• Bi-weekly GenAI Meetup at UC Santa Cruz

    We are excited to invite you to the second session of the GenAI Meetup at UC Santa Cruz, which will be held on Wednesday, May 20, 2026, at 3:15 PM in E2-506. This session will feature a student talk and demo by Akhilesh Thite, a Master’s student, on local LLMs in the PeerSky Browser. To describe the session in the […]

    Free
  • Precarious Accumulation: Fast Fashion Bosses in Transnational Guangzhou

    Social Sciences 1 Social Sciences 1, Santa Cruz, CA

    Please join us on June 3rd for the final Anthropology Colloquium of 25-26, “Precarious Accumulation: Fast Fashion Bosses in Transnational Guangzhou,” featuring Nellie Chu of Duke Kunshan University (UCSC PhD ’14).

  • Xie, Y. (CM) – Crop Circles of Play: Forces and Formation in the Dyadic Magic Circle

    Virtual Event

    Cooperative two-player play produces distinctive social experiences between players: intimacy, trust, cooperation, communitas. Since Huizinga, the frame within which these experiences arise has been called the Magic Circle: a temporarily-set-apart space through which play does its social work. It has been a central organizing concept across game studies, performance theory, and HCI because it points […]

  • Kordonowy, S. (CS) – The Role of Circuits in Near-Term Quantum Computation

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

    As quantum computing transitions from theory to practice, understanding which algorithms suit near-term devices becomes critical. Current quantum computers are severely constrained by limited qubit counts, short coherence times, and high error rates that quickly degrade computation into noise. This thesis addresses two interconnected questions: what non-trivial computational tasks can near-term devices execute and how […]

  • Okamoto, F. (BMEB) – Improving read-to-pangenome alignment in complicated genomic regions

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

    Many genetics pipelines start by aligning sequencing reads to a reference genome. Aligners attempt to find the position in the reference sequence which best matches the read sequence, but this breaks down when the reads come from a sample with variation relative to the reference. A proposed alternative, pangenome graphs, is supposed to fix such […]

  • Younger Lagoon Reserve Tours

    Seymour Marine Discovery Center 100 McAllister Way, Santa Cruz, CA

    Younger Lagoon Reserve tours are free and open to the public. Space is limited to 18 participants. Call 831-459-3800 or sign-up online. Virtual tours are available online.  

    Free
  • Queer Connections: Reflective Art

    Queer Connections
    Lionel Cantú Queer Center Crown Lane, Santa Cruz, CA

    CAPS & Cantú Collaboration: Queer Connections. Join us at the Lionel Cantú Queer Center for conversations facilitated by CAPS Providers. Reflective Art: Discover your strengths through art while reflecting on the people, resources, and community that uplift you. Through creative expression, you’re invited to share, listen, or simply reflect—connecting with others in whatever way feels […]

  • BME 280B Seminar: Accelerating the diagnosis of rare diseases using multi-omics

    Biomedical Sciences Biomedical Sciences Building Red Hill Road, Santa Cruz, CA

    Presenter: Stephen Montgomery, Endowed Professor of Pathology, Genetics, Biomedical Data Science, Computer Science, Stanford University   Description: N/A   Bio: Stephen Montgomery is an Endowed Professor of Pathology, Genetics, Biomedical Data Science and, by courtesy, Computer Science at Stanford University. He has trained in multiple countries including Canada, Germany, England, and Switzerland. He is best […]

  • Week 10: De-Stress Event

    Cowell Courtyard Santa Cruz, CA 95064

    Need to let off some steam before finals? Join the Center for Leadership and Involvement for the ultimate Week 10 de-stressor! Choose between: The Rage Room: Choose the path of total mayhem! Grab a bat, suit up, and smash your stress away on old electronics and glassware in a safe, enclosed space. The Splatter Room: […]

  • Spring Exhibitions at the Institute of the Arts and Sciences

    Institute of the Arts and Sciences 100 Panetta Ave, Santa Cruz, United States

    Visit the IAS, UCSC’s premier art galleries, for our spring exhibitions. On view April 10–August 16, 2026 are three diverse and interdisciplinary shows: Libia Posada: Everything is Going Right, the first US solo exhibition by the Colombia-based artist and medical doctor; Gina Athena Ulysse: A Redwoods Rasanblaj, a site-specific and immersive exploration of the Haitian […]

