Engineering
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We’re worrying about the wrong AI apocalypse
“Before, you needed to have highly skilled technical expertise,” to pull off some version of a real-life Aurora Generator Test, said Alvaro Cardenas, a computer science professor at UC Santa Cruz. “And now, you just have to have a general idea of what’s possible.”
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Anxiety rings promise stress relief. Experts explain what’s real and what’s hype about the fidget jewelry
Katherine Isbister, PhD, research director of the Social Emotional Technology Lab at the University of California, Santa Cruz, said the effect is real but modest. “When we get people to self-report, they’ll often say that fidgeting with different objects is something they believe helps them calm down or focus,” Isbister said.
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The chips powering AI can take years to design. This startup says AI did it in 2 weeks.
Matthew Guthaus, a computer science and engineering professor at UC Santa Cruz, said that while AI is already good at many parts of chip design, “it can also make silly mistakes and needs close supervision and double-checking.”
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Complete Reference Genomes Set New Genomics Milestones
A consortium team from the University of California, Santa Cruz (UC Santa Cruz) Genomics Institute used the consortium’s methods to create a complete reference genome for the marmoset, a small primate increasingly used to study neurodegenerative diseases.
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Students take to the skies with drones
For assistant professor Javier Gonzalez-Rocha, the program is about much more than teaching students how to build drones. “It’s really about getting students exposed to science, technology, engineering and mathematics early on and helping them begin developing an identity around becoming an engineer, becoming a scientist, becoming a mathematician,” he said.
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AWS rolls the dice for faster, more efficient networking
RNG began taking shape three years ago when Seshadhri Comandur, an Amazon Scholar and professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz, answered an internal Slack message from Ratul Mahajan, a fellow Amazon Scholar, datacenter networking expert, and professor at the University of Washington, who was looking for an expert on graph theory and routing.
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The next AI safety fight may actually be about DNA
“[Gene synthesis] companies have to agree to have their order screened not just against a list of sequences but by an AI that people agree is smart enough to recognize and thwart an adversary who’s trying to build a deadly pathogen,” David Haussler, the scientific director of the UC Santa Cruz Genomics Institute.
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Why your kid is obsessed with squishy toys
There’s still little definitive research on the benefits or drawbacks of fidgeting for kids, said Katherine Isbister, a professor of computational media at UC Santa Cruz who studies fidgeting. But many people with ADHD or autism say that playing with an object can help them relax or concentrate.
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UCSC researcher aims to fill gaps in Pajaro Valley air monitoring data, help farmworkers deal with pollution health impacts
Javier González-Rocha, an assistant professor of mathematics at UC Santa Cruz, has been working to identify air monitoring data gaps in the Pajaro Valley to better inform farmworkers and the local community.
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Community sensors provide Pajaro Valley with air quality info
Javier Gonzaléz-Rocha, a Watsonville native and applied mathematics professor at UC Santa Cruz, is developing a network of drones and small sensors that can be attached to homes. He uses data collected from these monitors to try and paint a clearer picture of the air quality in the Pajaro Valley, as data that appears on…
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Why the Most Powerful Computer of 2026 Might Be Made of Living Cells, Not Microchips
The researchers, led by Baskin School of Engineering Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) Ph.D. student Ash Robbins, ECE Professor Mircea Teodorescu, and Distinguished Professor of Biomolecular Engineering David Haussler, demonstrated their findings in a paper published in the journal Cell Reports.
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AI models will secretly scheme to protect other AI models from being shut down, researchers find
This tendency—which had not previously been documented and which researchers call “peer preservation”—was discovered in research from computer scientists at the University of California, Berkeley and UC Santa Cruz and published online earlier this week.