required).
Tickets available on Eventbrite.
Doors open 30 minutes prior to the 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.

Advisories
This performance is approximately 90 minutes with a 15-minute intermission and includes: flashing lights and mature language.
Event dates

Fri. Feb. 27: 7:30 p.m.
Sat. Feb. 28: 7:30 p.m.
Sun. Mar. 1: 2:00 p.m.
Thu. Mar. 5: 7:30 p.m.
Fri. Mar. 6: 7:30 p.m.
Sat. Mar. 7: 7:30 p.m.
Sun. Mar. 8: 2:00 p.m.

Parking

Parking by permit, ParkMobile, or $11.00 cash/credit card via the on-site parking attendant
Arts parking 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.
Refer to Transportation & Parking Services for more information.

This program is open to all members of the public consistent with state and federal law.

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.

Science in the Neighborhood: Transforming Pacific salmon recovery, from genes to ecosystems
2026-03-06 18:00 - 19:30 | Coastal Biology Building, 130 McAllister Way, Santa Cruz, CA, 95060
Science In the Neighborhood
A public lecture series hosted quarterly by the UC Santa Cruz Science Division
Transforming Pacific salmon recovery, from genes to ecosystems
Presentation by Eric Palkovacs, Professor, UC Santa Cruz
Q&A with Bryan Gaensler, Dean of Science, UC Santa Cruz
Register here.
An endangered Central California Coast coho salmon from the Scott Creek recovery program that UCSC operates in collaboration with NOAA. Photo credit: Joel Sartore / National Geographic Photo Ark.
For millennia, Pacific salmon have been integral to the health of coastal ecosystems and human communities from California to Alaska. Salmon are ecological and cultural keystone species, connecting marine and freshwater food webs and supporting thriving fisheries. Yet, wild salmon have declined precipitously due to a combination of factors including dams, harvest, hatcheries, water use—and now, climate change.
Professor Palkovacs, who leads UC Santa Cruz’s Institute of Marine Sciences and Fisheries Collaborative Program, will describe transformative approaches to recover wild salmon populations by connecting novel insights from the level of genes to ecosystems. Learn how this integrative research program can provide insights to transform the future for wild Pacific salmon and the ecosystems and fisheries they support.
The event is in-person only. Register here.
March 6, 2026 | 6:00–7:30 p.m.
Coastal Biology Building. Rm. 110
UC Santa Cruz Coastal Campus
130 McAllister Way
Santa Cruz, CA 95060
The screenshot below shows where to find the entrance of the Coastal Biology Building.

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.

UCSC Wind Ensemble—Spirits and Legends
2026-03-06 19:30 - 21:30 | Music Center Recital Hall, 400 McHenry Road, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064
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.
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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.
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PARKING
– Parking by permit, ParkMobile, or $11 cash/credit via the on-site parking attendant
– Arts Lot #126 is the closest parking lot to the event
– Visitors with DMV placards or plates may park for free in DMV spaces, Medical spaces, or ParkMobile spaces without additional payment, or in timed zones for longer than the posted time.
– UCSC affiliates must purchase their permits before arriving at the event in order to receive their discounted UCSC rate. Attendants will only sell the non-affiliate-priced permits.
– More information provided by UCSC Transportation & Parking Services (TAPS)
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This program is open to all members of the public consistent with state and federal law.

First Saturday Tour at the Arboretum
2026-03-07 11:00 - 12:00 | Arboretum, 122 Arboretum Road, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064
First Saturday Tours are a wonderful way to introduce yourself to the Arboretum or to deepen your knowledge of the Arboretum’s plant collections. Each tour is a little different depending on the time of year, the interests of the tour guide, and the people who join in. For example, you might learn about the birds and mammals that make this land their home or about the amazing physical adaptations that plants have evolved to better deal with our extreme weather and climate conditions. Tours are free with paid admission.

