Baskin Engineering at UC Santa Cruz

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Baskin Engineering at UC Santa Cruz

Elevating the world through bold and socially responsible innovation. A page for students, faculty, staff, and friends.

06/01/2026

What happens when a surfer studies applied mathematics at UC Santa Cruz? 🌊 Meet Rebecca Benjamin, a master's student in scientific computing and applied mathematics who is applying computational fluid dynamics to study how subtle differences in surfboard shape affect performance in the water.

“At Baskin Engineering, I found a smaller applied mathematics department with a collaborative culture, where faculty and students support interdisciplinary and unconventional projects,” Rebecca said.

“This environment helped me bring an unusual research idea—one explored by only a small number of researchers worldwide—into an academic setting and receive meaningful support.”

Rebecca is advised by Adjunct Professor of Applied Mathematics Frank Giraldo and Professor of Applied Mathematics Nic Brummell.

🎓 After graduating this year, she plans to pursue a Ph.D. in applied mathematics at UC Santa Cruz, working with Assistant Professor of Applied Mathematics Nilah Ioannidis on machine learning and genome sequencing to study rare diseases.

Learn more at the link in comments. ⬇️

05/21/2026

Where did life on Earth begin? Professor Emeritus of Biomolecular Engineering David Deamer and BME Research Associate Bruce Damer guest edited a new special issue of Astrobiology, “An Origin of Life on Land,” exploring growing evidence that life may have emerged across networks of terrestrial environments on early Earth billions of years ago.

“In this new view, perhaps an entire landscape might be implicated in life’s beginning,” Damer said.

🔎 The collection explores how the origins of life may have come about in volcanic landscapes, freshwater hydrothermal systems like geyser-fed hot springs, evaporative environments, crater and soda lakes, and other concentrating freshwater environments.

Learn more with the link in comments. 🔗

Image credit: Siegfried Poepperl / Pexel

05/15/2026

We are celebrating major strides in innovation at UC Santa Cruz! 🎉

🧬 Congratulations to Richard (Ed) Green, professor of biomolecular engineering, who received a UC Santa Cruz Lifetime Achievement Award recognizing a career defined by groundbreaking advances in genomics and computational biology, and for translating fundamental science into lasting societal impact. Methods developed in his lab have been widely applied, licensed, and commercialized across biotechnology, forensics, and genomics—and his technology has served as the foundation for three regionally based startups.

🧠 Another breakthrough innovation, NeuroSWARM3, received the Translation of the Year Award. Developed by the Yanik Lab led by Associate Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering Ali A Yanik, NeuroSWARM3 is a neurophotonic technology enabling wireless, minimally invasive monitoring of brain activity at unprecedented scale and resolution. Over the past year, the innovation has made significant progress toward real-world application and commercialization.

Join us in congratulating Ed Green and Ali A Yanik! Link in comments to learn more. 🔗

Image left to Right: Mike Beck, Richard (Ed) Green, Chancellor Cynthia Larive, Bud Colligan, and Ali Yanik.

05/11/2026

Hype yourself up in the mirror. Make your fingers walk around on something. Create a ritual. 👉 People are tasked to carry out these actions in a new extended reality (XR) experience called “Body Proxy”—because they are uniquely human.

Body Proxy is a satirical, speculative fiction piece that follows the narrative of an company recruiting humans to carry out physical actions in the world.

Co-produced by UC Santa Cruz Assistant Teaching Professor of Computational Media Samantha Gorman, at her creative studio Tender Claws, the experience debuted at SXSW 2026 where it won the XR Experience Jury Award! 🎉

“When people are seeing and engaging with this installation, they become more aware of what is possible now,” Gorman said. “The time is here, and it is up to us how we want to shape what our presence is in the world in relation to AI. Things that seem far-futuristic are being done and decided now.”

Read more with the link in comments. 🔗

Image description: At the Flux Festival showing of Body Proxy, a participant performs a uniquely human task on behalf of a fictional AI company. Photo courtesy of Tender Claws.

05/05/2026

👏 Congratulations to Assistant Professor of Computer Science and Engineering Yuanchao Xu on receiving a National Science Foundation (NSF) CAREER Award—one of the organization’s most prestigious grants in support of early-career faculty.

