UCSC in the News

April

April 17, 2025 - Observer
MASP’s Expansion Opens the Floor to Curatorial Experimentation

The Museu de Arte de São Paulo recently finished renovations which doubled the size of the structure. Included in an upcoming exhibition is work by Sir Isaac Julien, a distinguished professor of art. Lina Bo Bardi – A Marvellous Entanglement, Julien’s multi-media piece from 2019 honors the original architect (Bardi) of the museum.
April 16, 2025 - KQED
Isaac Julien Dreams Up a Beautiful and Urgent World at the de Young

This review of Sir Isaac Julien’s newest exhibition, I Dream a World, at the de Young highlights his innovative use of video for multimedia story telling. The distinguished professor of art uses this exhibition as a culmination of his work over several decades.
April 16, 2025 - Good Times Santa Cruz
‘Tenanan’ debuts at UCSC’s April in Santa Cruz music festival

With political turmoil in the air, Ph.D student Stephanie Valadez is bringing latin heritage to the stage. She helped found the UCSC Mecate Ensemble, and organized the upcoming concert on April 19. Tenanan explores themes of motherhood, gender violence, and economic crisis, largely through Valadez’s personal experience.
April 09, 2025 - Artforum
Donna Haraway and Italo Rota Receive Golden Lions for Lifetime Achievement

Donna Haraway, a distinguished professor emeritus in the History of Consciousness Department, was recently awarded a Golden Lion for Life Time Achievement. Given at the 19th Venice Architecture Biennale, this award honors Harawy's philosophical work centering on science fiction and technology.
April 11, 2025 - 7x7
The first U.S. retrospective of pioneering artist + filmmaker Sir Isaac Julien debuts at the de Young Museum

I Dream a World, a current exhibition at the de Young Museum, was named after a Langston Hughes poem. It is the farthest reaching exhibition for Sir Isaac Julien, a distinguished professor of art. Julien gave an opening talk to introduce the exhibition on the day of it’s opening, April 12. This retrospective uses collected works of Julien’s over the past few decades to create an encompassing experience of multi-channel video installations.
April 08, 2025 - Smithsonian Magazine
Odd-Looking Blue Creatures Are Washing Up in Large Groups on California’s Beaches Once Again

Velellas typically wash ashore in Northern California in spring or early summer, because “in the spring is when we have upwelling,” explains Raphael Kudela, a marine scientist at University of California, Santa Cruz, to KQED’s Danielle Venton and Sarah Mohamad. “Upwelling brings lots of nutrients, and lots of nutrients bring phytoplankton and zooplankton.”
April 08, 2025 - MIT Technology Review
Game of clones: Colossal’s new wolves are cute, but are they dire?

Beth Shapiro, an expert on ancient DNA who is now on a three-year sabbatical from the University of California, Santa Cruz, as the company’s CSO, acknowledged in an interview that other scientists would bristle at the claim. “What we’re going to have here is a philosophical argument about whether we should call it a dire wolf or call it something else,” Shapiro said.

Additional coverage by the New York Times, New Yorker, New Scientist, BBC, WIRED, and many other news outlets.
April 06, 2025 - Richmond Review
‘Isaac Julien: I Dream a World’ Opens at de Young Museum April 12

Sir Isaac Julien, a distinguished professor in the History of Consciousness and Art Departments, will have his work on display at the De Young Museum. I Dream a World is Julien’s first solo exhibition at the museum and uses video instillations and visual narrative to explore African American narratives.
April 07, 2025 - The Indian Express
Impact of Trump’s tariffs on India will be lower than for other countries, including China

Distinguished Professor of Economics Nirvikar Singh wrote about the potential impacts of new U.S. tarrifs on India. Singh suspects that the tariffs are mainly an aggressive starting point for a negotiation process that will proceed bilaterally. But he says the Trump approach undermines institutions and trust.
April 03, 2025 - Science
Geoengineering could be crucial in the fight against climate change. But first scientists need to learn how to talk to the public about it.