Barnstorm Presents--"Gloria" by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins
2026-03-07 14:00 - 16:00, 2026-03-07 19:30 - 21:00, 2026-03-08 19:30 - 21:00 | Theater Arts B100 Studio Theater, 453 Kerr Rd, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064, United States
Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’ Gloria is a razor-sharp comic drama about ambition, office warfare and hierarchies, where the only thing that matters is selling out to the highest bidder. This funny, trenchant and powerful play follows an ambitious group of editorial assistants at a notorious Manhattan magazine, each of whom hopes for a starry life of letters and a book deal before they turn thirty. But when an ordinary workday becomes anything but, the stakes for who will get to tell their own story become higher than ever.
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ABOUT BARNSTORM
UC Santa Cruz students experiment with and create their own innovative theater and gain a sense of operating and creating art in the Barnstorm Theater Company, a student-run theater arts production company established in 2004.
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ADVISORIES
– Ticket holders not seated at least 10 minutes before the advertised start time may forfeit their ticket/seat and no refund will be issued.
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FULL SCHEDULE OF EVENTS
Fri. March 6: 7:30 p.m.
Sat. March 7: 2:00 p.m.
Sat. March 7: 7:30 p.m.
Sun. March 8: 2:00 p.m.
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ADMISSION
– Tickets issued HERE through Eventbrite; Follow the Dept. of Performance, Play & Design and Barnstorm on Eventbrite for notifications and updates.
– Free for UCSC undergraduate students (ticket required).
– General admission “Pay What You Like” options $5–20
– A limited number of tickets/seats may be available at the door, even after online ticket sales end or reach full capacity.
– Doors are scheduled to open 30 minutes prior to event start time.
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PARKING
– Parking by permit, ParkMobile, or $11 cash/credit via the on-site parking attendant (Only present March 6)
– Additional parking by permit or ParkMobile
– Arts Lot #126 is the closest parking lot to the event
– Visitors with DMV placards or plates may park for free in DMV spaces, Medical spaces, or ParkMobile spaces without additional payment, or in timed zones for longer than the posted time.
– 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.

The Trial of Spock—An Opera Workshop
2026-03-08 16:00 - 18:00 | Music Center Recital Hall, 400 McHenry Road, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064
The creators of The Trial of Spock—An Opera In Three Acts present concert performances of five scenes from an opera-in-progress at the UC Santa Cruz Music Center Recital Hall.
Captain Christopher Pike is gravely injured. Lieutenant Spock is behaving strangely. Charged with protecting Pike in his state of extreme need,Vulcan Commodore T’or suspects that Lieutenant Spock—once Captain Pike’s science officer—is up to no good. Spock’s Captain, James T. Kirk, doesn’t see the trouble until far too late, and soon Spock holds all of them prisoner aboard a ship destined for the “forbidden planet” Talos IV. He refuses to say a word about their fate—not until his superiors agree to give him his trial. Under oath, and with strange evidence, Spock tells the story of Captain Pike’s first visit to Talos IV, where illusion and artificial experiences plunge Pike and fellow captive Vina into uncharted dimensions of their memories, and their concepts of self.
Join sopranos Nicole Koh, Sheila Willey, and Emily Sinclair; tenors Alex Boyer and Nicolas Vasquez-Gerst, baritones Joseph Calzada and Michael Kuo, and the Del Sol Quartet, as they distort the myth of Orpheus, in order to re-think our presumed relationships to freedom and reality, and its augmentations.
Music by Ben Leeds Carson; libretto by Perre DiCarlo & Ben Leeds Carson and Lincoln & Lee Taiz; with contributions from John de Lancie, based on teleplays by Gene Roddenberry.
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ADMISSION
– FREE and open to the public
– Tickets required and available online through Eventbrite
– 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)
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FULL SCHEDULE OF EVENTS
Fri, March 8, 4:00 p.m., UC Santa Cruz Music Center Recital Hall
The Trial of Spock—An Opera Workshop
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Fri, March 13, 7:00 p.m., Kuumbwa Jazz Center
How to Live Long and Prosper—Lessons from a Star Trek Opera
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This program is open to all members of the public consistent with state and federal law.