With support from the award, Xu will develop protocols to improve the security and efficiency of the software and hardware that power complex data centers.

“Security of the public cloud is more important than ever before, as much of our digital life now depends on it. AI agents, chatbots, and AI-assisted collaboration platforms—all of those applications run on the public cloud,” Xu said.

“As we offload more of our tasks to the public cloud, security is more important than before to guarantee performance.”

🔗 Learn more with the link in comments.

📸 Image description: Baskin Engineering branded graphic with Yuanchao Xu's portrait photo and supporting text that says "National Science Foundation CAREER Award recipient! | Yuanchao Xu, Assistant Professor, Computer Science and Engineering."

04/22/2026

Congratulations to students and alumni who have been awarded the prestigious National Science Foundation (NSF) Graduate Research Fellowship!

For more than 75 years, the fellowship program has played a critical role in developing the talent pipeline that sustains U.S. leadership in science and engineering.

This year’s awardees from UC Santa Cruz include both current students and alumni continuing their studies at institutions across the country. We’re proud to celebrate our Baskin Engineering community:

Charles Ferguson (Ph.D., bioengineering)
Loni Halsted-Ruelas (B.S. '25, computer science)
Piper Mahn (B.S. '26, biomolecular)
Naomi Rehman (B.S. '25, computer engineering & computer science)
Noah Williams (Ph.D., biomolecular engineering & bioinformatics)
Fan “Sarah” Xia (B.S. '23, biomolecular engineering & bioinformatics)

Join us in congratulating these outstanding scholars!

🔗 Link in comments to read more.

04/15/2026

A new ranking shows UC Santa Cruz students are among the top coders in the country! 🎉

The campus made its debut on CodeSignal's 2026 University Report, a data-driven ranking of universities based on the demonstrated programming and software engineering skills of their graduates.

Built on tens of thousands of verified, proctored coding assessments, the ranking places UC Santa Cruz among the top 50 universities nationwide—and in the top 30 among public universities—for producing graduates with the skills today's top employers are hiring for.

“Our graduates are entering the workforce with the ability to translate strong technical skills into real-world contexts,” said Jim Whitehead, Associate Dean for the Undergraduate Experience at . “As AI transforms the software engineering landscape, proven career readiness is more crucial than ever.”

Link in comments to learn more.

04/02/2026

🤯 NVIDIA hackathon WINNER! 🏆 Congrats to UC Santa Cruz student Preet Karia (B.S. '28, robotics & computer science engineering) for placing first at the NVIDIA GTC 2026 Agents for Impact Hackathon!

Competing against ~300 participants, Preet built an -powered tool called Loomin that turns physics notes into 3D visualizations.

He also got the chance to speak with NVIDIA CEO and Co-Founder Jensen Huang!

“I think last week I made some of the best decisions of my life,” Preet said. “We spoke for a couple minutes, I was asking him a bunch of questions and he was giving me feedback. And as a student, he also wanted to learn my perspective of how I use NVIDIA’s technologies.”

Karia credits lab-based classes at Baskin Engineering, such as EC167 “Sensing and Sensor Technologies,” for imparting the value of using 3D renders as a learning tool.

Join us in congratulating Preet! 👏 Read more with the link in comments.

Image description: Preet Karia (left) with Jensen Huang.

04/01/2026

A faculty-student team—Assistant Professor of Biomolecular Engineering Vanessa Jonsson and Ph.D. student Divya Venkatraman—will pursue high-impact basic science research with support from the W. M. Keck Foundation’s Bridge Funding Initiative.

Jonsson and Venkatraman will build the Human Immunome Atlas, an open, interpretable resource for understanding the connection between the variability of a set of genes crucial to immune response—Human Leukocyte Antigen (HLA) genes—and the body’s ability to fight cancers and pathogens.

The initiative supports early- to mid-career faculty and their graduate students, helping sustain research during shifts in traditional funding.

Link in comments to learn more. 🔗

Address

1156 High Street
Santa Cruz, CA
95064

Telephone

+18314594877

Website

http://engineering.ucsc.edu/

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