Environmental Studies Professor Sikina Jinnah shared her insights from working to help the geoengineering sector incorporate governance and public-engagement best-practices documented by social science research. “It’s really, really hard to be taken seriously,” she said. “There’s a handful of scientists who I think bend over backwards to support social science and to advocate for the inclusion of social scientists and their perspectives, but they’re few and far between.”
April 03, 2025 - NBC
Trump administration axes more than $125M in LGBTQ health funding, upending research field

Amid the prospect of both gay and trans people’s erasure from the nation’s research priorities, 30 editors of leading journals that focus on sex and gender research published an editorial last month in The Journal of Sex Research on this work’s importance, NBC reported. UC Santa Cruz Psychology Professor Phillip Hammack coauthored the editorial in his role as an editor of the journal Psychology and Sexuality.
April 03, 2025 - KAZU
UC Santa Cruz sociologist sees ‘a real opportunity’ for labor power right now

Sociology Professor Steve McKay, director of the Center for Labor and Community, says union power helps to push back against increasingly precarious conditions in our country’s economy and society. “Unions are one of the only independent structures that actually fight that kind of precariousness and help empower workers,” he said. Additional coverage was included in an April 2 story.
April 04, 2025 - Art Review
Donna Haraway and Italo Rota awarded Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement

Donna Haraway, a distinguished professor emeritus from the History of Consciousness Department, recently won a "Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement" from La Biennale di Venezia. Her philosophical work covers both science and science fiction, as well as speculative feminism, speculative fabulation, science and technology studies and multi-species worlding.
April 04, 2025 - Hyperallergic
Art Scholars Pledge to Boycott Columbia University

Professors across the country are speaking out about inequality, and UC Santa Cruz is no exception. TJ Demos, the chair of the Department of History of Art and Visual Culture, comments on arts role as a contributor to critical discussions. “It’s a serious kind of new Red Scare. Within the university, [artists] are vulnerable and being attacked.”

March

March 28, 2025 - NPR
Can the Economy Grow Forever?

UC Santa Cruz emerita professor and astronomer Sandra Faber featured on NPR podcast "Planet Money," discussing the implausibility of endless economic growth. The inspiration was a lecture Faber gave at Oxford University, titled "Cosmic Knowledge and the Future of the Human Race."
March 26, 2025 - Los Angeles Times
Should Malibu fire victims rebuild their coastal homes when the ocean is advancing?

“I think we suffer from what I call a short disaster memory. We want to get in there and build and rebuild as fast as we can,” said Gary Griggs, a UC Santa Cruz oceanographer and coastal geologist who wrote “California Catastrophes: The Natural Disaster History of the Golden State.” But the impermanence of coastal construction ”is not something most people are interested in hearing about.” Also in the LAist.
March 25, 2025 - Financial Express
A major reset of higher education

Distinguished Professor of Economics Nirvikar Singh wrote an op-ed discussing how the Trump administration’s war on universities may be a harbinger of long-run structural changes in the world order when it comes to higher education leadership and opportunity.
March 28, 2025 - In These Times
Labor podcast: What Working People's Struggles to Survive The Great Depression Can Teach Us Today

“During the Great Depression of the 1930s, the U.S. economy almost completely collapsed,” historian Dana Frank writes in her book, What Can We Learn from the Great Depression? “As we face our own crises today — a precarious economy, outrageous inequality and poverty, growing racism, climate change — and lie awake at night, facing our own fears, these stories from the Great Depression offer us new and often surprising insights into our own time, our own choices.”
March 28, 2025 - Bloomberg Businessweek
The Real Reason Trump Is Pushing ‘Buy American’

A Bloomberg Businessweek story, "The Real Reason Trump Is Pushing 'Buy American,'' highilghts Dana Frank, Research Professor and Professor Emerita of History at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and her new book, Buy American: The Untold Story of Economic Nationalism.
March 25, 2025 - Game Developer
UC Santa Cruz professor roleplays gig economy, publisher negotiation, and layoffs with game design students

