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2022 Engineering News

August 11, 2022
New study shows COVID-19 genomic recombination is uncommon but disproportionately occurs in spike protein region
An analysis of millions of SARS-CoV-2 genomes finds that recombination of the virus is uncommon, but when it occurs, it is most often in the spike protein region, the area which allows the virus to attach to and infect host cells.
August 10, 2022
Incoming UC Santa Cruz class exemplifies academic excellence and diversity
UC Santa Cruz anticipates welcoming approximately 5,100 new Banana Slugs this fall, concluding an admissions cycle that reflected increased interest in the campus. Campus leaders are carefully managing student enrollment and working to provide more on-campus housing for students because of a statewide housing crisis that is particularly difficult in Santa Cruz.
August 03, 2022
New research explores opportunities for eliminating equity gaps in computer science gateway courses
New research shows how addressing “gateways within gateway courses,” specific factors that hold able students back from success in introductory courses, may provide a path forward for closing equity gaps for students pursuing engineering degrees.
August 02, 2022
UCSC student named one of 50 top hackers of 2022
Rising second-year computer science: computer game design student Mansi Saini has been recognized by Major League Hacking for outstanding contributions to the hackathon community.
July 25, 2022
Steve Kang celebrates a career of seizing challenges
As the first in his family to graduate college and in taking on positions as the second dean of the Baskin School of Engineering and chancellor of UC Merced, Sung-Mo “Steve” Kang has always been someone ready and willing to take on challenges.
July 25, 2022
Help ‘Stuff the Bus’ and get students ready for school
With the new school year just around the corner, the United Way of Santa Cruz County and Santa Cruz Office of Education are looking for volunteers to help Stuff the Bus. Come and help fill new backpacks with school supplies for K-12 students.
July 19, 2022
Hallmark cancer gene regulates RNA ‘dark matter’
A new study finds that a key genetic mutation that occurs early on in cancer alters RNA “dark matter” and causes the release of previously unknown RNA biomarkers for cancer early detection.
July 18, 2022
UCSC iGEM developing yeast-based type 2 diabetes medication for 2022 international competition
14 UCSC undergraduates are addressing access and cost of Type 2 diabetes medications by creating an alternative, yeast-based treatment that will be presented at the 2022 iGEM Jamboree in Paris.
July 13, 2022
ASPIRE program launches to aid conservation in a changing climate
A new program out of the UC Santa Cruz Genomics Institute involves students in an effort to measure changes in biodiversity and ultimately prevent them.
July 12, 2022
Alternate reality game launching Fall ‘22 will measure resilience of first-year students
“LUX,” a non-traditional research project to measure the resilience of its players, will officially launch this fall, recruiting participants from the incoming first-year class..
July 06, 2022
UCSC scholars join researchers statewide on a massive genomic study of California’s biodiversity
The California Conservation Genomics Project (CCGP) is a state-funded initiative with a single goal: to produce the most comprehensive, multispecies genomic dataset ever assembled to help manage regional biodiversity.
July 01, 2022
Adapted machine learning models will allow for better understanding of federal surveys
With the support of a three-year, $337,000 grant from the National Science Foundation, Assistant Professor of Statistics Paul Parker will develop statistical and machine learning methods to best suit the analysis of complex surveys produced by federal statistics agencies.
June 29, 2022
~$6M NSF grant for cyber-physical systems project will enable engineers to explore the next generation of transportation systems
With the support of a nearly $6 million grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF), researchers at UC Santa Cruz will lead a five year, multi-institutional project to explore a new vision of engineering cyber-physical systems.
June 28, 2022
UC Santa Cruz celebrates innovative and dedicated teachers
The Academic Senate’s Committee on Teaching (COT) in collaboration with Chancellor Larive and CP/EVC Kletzer, Cruz celebrated UCSC’s innovative and dedicated teachers with a gathering at the Cowell Provost House in early June.
