Research
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Research project shows how aquaculture, agriculture, and restoration can work together
UC Santa Cruz, Pie Ranch, and the Amah Mutsun Land Trust are collaborating to show how leftover water from aquaculture can be used to grow plants sustainably, including native varieties used for restoration efforts.
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Drought’s limited effect on tropical-tree growth—but hotter planet threatens that resilience
Researchers worldwide contribute to largest collection of tropical tree-ring data to date
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New research shows how immigration status can become a death sentence during public health crisis
A study looking back on COVID-19 deaths in California found that immigrants who were potentially undocumented experienced much higher relative excess mortality during the pandemic, revealing failures in both public health and immigration policy.
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Upasna Sharma wins McKnight Foundation neurobiology award to study how paternal stress impacts offspring health
Just four research projects nationwide won the 2025 award
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Horse teeth hold historical clues about military power and trade in Western Africa
Undergraduate Elyse Venerable won the Chancellor’s Award and Dean’s Award for her research using strontium isotope analysis to uncover the origins of Oyo Empire war horses.
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Innovative and artful rainwater harvesting nourishes gardens and hope
UC Santa Cruz cosmologist leads widely interdisciplinary project funded by the Center for Coastal Climate Resilience to turn urban runoff into low-cost irrigation
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New book explores social impacts, public health lessons from Peru’s fight against AIDS
Assistant Professor Justin Perez’s latest book focuses on local engagement with HIV prevention efforts in Peru during the early 2010s. During this time period, as global health leaders began to envision an “end of AIDS,” the course of the epidemic in Peru took a turn for the worse.
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Planting seeds of change: Sheyna Burns reimagines agriculture practices
UCSC undergraduate researcher Sheyna Burns (Oakes ’26) is pioneering inclusive agricultural research and entrepreneurship through her campus-based Sankofa Sky Farm, developing a statewide food hub aimed at supporting more equitable farming, and more.
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Social psychologist explains historical progress and pitfalls in addressing anti-Black racism
New book applies seven decades of research on race relations and proposes a path forward
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Colombia’s peatlands could be a crucial tool to fight climate change. But first we have to find them.
Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies Scott Winton conducted three years of extensive fieldwork to develop the first data-driven map of both newly documented and predicted peatlands across Colombia’s eastern lowlands.
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Center for Labor and Community partners with regional union leaders on state-funded push to ensure workplace rights, safety, and benefits
UC Santa Cruz’s Center for Labor and Community will partner with the Monterey Bay Central Labor Council, AFL-CIO on a state grant to educate workers across the Central Coast in sectors like agriculture, hospitality, construction, manufacturing, and retail.
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New book explains the public health costs of prisons and policing
Assistant Professor Carlos Martinez’s latest co-edited book explores the public health impacts of punitive policing, incarceration, and deportation policies and describes how the abolitionist health justice movement is working toward a new, more just vision of “safety” that protects, rather than harms, the health and wellbeing of our society’s most vulnerable people.