Retora Games founder and UC Santa Cruz Lecturer of Computational Media Tyler Coleman held classroom exercises with game design students in order to help prepare them for the harsh current realities of the game industry.
March 21, 2025 - Tech Brew
The Human Genome Project’s legacy is still yielding new advances

Distinguished Professor of Biomolecular Engineering David Haussler and UCSC Genomics Institute Executive Director Lauren Linton were quoted in a story by Tech Brew on the continuing impact of the Human Genome Project.
March 21, 2025 - AP
Ocean dumping – or a climate solution? A growing industry bets on the ocean to capture carbon

“It’s like the Wild West. Everybody is on the bandwagon, everybody wants to do something,” said Adina Paytan, who teaches earth and ocean science at the University of California, Santa Cruz.
March 20, 2025 - Santa Cruz Sentinel
Trump is turning off the lights on biomedical research: Why it matters for Santa Cruz

Guest commentary by UC Santa Cruz Science Division Professors Needhi Bhalla, Susan Carpenter, and Carol Greider: "A total of $59 million and 102 research projects, in addition to $145 million in local economic impact is what’s at stake in Santa Cruz if these proposed NIH funding cuts go through. From life-saving drugs to cutting-edge cancer treatments, NIH-funded research is vital to both our health and our economy. These cuts will cripple UCSC’s research capacity, endangering everything from the newest medical discoveries to your neighbor who lost their UC Santa Cruz job. We can’t afford to let this happen."
March 19, 2025 - Guardian
Dark energy: mysterious cosmic force appears to be weakening, say scientists

Professor Alexie Leauthaud-Harnett, a co-spokesperson for Desi and a cosmologist at the University of California, Santa Cruz, said: “What we are seeing is deeply intriguing. It is exciting to think that we may be on the cusp of a major discovery about dark energy and the fundamental nature of our universe.” Also covered by the New York Times, Washington Post, Scientific American, Nature, CBS News, and many other outlets internationally.
March 18, 2025 - Lookout Santa Cruz
Ask Lookout: What happened to the walking path on Capitola's Depot Hill?

Gary Griggs, UC Santa Cruz professor of earth and planetary sciences, notes that Depot Hill is “probably the most rapidly eroding section of cliff in Santa Cruz County.” He added that the buff has eroded about a foot each year over the past century.
March 18, 2025 - KAZU
As investors fret over a coming recession, a UC Santa Cruz economist says it has already begun

U.S. financial markets have been in turmoil for weeks, as investors debate whether President Trump's trade war and falling consumer confidence could trigger a full-blown recession. But a UC Santa Cruz economist says that a model he helped develop, which is attracting growing attention, shows that the economy is already in a recession and has been for nearly a year. "Our method starts to flash in April 2024," said Pascal Michaillat, an associate professor of economics. "That's when the method crosses its threshold and says a recession might have started."
March 20, 2025 - Monterey County Weekly
Local promotores trained on climate change impacts are now teaching fellow farmworkers.

UC Santa Cruz has been working with local organizations for two years on Campo-Sano, a research project investigating the impact of climate change on the well-being of farmworkers. That work included development of a bilingual app with an anonymous tipline about unsafe conditions. Professor Matthew Sparke, leader of the project, says adoption of the app will help agencies like CalOSHA and Department of Pesticide Regulation to address concerns. “The app is only going to really start working well when lots of farmworkers use it,” he said.
March 19, 2025 - USA Today
Schools closed and went remote to fight COVID-19. The impacts linger 5 years later.

New research on the lingering effects of the pandemic on teachers from University of California, Santa Cruz Professor of Education Lora Bartlett and her colleagues show that the pandemic-era "hastened a downward spiral in career satisfaction and longevity for teachers. The biggest declines in satisfaction took place in places where teachers described experiencing a lack of support and respect from school leaders and the public during the pandemic and felt that their expertise was often ignored, including in plans to address post-pandemic learning loss," Bartlett said.
March 17, 2025 - KQED
Daffodils Signal Resilience in Santa Cruz Mountains, Almost 5 Years After CZU Fires

Karen Holl, an ecologist from nearby University of California, Santa Cruz, weighed in that a species like California poppies would have been her first choice, though daffodils are not listed on the California Invasive Plant Council’s problem invasives list. “Daffodils should be confined to gardens,” Holl said.
March 18, 2025 - The Atlantic
Who Wants to Live in the Palisades Now?