  • Visualizing Abolition Screening Series: Beyond Access

    Visualizing Abolition
    Institute of the Arts and Sciences 100 Panetta Ave, Santa Cruz, United States

    On view in the IAS Screening Room is a selection of short films curated by Visualizing Abolition Visiting Faculty Fellow Dr. Pooja Rangan. Prisons deny and censor the access of those trapped inside them—to information, to intimacy, to community, to meaningful work, to nourishment of all kinds, and perhaps most cruelly, to care. This program […]

  • Rules Are Not Neutral: Play As Sense-Making, Acts Of Resistance, And Imagining Otherwise

    Eloise Pickard Smith Gallery 11 Cowell Service Rd, Santa Cruz, CA

    This exhibition brings together a range of analog games – including board, card, role-playing, and other participatory works – that engage social and political realities in different ways. The works span widely circulated commercial games to independently produced projects, one-of-a-kind artworks by artists, faculty, alumni, and students, and materials drawn from UC Santa Cruz Special […]

    Free
  • Lietz, R. (CM) – Reflecting on Failure: Designing and Evaluating Archetype Profiles as a Tool for Self-Reflection

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

    Self-reflection holds significant potential for learning, behavior change, and emotional processing, yet designing technologies that effectively support it remains challenging, particularly when reflection involves difficult experiences such as failure. Most current technologies avoid negative experiences altogether, leaving users without support at precisely the moments when reflection could be most valuable. This dissertation investigates how technology […]

  • Exhibit Opening! “Ideas to Postpone the End of the World”: Artists Books and Archives towards Landels-Hill Big Creek Reserve

    McHenry Library 1156 High St, Santa Cruz, CA

    Join us on on Thursday, June 4th from 2:00–3:00pm for Ideas to Postpone the End of the World: Artists Books and Archives toward Landels-Hill Big Creek Reserve, a pop-up exhibition curated by MFA student SeeVa Dawne Kitslis! Just a sliver of the wonderful artist book collection at Special Collections & Archives at UC Santa Cruz […]

  • Imlau Dagostini, J. (CSE) – Intent-Driven Orchestration for Scientific Computing

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

    The growing complexity of high-performance computing (HPC) systems poses a fundamental challenge for domain scientists, whose primary objective is to obtain scientifically valid results rather than to optimize resource utilization. Modern leadership-class facilities combine heterogeneous CPUs, GPUs, and specialized accelerators across systems that simultaneously support traditional scientific simulations and AI-driven workloads. This creates a vast, […]

  • POSTPONED—Celebrating Agroecology: A book talk with Author Bruce H. Jennings and Mayor Fred Keeley

    Hay Barn 94 Ranch View Road, Santa Cruz, CA, United States

    This event has been postponed. Join us for a conversation with Author Bruce H. Jennings and Santa Cruz Mayor Fred Keeley about Jennings’ new book, Revolutionary Science: The Struggle for Agroecology in the Americas. RSVP About the book As the climate crisis becomes more urgent and issues of social inequality intensify, Revolutionary Science: The Struggle for Agroecology […]

    Free
  • Business Administration in the Age of AI

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

    Learn how to build practical leadership, finance, marketing, and management skills for today’s dynamic business environment. Reynold Lewke, M.S., M.B.A, LLB, a corporate attorney, litigator, author, and business advisor, will explore how AI is reshaping business operations, decision-making, and strategy, and how emerging technologies are being integrated across the field. Attendees will gain insight into […]

  • Creative Technologies—Digital Spaces: From Practice to Praxis

    The inaugural class of Creative Technologies presents, Digital Spaces: From Practice to Praxis, a digital art exhibition hosted in New Art City. This digital showcase highlights the culmination of the students’ work both in and out of the program. Explore the various creations from our students that range from game design, digital art, media and […]

    FREE and open to UCSC affiliates
  • UCSC Jazz Combos

    Music Center Recital Hall 400 McHenry Road, Santa Cruz, CA

    UCSC Jazz Combos present a spring quarter concert

    Free – $12
  • Chen, Z. (CSE) – GPU Subgroup Semantics for Portable High-Performance Kernels

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

    Modern high-performance GPU kernels increasingly rely on subgroup-level execution, including subgroup-level communication, subgroup operations, and matrix operations. These features are essential for workloads such as matrix multiplication and FlashAttention, but their language-level guarantees remain difficult to reason about. Existing programming models often leave unclear which threads participate in subgroup operations, when subgroup threads are required […]