• ECE Seminar: Multiscale Sensing for Specialty Crop Systems: From Field Monitoring to Food Safety Application

    Engineering 2 Engineering 2 1156 High Street, Santa Cruz, CA

    Presenter: Eve Laroche-Pinel, Postdoctoral Researcher, California State University, Fresno Description: Advances in remote sensing, drone platforms, and data analytics are enhancing the ability to monitor agricultural systems at fine spatial and temporal scales. This presentation will highlight applied research using multispectral and hyperspectral data from satellites, drones, aircraft, and ground platforms to assess crop water […]

  • Paul Pena, D. (CSE) – Efficient Pattern Counting in Sparse Graphs and Hypergraphs

    Engineering 2 Engineering 2 1156 High Street, Santa Cruz, CA
    Hybrid Event

    Pattern counting is a fundamental problem in computer science with applications in many domains. For a fixed small pattern H, we are given a large graph G and we are asked to count the number of subgraphs or homomorphisms (edge-preserving maps) of H in G. For practical applications where the input graph can be very […]

  • CSE Colloquium – Safety Alignment of LMs via Non-cooperative Games

    Engineering 2 Engineering 2 1156 High Street, Santa Cruz, CA

    Presenter: Arman Zharmagambetov, Meta Abstract: Ensuring the safety of language models (LMs) while maintaining their usefulness remains a critical challenge in AI alignment. Current approaches rely on sequential adversarial training: generating adversarial (harmful) prompts and fine-tuning LMs to defend against them. We introduce a different paradigm: framing safety alignment as a non-zero-sum game between an […]

    Free
  • BME80G Seminar – Ann Mc Cartney, “The Why, What and How of Indigenous Data Sovereignty”

    Presenter: Dr. Ann Mc Cartney Location: Virtual. Please register here: https://ucsc.zoom.us/meeting/register/ciShTZsyRViYxMDjCc_cAQ#/registration Abstract: In 2007 the General Assembly of the United Nations adopted the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) that supports Indigenous Peoples’ inherent rights to self-determination and governance over Indigenous Peoples, territories and resources. This codification in an international treaty led to the […]

  • Annual BE Student Project Showcase

    The annual BE Student Project Showcase celebrates the innovative work and accomplishments of undergraduate engineers in capstone courses and research pathways.

  • BME 280B Seminar: Speaker Dylan Shropshire – “How did Wolbachia become Earth’s most pervasive animal symbiont?”

    Biomedical Sciences Building 575 McLaughlin Drive

    Presenter: Dylan Shropshire, Assistant Professor in the Department of Biological Sciences, Lehigh University Description: Maternally transmitted Wolbachia bacteria inhabit roughly half of all arthropod species, making them likely the most common animal-associated microbe on Earth. Wolbachia alter host reproduction, persist across deep evolutionary timescales, and move into new host species in ways that we are only beginning to resolve. Wolbachia’s […]

  • ECE Seminar: Hamid Jafarbiglu

    Engineering 2 Engineering 2 1156 High Street, Santa Cruz, CA

    Presenter: Hamid Jafarbiglu, Agricultural Technology Evaluator, Big Idea Ventures Description: TBA Bio: Hamid Jafarbiglu is a researcher specializing in remote sensing, spectral analysis, and machine learning for agricultural systems. His work focuses on enhancing food safety, crop monitoring, and precision decision-making in high-value specialty crops. Dr. Jafarbiglu earned his Ph.D. in Biological Systems Engineering from […]

  • Harsh, B. (CSE) – SUPERSCALAR, MULTIPLE TAKEN BRANCH PREDICTOR

    Engineering 2 Engineering 2 1156 High Street, Santa Cruz, CA
    Hybrid Event

    This work addresses improvements in branch prediction mechanism to support high perfor- mance processors. The state of the art aims to balance the prediction latency and prediction accuracy using multi level correcting predictors . Prior published work focusses on scalar designs and prediction accuracy improvement for hard to predict branches employing tailor made, non generic […]

  • Castro, S. (CSE) – Agentic AI for Security: Adversarial Foundations for Autonomous Cyber Operations

    Engineering 2 Engineering 2 1156 High Street, Santa Cruz, CA
    Hybrid Event

    Autonomous Cyber Operations (ACO) agents promise effective security automation with minimal human intervention, yet their deployment raises three interconnected challenges: agents must be realistic (reproducing diverse attacker sophistication), secure (preventing autonomy from becoming an attack surface), and feasible (safely replicating human behavior at full autonomy). We argue that these three properties are requirements for ACO […]

  • Liu, P. (CM) – Reimagining Workplace Concern Reporting: From Emotional Harm to Co-Designed Futures

    Virtual Event

    Workplace concern reporting infrastructure, including human resources (HR) portals, grievance procedures, and whistleblower hotlines, is the formal channel through which employees in most organizations raise concerns about harassment, discrimination, and retaliation. Yet existing research consistently finds that these systems fail the employees they are meant to protect: reports stall, concerns get filtered, retaliation occurs, and […]

  • Baskaran, D. (CM) – More than Just Fun: Exploring Meaningful Play, Communities of Play, and Relatedness of Play

    Virtual Event

    Play is often seen as a form of entertainment, leisure, or childhood development. However, it also acts as a meaningful experience that shapes how people connect with others and interact with the world around them throughout their lives. Prior work on meaningful play and communities of play has mainly focused on individual experiences and participation, […]

  • Tu, H. (CSE) – From Evaluation to Adaptation: Building Reliable Multimodal Intelligence

    Virtual Event

    Multimodal large language models (MLLMs) are rapidly becoming general-purpose AI systems, yet their capabilities are advancing faster than our ability to evaluate, improve, and validate their reliability in realistic use. Standard benchmarks mainly measure in-distribution final-answer accuracy, leaving critical gaps in safety, robustness, fine-grained reasoning evaluation, and reliability in real-world agentic settings. My research proposes […]

  • CSE Colloquium – Learning to Image: Computational Microscopy for Dynamic Systems

    Engineering 2 Engineering 2 1156 High Street, Santa Cruz, CA

    Presenter: Laura Waller, UC Berkeley Abstract: Computational imaging jointly designs hardware and algorithms to push beyond the classical limits of imaging, enabling measurement of new quantities (e.g. 3D, phase, and super-resolution) with simple, inexpensive hardware. These approaches have already transformed consumer photography; our goal is to achieve a similar transformation in scientific microscopy. In this […]

    Free
  • Zheng, Y. (CSE) – Extending eBPF Beyond Kernel Extensions: Verified Interfaces for Runtime System Extensibility

    Virtual Event

    Modern system software increasingly needs runtime extensibility: userspace applications need safe ways to expose domain-specific extension points, GPU resource management needs workload-specific memory and scheduling policies, and kernel eBPF JIT compilers need different runtime optimizations as workloads and hardware vary. However, built-in policies are safe but difficult to specialize across rapidly changing workloads and hardware […]

  • Yang, D. (CSE) – Inner Monologue: a Pathway to Human-Like Reasoning for Complex Tasks

    Silicon Valley Campus 3175 Bowers Avenue, Santa Clara, CA, United States
    Hybrid Event

    A central goal on the path toward general AI is to build systems capable of deliberative reasoning before action. Such systems should inspect what they know, identify what they need, seek or construct useful information, and revise their reasoning through intermediate cognitive states. This dissertation studies this goal through the lens of Inner Monologue (IM), […]