Move everyone out of the wildland-urban interface and you may have taken away the people who were clearing brush and otherwise reducing the fire risk for the city nearby, said Miriam Greenberg, a sociology professor at UC Santa Cruz. Leaving these areas untouched, Greenberg said, means “the potential for future disasters increases significantly for those adjacent urban areas, which is most of California.”
March 14, 2025 - Scientific American
Life on Earth May Have Been Jump-Started by ‘Microlightning’

Professor Emeritus of Biomolecular Engineering David Deamer was quoted in a Scientifc American story on how wet-dry cycles may have contributed to the origins of life on Earth.
March 13, 2025 - NPR
Ocean plant cell discovery might revolutionize farming

It's one of the holy grails of biotechnology, says Jon Zehr, the ability to engineer plants that could snatch nitrogen out of the air and use it to grow without any of the pollution, energy, or expense that current fertilizers require. Additional NPR coverage.
March 14, 2025 - CNN
Fact check: Trump falsely claims ‘I invaded Los Angeles.’ His water releases didn’t go to LA

President Donald Trump continues to claim that he sent fire-plagued Los Angeles the critical water he says California’s leaders refused to provide. In reality, the water was directed to a dry lake basin elsewhere in the Central Valley – more than 100 miles north of Los Angeles. “The only way that water got to LA is if an Angeleno driving by got mud on their tires,” said Brent Haddad, an environmental studies professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz.
March 10, 2025 - San Francisco Public Press
Toxic Waste Cleanups Take Longer in Marginalized Communities

Lindsey Dillon, an associate professor of sociology at the University of California, Santa Cruz, who studies the impact of toxic sites on surrounding communities, said the Public Press’ findings are consistent with academic literature on environmental justice. “Marginalized groups get fewer resources,” Dillon said.
March 07, 2025 - Vox
The problem with dating? Your standards might be too high.

Campbell Leaper, a distinguished professor of psychology at the University of California, Santa Cruz commented on how dating expectations can clash with shifting gender norms and increased levels of education and employment for women. “A lot of these men who are not going on to college are often having trouble finding jobs and then resenting women,” he explained.
March 06, 2024 - The Guardian
Republicans want corporate oligarchy. We need economic democracy

Michael A McCarthy, director of the Community Studies Program at UC Santa Cruz, coauthored an opinion article with U.S. representative Rashida Harbi Tlaib about how to build an economic system that works for all Americans by advancing collective ownership models across sectors.
March 03, 2025 - National Geographic
Where were enslaved Africans taken from? The answer could be hidden in their bones.

Anthropology Professor Vicky Oelze's groundbreaking map of strontium isotopes found across sub-Saharan Africa could help descendants of enslaved people reconstruct their family histories. By comparing strontium values found in a person's remains to strontium values across a landscape, scientists can gauge where that person is most likely from. "Individual histories are completely erased" by the slave trade, says Oelze, but strontium signatures can help us see "the invisible."
March 04, 2024 - San Francisco Chronicle
California’s effort to streamline wildfire prevention could have long-term consequences

Karen Holl, a distinguished professor of environmental studies at UC Santa Cruz, spoke with the San Francisco Chronicle about the potential pitfalls Governor Newsom's executive order and emergency proclamation to suspend the California Environmental Quality Act, the Coastal Act and other longstanding regulations in order to remove red tape from projects to reduce fuels from state forests.
March 16, 2025 - NPR
An animation breakthrough makes it possible to more accurately illustrates Black hair

Cross-disciplinary professor AM Darke breaks down her recent research on animating Black hair. Historically, character models in animation feature white hair and most of the research into animating hair is done on straighter hair patterns. Darke’s research into coily hair provides a course to better representation that will revolutionize animation.
March 11, 2025 - Santa Cruz Sentinel
UC Santa Cruz to showcase next generation of artists with Open Studios

