• Sambamurthy, A. (AM) – Lazy Diffusion: Resolving Spectral Collapse in Generative Models for Turbulence

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

    Diffusion-based generative models offer a principled framework for probabilistic forecasting, but we show they suffer from a fundamental spectral collapse when applied to turbulent flows. A Fourier-space analysis of the forward SDE reveals that the mode-wise signal-to-noise ratio decays monotonically in wavenumber for power-law spectra, rendering high-wavenumber content indistinguishable from noise. We reinterpret the noise […]

  • CSE Colloquium – Query Optimization: How to design a Meta-Algorithm that designs Algorithms?

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

    Presenter: Mahmoud Abo Khamis, RelationalAI Abstract: Database systems have evolved from simple bookkeeping tools to comprehensive data analytics platforms capable of learning from the data and making business decisions. As a result, database queries expanded in their expressive power and applications to include tensor computations, constraint satisfaction problems, graph analytics, scientific computing, SAT solving, among […]

    Free
  • Fredrickson, K. (CSE) – Practical Anonymity with Formal Resistance to Traffic Analysis

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

    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 […]

  • ECE 290 Seminar: High-Frequency Circuits for Next-Generation Communication: From Beyond-5G mm-Wave MIMO to Co-Packaged Optics

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

    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 […]

  • AM Seminar: Multiscale Modeling of Cellular Membranes and Oncogenic Proteins

    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 […]

  • Statistics Seminar: Rotated Mean-Field Variational Inference and Iterative Gaussianization

    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 […]

  • Transform Your Future Pop-Up (Cookies Included!)

    Jack Baskin Engineering Baskin Engineering 1156 High Street, Santa Cruz, CA

    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 […]

  • AI and Security 101

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

    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 […]

  • Liu, C. (CSE) – Enabling LLM Unlearning at Inference Time by Decomposing Detection and Intervention

    Virtual Event

    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 […]

  • CSE Colloquium: Agile and evolvable software construction in the era of rapidly evolving hardware accelerator designs

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

    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 […]

    Free
  • Exploring Research Pathways at Baskin Engineering

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

    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 […]

  • BME 280B Seminar: The evolution of structural variation across vertebrate genomes

    Physical Sciences Building Physical Sciences Building, Santa Cruz, CA

    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 […]

  • BE Club Bash – Engineers Week

    Jack Baskin Engineering Baskin Engineering 1156 High Street, Santa Cruz, CA

    Discover innovation at the Baskin Engineering Club Bash, an event celebrating National Engineers Week! Mark your calendars for Thursday, February 26, 12–2 PM in the BE Courtyard! The BE Club Bash brings together student organizations across all engineering disciplines to showcase their projects, demos, and interactive activities. Stop by to: Explore hands-on booths and demonstrations from student organizations Learn about engineering opportunities on […]

  • Semiconductor Career Summit – From Campus to Silicon Valley

    Stevenson Event Center Stevenson Service Road, Santa Cruz, CA

    A SEMI Professional Development Seminar organized by the SEMI Silicon Valley Chapter – Connecting College Students to the Semiconductor Industry. Learn about career opportunities in high tech and acquire valuable, practical information that will help you choose career directions and plan for your success.

  • Formula Slug Open House

    Jack Baskin Engineering Baskin Engineering 1156 High Street, Santa Cruz, CA

    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 […]

  • ECE 290 Seminar: Precision Nuclear Medicine: Engineering Solutions from Acquisition to Analysis

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

    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 […]

  • CM Seminar – “From Sibelius to Game: Crafting Adaptive Music for ‘Kingdom Come: Deliverance’”

    Silicon Valley Campus 3175 Bowers Avenue, Santa Clara, CA, 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. […]

  • Statistics Seminar: Decoding Phytoplankton Responses to a Changing Ocean

    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. […]

  • AM Seminar: The Evolving Landscape of AI for Science and Engineering: Bridging Simulation, Experiment, and Multi-scale Dynamics

    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 […]