"The Cigarette Surfboard" screening with filmmaker Ben Judkins (Kresge '17)
2026-03-08 17:00 - 21:00
Join Banana Slug alumni filmmaker Ben Judkins (Kresge ’17, film and digital media) and “ciggy board” creator Taylor Lane for a screening of their award-winning documentary, The Cigarette Surfboard (presented by the California Coastal Commission‘s Whale Tail Grant).
5:00-6:00 PM | alumni meet & greet with light refreshments
6:00-7:35 PM | film screening
7:35-8:30 PM | filmmaker discussion
8:30-9:00 PM | mingle
REGISTER
ABOUT THE FILM
After a young designer realizes that a surfboard – which he crafted from thousands of littered cigarette butts picked up off California beaches – could captivate the eyes of millions across the globe, he decides to use it as the impetus to do something more. The Cigarette Surfboards become a platform to spark ocean stewardship and the symbol of a campaign to hold Big Tobacco accountable for their toxic, plastic waste. Surfing is the medium, but the message is universal.
Small decisions and actions, like littering a cigarette butt, cumulatively can have a large impact, for better or for worse. This immersive documentary provides viewers an up close experience of the ocean through surfers’ eyes, to amplify a message of urgency and possibility regarding the ocean’s wellbeing. As our ocean faces mounting threats, and surfing continues to grow, we as surfers have a responsibility to protect it.
ABOUT THE FILMMAKER
Raised in Northern California, at age eight, Ben Judkins found an old camcorder and discovered the medium to explore and create. After years of videotaping friends skateboarding and surfing, Ben landed at the University of California, Santa Cruz, majoring in Film & Digital Media. His senior film “Marshall” earned the Dean’s Award, and also won “Best Locally-Produced Work” at the 2017 Santa Cruz Film Festival. Ben is an avid surfer who believes in the power of visual storytelling to move people to action. The Cigarette Surfboard documentary is an opportunity to inspire a generation of surfers to be stewards of the sea.

Wellness in Action: Managing Stress in Times of Uncertainty
2026-03-09 13:00 - 13:30
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: Solution Discovery in Fluids with High Precision Using Neural Networks
2026-03-09 16:00 - 17:00
Presenter: Ching-Yao Lai, Assistant Professor, Stanford University
Description: I will discuss examples utilizing neural networks (NNs) to find solutions to partial differential equations (PDEs) that facilitate new discoveries. Despite being deemed universal function approximators, neural networks, in practice, struggle to fit functions with sufficient accuracy for rigorous analysis. Here, we developed multi-stage neural networks (Wang and Lai, J. Comput. Phys. 2024) that can reduce the prediction error to nearly the machine precision of double-precision floating points within a finite number of iterations. We use accurate NNs to tackle the challenge of searching for singularities in fluid equations (Wang-Lai-Gómez-Serrano-Buckmaster, Phys. Rev. Lett. 2023). Unstable singularities, especially in dimensions greater than one, are exceptionally elusive. With NNs we demonstrate the first discovery of smooth unstable self-similar singularities to unforced incompressible fluid equations (Wang et al., arXiv:2509.14185). The example illustrates how deep learning can be used to discover new and highly accurate numerical solutions to PDEs.
Bio: Ching-Yao Lai (Yao) is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Geophysics and an Affiliated Faculty of the Institute for Computational and Mathematical Engineering (ICME) at Stanford. Before joining Stanford, she was an Assistant Professor at Princeton University. She received an undergraduate degree (2013) in Physics from National Taiwan University and a PhD (2018) in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering from Princeton University. She completed her postdoctoral research at Columbia University where she received the Lamont Postdoctoral Fellowship. Her current research focuses on enhancing the representation of machine-learning models to tackle multiscale problems. She was the recipient of the 2023 Google Research Scholar Award, the 2024 Sloan Research Fellowship, and the 2025 NSF CAREER Award.
Hosted by: Applied Mathematics