This Friday, March 14, UC Santa Cruz will open its doors for the public to get a first glimpse into the future of art. The quarterly open studios is a free event for the public where they can come to campus and see art in all forms: painting, sculpture, photography and more.
March 10, 2025 - San Francisco Chronicle
‘It’s just chaos’: How California scientists are facing attacks on research by Trump and DOGE

“We’re feeling frustrated,” Needhi Bhalla, a professor of molecular, cell and developmental biology at UC Santa Cruz, said of the precarious situation. “And wondering why something that has benefited from bipartisan support for 70 years is now currently a target.” Graduate student Fabiola Avalos-Villatoro was also quoted.
March 10, 2025 - Santa Cruz Local
Federal funding freeze threatens UCSC research, Santa Cruz biotech industry

A de facto funding freeze on federal biomedical grants could soon stymie UC Santa Cruz research on cancer and other diseases, and stifle the county’s biotech industry, several UC Santa Cruz faculty members said. Quoted faculty members include Carol Greider, Karen Ottemann, Needhi Bhalla, and Ed Green.
March 07, 2025 - KAZU-FM
UC Santa Cruz professors and students rally for science

Several hundred people rallied in Santa Cruz Friday to support science in the face of significant threats to federal funding. “Stand Up for Science” rallies took place on the UC Santa Cruz main campus and at the coastal science campus. Chair of the UCSC Microbiology and Environmental Toxicology department Karen Ottemann spoke to a crowd of at least 200 outside the science and engineering library. Additional coverage in the Santa Cruz Sentinel, KSBW-Salinas, KION-Salinas, and Lookout Santa Cruz.
March 06, 2025 - San Jose Mercury news
Daylight saving time is bad for you. Here’s what you can do to soften the blow.

The surprising array of downsides come because our bodies — and those of many animals, plants and even bacteria — are intricately linked to the day-night cycle, explains Carrie Partch, a scientist who studies circadian rhythm at the University of California, Santa Cruz.
March 10, 2025 - Mercury News
UC teams with Bay Area tech company for new lab that hopes to make AI work for artists

The UC Santa Arts Division launched a new lab, A4, last fall focused on combining AI and the arts. A4 opened with a summit featuring arts professors and notable Arts Division alumni including Kevin Nolting, a producer for Pixar. The lab will create new opportunities to breach the gap between arts and tech as the two become increasingly intertwined.
March 05, 2025 - Santa Cruz Sentinel
UCSC’s annual student-run dance production beautifully answers ‘The Calling’

Random with a Purpose, the annual student run dance show received a stunning review for it’s dedication to art and performance. Student director Emily Pflieger decided to follow the theme of “The Calling” inspired by her love for dance, and her call to be a part of the dance world. Writer Jake Thomas raves that the show is “a passionate and energetic celebration of creative inspiration.”
February 28, 2025 - 7X7
Spring Arts 2025: Ruth Asawa, Colman Domingo, Bay Area Dance Week + More

Professor Sir Isaac Julien’s recent work was highlighted as part of a list of best art shows to visit. I Dream a World at the de Young Museum opens on April 12, and is a retrospective on American history and race.

February

February 28, 2025 - Scientific American
Why You Can’t Get That Song Out of Your Head

Scientific American spoke with UC Santa Cruz Psychology Professor Nick Davidenko and Ph.D. student Matt Evans about “earworms,” the types of songs that get stuck in your head and play automatically on a loop. Davidenko and Evans have studied earworms together, finding that when people sing out their earworms, they have a remarkable ability to perfectly match the pitch of the original songs they were based upon.
February 26, 2025 - Lookout Santa Cruz
This week in Santa Cruz County business

Lookout Santa Cruz's weekly roundup of business news shared findings from a report by UC Santa Cruz's Center for Labor and Community, which showed that 44% of Santa Cruz County workers, students and residents between the age of 18 and 34 said they’d be interested in joining a union.
February 24, 2025 - KQED
Dr. Nia Imara’s ‘Painting The Cosmos’ Underscores the Connections in Everything

