
Earth & Space
-

UC Santa Cruz awarded grant to promote and support open scholarship, engaged mentoring
UC Santa Cruz will launch a pioneering initiative to support and promote open science, open scholarship, and high-quality graduate student mentoring by developing guidelines to evaluate and recognize this important work.
-

UC Santa Cruz’s deep expertise with elephant seals vital to avian influenza monitoring
Well-trained students and scientists are the boots on the beach collecting the samples and observations needed to help a statewide collaboration of responders monitor the recent outbreak
-

An adventurous vulture’s plight
Disturbing increases in toxic lead exposure are linked to wider foraging by the critically endangered California condor and more wild pigs being shot throughout the state, masking positive effects of outreach and lead-ammo bans
-

Does sexual harassment behavior matter for ecosystems?
Intense harassment of females by male mosquitofish increases the ecosystem consequences of this highly invasive fish
-

First cases of highly pathogenic avian influenza in northern elephant seals confirmed in California
The outbreak marks the first cases of HPAI H5N1 in marine mammals in California and the first detection in northern elephant seals.
-

Ashesh Chattopadhyay wins Sloan Fellowship to build advanced AI for Earth-system modeling
Assistant Professor of Applied Mathematics Ashesh Chattopadhyay will build AI models to project extreme Earth-system events.
-

New study on avian malaria finds most of Hawaii’s birds contribute to deadly pathogen’s transmission
Research led by UC Santa Cruz finds that both non-native and native birds play a key role in the transmission of a disease that has contributed to the extinction of over a dozen species of Hawaii’s native birds
-

Science Division awards honor staff and faculty for outstanding work and dedication
Alyssa Danielli, department manager in astronomy and astrophysics, and Carrie Partch, professor of chemistry and biochemistry, are the respective recipients of the division’s 2024-25 Outstanding Staff and Faculty Awards
-

Meet this historian of alien worlds
With equations and simulations, astronomer Ruth Murray-Clay is working to understand how distant planets form, evolve and could offer conditions to support life.
-

From Space to Soil, Alexie Leauthaud Bridges Cosmology and Environmentalism
UC Santa Cruz astronomer Alexie Leauthaud is bringing her cosmology expertise to climate action through Seed Spoon Science, a community-based gardening program focused on environmental justice and sustainability.
-

How quiet galaxies stay quiet: cool gas feeds black holes in ‘red geysers’
New paper led by UC Santa Cruz undergraduate suggests that long-dormant galaxies deemed to be dead may actually be stunted by the dynamics of supermassive black holes at their center