June 27, 2022
Study finds chaos is more common in ecological systems than previously thought
The idea that chaos is rare in natural populations may be due to methodological and data limitations, rather than the inherent stability of ecosystems.
June 27, 2022
Campus recognizes innovative, dedicated teachers
The Academic Senate’s Committee on Teaching (COT) in collaboration with Chancellor Larive and CP/EVC Kletzer, Cruz celebrated UCSC’s innovative and dedicated teachers with a gathering at the Cowell Provost House in early June.
June 21, 2022
The team behind a tree of 10 million Covid sequences
10 million sequences of COVID-19’s genomic code have now been organized into a phylogenetic tree in the UC Santa Cruz SARS-CoV-2 Browser, which is the largest tree of genomic sequences of a single species ever assembled.
June 14, 2022
Ingenious, tech-based solutions pitched at Santa Cruz Launchpad 2022
The annual UC Santa Cruz business pitch competition and job fair drew in 19 student teams, 25 local companies, and nearly 500 attendees.
June 08, 2022
Prestigious $3.8M NIH grant awarded to biomolecular engineering professor to develop an RSV vaccine
Associate Professor of Biomolecular Engineering Rebecca DuBois will use the five-year grant to develop a vaccine for respiratory syncytial virus, a common and potentially dangerous virus.
June 06, 2022
CIDER Pilot Training Program helps students reach new heights in drone research and industry
18 students participated in the CIDER’s first-ever Pilot Training Program, which prepared them for success in research and industry opportunities.
June 06, 2022
UC Santa Cruz named No. 2 public university for ‘making an impact’
Princeton Review has named UC Santa Cruz the No. 2 public university in the nation for students focused on making an impact on the world. The honor underscores the university’s commitment to encouraging positive social impact and is an increase from last year’s No. 3 spot.
May 31, 2022
Capstone to console: UC Santa Cruz student-developed game releasing to Nintendo Switch
The soon to be released, interactive, fast-paced game Squish was developed by UCSC engineering and arts, games, & playable media students.
May 31, 2022
Teresa Faasolo
Teresa Faasolo decided to study computer engineering because she was good at math and highly interested in computers. The major proved more difficult than she had expected, but with help from the Multicultural Engineering Program, she regained her confidence—and found a family.
May 31, 2022
Tiffany-Ellen Vo
Tiffany-Ellen Vo encountered some initial difficulties in college, but with support from the Multicultural Engineering Program she regained her footing. She went on to take advantage of every opportunity she was offered at UC Santa Cruz—and she has already secured a job as a software engineer at Cisco.
May 26, 2022
Marcella Gomez appointed as the Baskin School of Engineering’s inaugural Associate Dean for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion
Marcella Gomez has been appointed as the Baskin School of Engineering’s inaugural Associate Dean for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, and will focus on student success and recruitment and retention of historically underrepresented groups in STEM.
May 23, 2022
Karen Miga named one of TIME’s 100 Most Influential People of 2022
Karen Miga, assistant professor of biomolecular engineering at UC Santa Cruz, was named one of the 100 most influential people of 2022 by TIME. The honor was announced on May 23.
May 18, 2022
Sloan Foundation funds two-year pilot open source program office at UC Santa Cruz
The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation awarded Professor Carlos Maltzahn a $695,000 two-year grant aimed at establishing an open source program office (OSPO) that will serve the entire campus community.
May 18, 2022
Instrumentation grant will establish UCSC hybrid robotic systems experimental testbed
A $275K instrumentation funding award from the Defense University Research Instrumentation Program will support a multi-university project to create a hybrid robotics system test environment to run verification and validation testing on autonomous systems.
May 16, 2022
Grant funding will augment calculus courses to support engineering students’ success
A seed grant from the state-funded California Learning Lab will be used to help address the equity gap in calculus courses and increase retention for engineering students at UC Santa Cruz.