Raised in Oakland, Imara is a graduate of UC Berkeley’s Department of Astronomy and a professor at UC Santa Cruz. In her book, another quote from Mae Jemison speaks directly to the author’s personal story: “Science provides an understanding of a universal experience. Art provides a universal understanding of personal experience.” Additional coverage by ABC News, CBS News, Science Magazine, and KTVU.
February 28, 2025 - NPR
Residents near a fire at a California lithium battery plant worry about their health

Don Smith is a professor of environmental toxicology at the University of California, Santa Cruz. He says the state and San Jose test results look contradictory for a couple reasons. They sampled different locations, and San Jose state researchers only analyzed the topmost layer of soil. Some of the state tests included deeper samples, which, Smith says, could result in diluted levels of metals. He says people are right to want more clarity. Additional coverage in KAZU.
February 27, 2025 - Earth.com
How cosmic rays from a supernova explosion impacted Earth and changed history

The star’s explosion released intense ionizing cosmic radiation which, based on modeling predictions, could have collided with the Earth’s surface for roughly 100,000 years. “It’s really cool to find ways in which these super distant things could impact our lives or the planet’s habitability,” said lead author Caitlyn Nojiri from UC Santa Cruz. Additional coverage in Live Science and Forbes.
February 26, 2025 - Popular Mechanics
A 'Third State' Exists Between Life and Death—And That Suggests Your Cells Are Conscious, Some Scientists Say

A growing number of new studies have found that, at least for some cells, death isn’t the end, but the beginning of something wholly unexpected. "This is nothing new,” said University of California, Santa Cruz plant biologist Lincoln Taiz.
February 26, 2025 - Santa Cruz Sentinel
UC Santa Cruz Theater Arts’ ‘Paradise Blue’ delivers potent vision of Detroit

This stunning review of the African American Theater Arts Troupe’s production of Paradise Blue puts special emphasis on Professor Don Williams powerful directorial skills. Writer Jake Thomas says “This is a powerful play full of emotional arcs and sparking with the electricity of music, lust and murder.”
February 24, 2024 - Yahoo News
that the restoration of this ocean feature could protect thousands of lives: 'We level the playing field'

"Our modeling is a major advance in characterizing the effectiveness of nature-based infrastructure for coastal protection. The approach can also be applied to other ecosystems, such as beaches, marshes, oyster reefs, and mangrove forests," said Borja Reguero, who led the research at UC Santa Cruz.
February 23, 2025 - WIRED
The strange relationship between the evolutionary boom in an African lake and the explosion of a supernova

Evidence of cosmic radiation debris arriving at the same time that a virus community in Africa was boosted. Scientists at the University of California, Santa Cruz think the two factors are linked. They believe the radiation was likely powerful enough to break the double-stranded DNA of organisms, thereby driving mutations and diversifying species.
February 20, 2025 - Grist
Droughts are getting worse. Is fog-farming a fix?

Peter Weiss, an atmospheric chemist at the University of California, Santa Cruz, has been installing them in Pacifica, just south of San Francisco. In the summertime, fog can provide enough water to sustain a home's established plants without turning on the hose.
February 18, 2025 - Earth.com
Photos capture coyotes hunting and eating baby seals for the first time

Motion-triggered cameras have captured these wild canines dragging baby seals away from mainland beaches. This discovery has sparked questions about how these predators use the shore as part of their menu. Led by UC Santa Cruz Ph.D. student Frankie Gerraty, the investigation uncovered details of coyote hunting patterns near seal rookeries. Also in USA Today, Daily Mail, and SF Gate.
February 25, 2025 - The Intercept
Title 42 Isn’t About Public Health — It’s About Keeping Immigrants Out

Associate Professor of Sociology Juan Pedroza says erroneously linking immigrant communities to the spread of infectious diseases has been a common anti-immigration strategy throughout U.S. History. “You can find in the United States plenty of evidence of people saying that immigrants are bringing disease and will be contaminating the nation, including public health,” he said.
February 21, 2025 - KION
Closing out Black History Month, one UCSC study shows some disparities

