Research
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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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Lick Observatory to mark 150 years of discovery and innovation
Serving nine UC campuses and two national laboratories, Lick Observatory continues to be at the forefront of groundbreaking discoveries and innovation, training the next generation of astronomers and astrophysicists.
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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.
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Brain cells are more plastic than previously thought, study shows
Using in-vitro models of a specific type of brain cell, scientists show that neurons are capable of changing from one type to another
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What psychology research says about virtual communication
As more companies and governments issue often unpopular return-to-office mandates, there’s still very little evidence about how remote work compares to in-person settings, especially when it comes to communication, which is the foundation of collaboration. Psychology researchers at UC Santa Cruz have been working to fill in the gaps by investigating the nuances of virtual…
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Scientists program stem cells to mimic first days of embryonic development
Their “programmable” embryo-like structures, also known as embryoids, can be used to study the role of certain genes in early development
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Workshop aims to create speech AI for all
Researchers are studying and seeking solutions to the technical and policy challenges of accessible speech AI