May 10, 2022
Submissions open for 2022 CITRIS UC Santa Cruz Campus Seed Funding Program
CITRIS and the Banatao Institute at UC Santa Cruz invites all UCSC principal investigators to apply for project support through its Campus Seed Funding program.
May 03, 2022
Team of researchers win the public benchmark phase of new Alexa Prize competition
UC Santa Cruz’s team of computer science and engineering (CSE) Ph.D. students came out victorious by a generous margin during the public benchmark phase of the first-ever Amazon Alexa Prize SimBot Challenge, far surpassing other teams in the university competition focused on advancing virtual assistant technology.
May 01, 2022
Summer Session Invites Students to Stay for Summer
UC Santa Cruz Summer Session enrollment is underway and for the first time since 2019, students can choose to stay on campus for in-person classes, or the option remains to study online from anywhere.
April 28, 2022
New Google-funded research project applies computer science to aid bird conservation
Two faculty members have begun a new collaboration to use machine learning models to create continent-wide maps of bird habitat connectivity for conservation purposes, and they have recently received a $60,000 Google Research Scholar award to fund this work
April 25, 2022
CITRIS drone program lands $1 million grant from James Irvine Foundation
The UC Santa Cruz CITRIS Initiative for Drone Education and Research (CIDER) along with several partners has received a $1 million, 15-month planning grant to support regional drone education and workforce development from The James Irvine Foundation.
April 21, 2022
Institute for the Biology of Stem Cells awarded $1M training grant for postdoctoral researchers
The directors of the Institute for the Biology of Stem Cells brought in a new $1M training grant for postdoctoral researchers, and have been awarded over $12M in grants in just two years.
April 20, 2022
Cruz Foam teams up with DiCaprio, Kutcher as advisors and adds a major industry partner
Cruz Foam, a company that started as a Ph.D. student’s project at the UC Santa Cruz Baskin School of Engineering and makes a compostable alternative to styrofoam packaging, has added actors Leonardo DiCaprio and Ashton Kutcher as advisors and investors.
April 19, 2022
Superheroes, spaceships, and social wearables: An immersive, social STEM camp for middle school girls sparks interest, builds confidence in STEM
The UCSC-developed STEM camp combines the crafting of wearable technology with social experience to pique interest in computation and technology for middle school girls.
April 15, 2022
Honoring UC Santa Cruz’s 2022 Distinguished Graduate Student Alumni
Each year, UC Santa Cruz’s five academic divisions select one graduate student alumnus/a/i as their Distinguished Graduate Student Alumni honoree. The awards ceremony for the 2022 cohort will take place on April 23 of Alumni Weekend.
April 14, 2022
Statistics professor wins Hellman fellowship to rethink verbal autopsy survey design
Assistant professor of statistics Richard Li will use his Hellman award to rethink survey design for verbal autopsy, the process of determining cause of death outside of the hospital which is routinely implemented in many low- and middle-income countries throughout the world.
April 11, 2022
UCSC and Amazon Web Services work to accelerate genomics research
The UC Santa Cruz Genomics Institute is collaborating with Amazon Web Services (AWS) to allow researchers to quickly and efficiently execute bioinformatics pipelines on AWS’s global cloud infrastructure.
April 11, 2022
2022 PIT-UN Network Challenge funding open for submissions
The Public Interest Technology - University Network (PIT-UN) has opened the call for proposals for the 2022 Network Challenge funding opportunity.
April 04, 2022
Genomics Institute tool becomes primary method to identify lineages of COVID-19 worldwide
As COVID-19 continues to mutate, software developed and maintained at the University of California, Santa Cruz’s Genomics Institute will now be at the core of the primary tool used by health officials worldwide to track the spread of variants in their community. It is now the default software behind the ubiquitously used tool Pangolin, replacing previous software to more accurately assign genomic samples of COVID-19 to a known branch on the virus’s family tree.