For Black History Month, KION covered a study out of UCSC's Institute for Social Transformation that highlights the ongoing disparity faced by black communities living in the Monterey and San Benito counties. The study considered issues like educational attainment, poverty levels, and access to health care.
February 23, 2025 - Santa Cruz Sentinel
UC Santa Cruz Ph.D. candidate writes environmental children’s book

Brook Thompson, a Ph.D. student in environmental studies at UC Santa Cruz, shared some of her life experiences in her new children’s book, “I Love Salmon and Lampreys: A Native Story of Resilience,” which will be published March 4.
February 19, 2025 - Financial Express
Beyond staying the course

In this op-ed, Nirvikar Singh, a distinguished professor of economics at the University of California, Santa Cruz, argues that many policies available to the Centre (and potentially states), none radical, can even lead to faster growth in the short run while India’s demographics are still favorable.
February 20, 2025 - Geographical
Strontium: the metal with remarkable powers to help track ancestral roots

A new strontium isotope map of Sub-Saharan Africa developed by Anthropology Professor Vicky Oelze could help descendants of the transatlantic slave trade to finally trace their roots. So far, the map has been used to precisely trace the origins of two people found in the Anson Street African Burial Ground: Kuto and Banza (both named by the Charleston community), who were both brought to the US from western Angola.
February 18, 2025 - POLITICO
What's Next for Lithium Valley

Politico’s California climate reporter Blanca Begert hosted a panel discussion with Chris Benner of the University of California, Santa Cruz, and Manuel Pastor of the University of Southern California, two experts with a new book out about the Salton Sea region. The event was on Feb. 19 at 12pm at the UC Student and Policy Center.
February 16, 2025 - Washington Post
Under Trump, NASA meetings are on hold and missions are up in the air

“Our immensely successful research enterprise is under attack,” said Garth Illingworth, an astrophysicist at the University of California, Santa Cruz and one of the scientists who decades ago conceived of the James Webb Space Telescope.
February 14, 2025 - ECO Magazine
Study Finds Important Marine Species Vulnerable to Changing Climate

Dungeness crab, Pacific herring, and red abalone are among the marine species most vulnerable to the changing climate's effect on California's coastal waters, a new study led by Timothy Frawley, an assistant project scientist at UC Santa Cruz’s Institute of Marine Sciences, finds.
February 13, 2025 - ABC News
How marine biologists are using elephant seals as nature's 'artificial intelligence'

Marine biologists at the University of California, Santa Cruz, led by Roxanne Beltran, have tagged thousands of northern elephant seals with smart sensors that can measure anything from physical environmental characteristics – like temperature of air or water – the salinity of the ocean, location and how deep the seals are diving, according to a paper published in Science on Thursday. Additional coverage in Atlas Obscura, Earth.com, Monga Bay, and Eco Magazine.
February 19, 2025 - Santa Cruz Sentinel
UC Santa Cruz’s eXperimental Theater gives ‘The Comedy of Errors’ new energy

UC Santa Cruz’s production of Shakespeare’s Comedy of Errors received a rave review highlighting its brilliance and humor. Special commendations were given to director and Professor in the Department of Performance, Play and Design Patty Gallagher, who is a Shakespeare expert.
February 12, 2025 - The Washington Post
We thought these places were useless. They may help save the world.

Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies Scott Winton explained how the soggy, anoxic environment of peatlands make them ideal for sequestering carbon from organic matter. “Those organisms that would break down organic matter and decompose it and recycle it back into nutrients and CO2, they can’t work efficiently. And so the organic matter tends to pile up.”
February 12, 2025 - Santa Cruz Sentinel
Photos | UC Santa Cruz team prepares for premier of Shakespeare’s ‘The Comedy of Errors’

This inside look at UC Santa Cruz’s upcoming performance of Comedy of Errors gives audiences a behind the scenes look at the production. These pictures give a look into the production during their dress rehearsal.
February 12, 2025 - Santa Cruz Sentinel
UC Santa Cruz brings Shakespearean comedy to the stage