March 31, 2022
First complete, gapless sequence of a human genome reveals hidden regions
Parts of the human genome now available to study for the first time are important for understanding genetic diseases, human diversity, and evolution.
March 29, 2022
UCSC Ph.D. students dive deep into engineering open-domain dialogue AI with the support of industry partners
LivePerson, which builds conversational AI, is funding two students' study of the models that drive chatbots, digital assistants, and more
March 28, 2022
Seed funding grants for early-stage research, creative projects given to 19 awardees
The UCSC Office of Research has awarded funds this month to 19 projects through its inaugural Seed Funding for Early Stage Initiatives program
March 10, 2022
New study confirms bioengineered RSV protein vaccine evokes protective immune response
Two UC Santa Cruz researchers just marked a major milestone in their effort to create an effective vaccine for respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), which can cause severe respiratory disease in children and the elderly.
March 10, 2022
UC Santa Cruz to implement strategic plan for internationalization
UC Santa Cruz is advancing comprehensive internationalization to ensure that the members of the campus community are prepared and encouraged to study, teach, conduct research, and work in a global context, and that institutional policies, programs, and initiatives are aligned to achieve this shared goal.
March 09, 2022
New responsible data sharing technique will enable better understanding of disease-causing genetic variants
Scientists may better understand and test for the genetic variations that cause cancer and other heritable diseases through the application of a novel strategy for securely sharing and analyzing genomic data developed at the UC Santa Cruz Genomics Institute.
March 03, 2022
Computer scientist Yang Liu wins NSF CAREER award
Yang Liu, assistant professor of computer science as the Baskin School of Engineering, won a prestigious NSF CAREER award for his study of human-centered machine learning.
March 01, 2022
Marizza Delgado Leads in the Era of Multipotentialite Women
UC Santa Cruz Alumna Marizza Delgado (Rachel Carson ’21, Technology and Information Management) is a data scientist at Etsy in New York City, fashion model, and Miss Earth New York 2021. Her experiences at UCSC helped inspire Delgado to pursue all of her passions in life.
February 24, 2022
Record applications enable UC Santa Cruz to build strong, diverse fall class
With record-breaking applications from undergraduate students, UC Santa Cruz is looking to admit students who will be ready to contribute to and benefit from a high-impact research university.
February 10, 2022
UCSC selected to join US CYBERCOM Academic Engagement Network
UCSC will join the inaugural class of the U.S. Cyber Command’s (CYBERCOM) Academic Engagement Network (AEN), a group of 84 colleges and universities selected to help strengthen the country’s cybersecurity operations.
February 08, 2022
Computer scientist Lindsey Kuper wins NSF CAREER award
Lindsey Kuper, assistant professor of computer science and engineering at the University of California, Santa Cruz, has won a Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Award from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to fund her lab’s study of distributed systems.
February 08, 2022
UC Santa Cruz announces ambitious investment to hire 100 additional faculty over decade, part of broader effort to advance student success and research excellence
To advance its place as an international leader at the intersection of innovation and social justice, UC Santa Cruz announced today its intention to prioritize faculty hiring by adding 100 additional faculty over the next decade.
January 27, 2022
CITRIS Tech for Social Good 2021-22 student teams awarded funding
CITRIS and the Banatao Institute at UC Santa Cruz has chosen three new student projects and two events for funding through the 2021-22 Tech for Social Good (TSG) Program.
January 20, 2022
UC Santa Cruz receives National Endowment for the Humanities grant to connect studies of humanities, engineering
UC Santa Cruz will create a new Certificate in the Humanities introducing students enrolled in the Baskin School of Engineering to humanities disciplines aimed to help them better understand the social and cultural impacts of technological change.
January 14, 2022
Computer engineer Scott Beamer wins NSF CAREER Award
Scott Beamer, assistant professor of computer science and engineering at UC Santa Cruz, has received a Faculty Early Career Development Award from the NSF to support his work on verifiable computation.