UC Santa Cruz is bringing back its love for Shakespeare. For several decades the university staged the Bard’s productions every summer until losing funding. The upcoming production of Comedy of Errors will rejuvenate student and audience passions for plays.
February 08, 2025 - Fresno Bee
Debunking myths perpetuated by Donald Trump about undocumented immigrants

Lucinda Pease-Alvarez, a professor emerita of education at UC Santa Cruz who has worked extensively with immigrant children and their families, co-authored this op-ed debunking a variety of myths the current president relies on when targeting undocumented immigrants.
February 07, 2025 - Lookout Santa Cruz
UC Santa Cruz report details socioeconomic challenges for Black populations in Monterey, San Benito counties

Compared to other racial groups, Black residents of Monterey and San Benito counties face higher rent burdens, higher incarceration rates and lower levels of education, among other findings, according to a report published last month by UC Santa Cruz researchers. The researchers, Professor Chris Benner and Gabriella Alvarez, say this report underlines the need for implementing programs and policies that improve the social and economic well-being of Black residents of the Central Coast.
February 07, 2025 - Nature
Pinpointing the origins of people taken from Africa for the slave trade

Anthropology Professor Vicky Oelze explained that, in the past, archaeologists who worked on ‘slave cemeteries’ in the African Diaspora could only use isotope ratios and genetic analysis to identify that an individual must have been born and raised somewhere on the African continent. “Now, with strontium isotopes being mapped for most of sub-Saharan Africa, we can move away from 'somewhere in Africa' and make more specific calculations of probability where a given ancestor from the African diaspora might have been kidnapped from,” she says.
February 03, 2025 - Science News
An African strontium map sheds light on the origins of enslaved people

Anthropology Professor Vicky Oelze and colleagues spent more than a decade amassing nearly 900 environmental samples from 24 African countries and combined those measurements with other published data to create a strontium map of sub-Saharan Africa and have demonstrated how it can be used to shed light on the transatlantic slave trade.
February 09, 2025 - The Independent
Scientists have some novel ideas to save the ice caps. Here are the most out-of-box suggestions

While theories are abundant in glacial engineering, making them a reality would prove difficult. It would take decades to make the necessary measurements to understand what it would actually take to perform such interventions, Slawek Tulaczyk, a glaciologist at UC Santa Cruz, pointed out.
February 06, 2025 - Live Science
'Impossible' black holes detected by James Webb telescope may finally have an explanation - if this ultra-rare form of matter exists

"The dark matter self-interaction is a necessary component because the dark matter particles need a way to scatter off one another, much stronger than just gravitational interactions," said study co-author Grant Roberts, a doctoral student at the University of California, Santa Cruz. "This scatter causes the dark matter to bunch up in the very inner central regions of the galaxy, which allows them to collapse into supermassive black hole seeds."
February 05, 2025 - Science
Trump orders cause chaos at science agencies

“Our country is hobbling ourselves by canceling these programs,” says cell biologist Needhi Bhalla of the University of California, Santa Cruz. These undergraduates, graduate students, and postdocs “bring important, unique, and novel insights and breadth to solving challenging, scientific problems,” she adds.
February 06, 2025 - STAT
Researchers 'stunned' after HHMI abruptly cancels program to make science more inclusive

The Howard Hughes Medical Institute, the nation’s largest private funder of biomedical research, this week abruptly ended a $60 million program aimed at improving the retention of a diverse student body in undergraduate science and engineering programs. “There is a chance for layoffs to occur at the end of this calendar year. If the university can’t find some cash to support staff members, that’s a concern” said Grant Hartzog, a molecular biologist at the University of California, Santa Cruz.
February 06, 2025 - KSBW
UC Santa Cruz alumna wins Grammy for ‘Best Folk Album’ again

Gillian Welch, along with her partner David Rawlings, won for their album “Woodland” at the 67th Annual Grammy Awards on Feb. The album is a blend of Appalachian folk, bluegrass, and Americana.