UC Santa Cruz Science

At approximately 100,000 light years in diameter, the Milky Way's vastness and the broader, ever-changing dynamics of the cosmos defy any attempt to fully understand our home galaxy and its history. UC Santa Cruz astronomer Puragra "Raja" GuhaThakurta sums up this dilemma in more familiar and figurative terms: "We simply don’t have a selfie stick long enough to take those kinds of photos."

Read the full story: https://news.ucsc.edu/2024/08/rings-guhathakurta.html

Summer is the perfect time for scientific gatherings on campus. Earlier this month, we hosted about three dozen graduate students and postdocs from around the world, including India, Finland, Germany, and the UK, for a weeklong class exploring the fields of geometric inverse problems and inverse problems for elliptic equations.

These fields help us to understand and visualize things we can’t directly observe—like the internal structure of a body—through mathematical models. These methods and processes ultimately help develop practical tools that can have a real impact on health, technology, and other areas.

The attendees were introduced to new topics in the vicinity of their current research, while learning new mathematical tools and methods. The schedule also included discussions, community-building activities, and networking opportunities so people from different fields, cultures, and backgrounds could connect.

The course was organized by UC Santa Cruz math professor Francois Monard as part of his National Science Foundation (NSF) career grant, in conjunction with University of California, Irvine professor Katya Krupchyk and University of Washington professors Gabriel Paternain and Gunther Uhlmann.

Congratulations to all of the undergraduate students from and beyond who presented their summer research projects last Friday at the 15th annual Summer Research Symposium! It was a beautiful day in the redwoods and the excitement amongst the crowd was palpable. Thanks to everyone who came out to support our participants!

Meet Professor Jevgenij Raskatov in our Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry. One stream of his research is making molecular-level discoveries that aim to help drug makers produce better treatments for Alzheimer’s disease. The other stream is materials research that may one day lead to the creation of more durable and effective synthetic materials that would improve applications ranging from drug delivery and diapers to moisturizing lotion.

Read about how those streams have converged to create a ripple effect in his field and for his students UC Santa Cruz: https://magazine.ucsc.edu/2024/08/creating-a-ripple-in-the-chemistry-field/

Life beyond the redwoods: Meet Ozzy Bagno, who is pursuing his Ph.D. at one of the top medical schools in the country: Hopkins School of Medicine.

He graduated in 2023 and credits UC Santa Cruz's Molecular, Cell, and Developmental Biology Department—and our campus STEM Diversity programs—for giving him the tools necessary to pursue his goals.

"My classes were taught by awesome faculty who were always approachable and answered any of my questions about science and life,” he said. Ozzy will be the first in his family to earn a graduate degree.

Read the full article: https://news.ucsc.edu/2024/08/ozzy-bagno.html

What if there were a 23andMe for bears? Conservationists could use their DNA to figure out where a bear comes from, their genetic ancestry, and in the case of management, where they should be moved to help them thrive again.

professor Joanna Kelley is working on collecting 200 years’ worth of DNA samples of brown bears from the lower 48 U.S. states, where their numbers have dwindled from an estimated population of over 50,000, down to under 2,000 today.

Her research will characterize their genomic diversity over the past two centuries, how it has changed, and how (or if) management decisions have impacted the genomic landscape of the species. Her goal is to design conservation-action plans and investigate the consequences of past bottlenecks and long-term small population sizes. She will also recommend potential future management actions using genomic tools.

This research is one of 10 projects receiving a total of $16 million in funding under the Partnership to Advance Conservation Science and Practice program, a first-of-its-kind collaboration between the NSF and the Paul G. Allen Family Foundation.

Photo by Aditya Datta

This Friday, August 23rd, undergraduate scholars will showcase their summer research projects and share their findings with the UC Santa Cruz community at the 15th annual STEM Diversity Research Symposium!

Presenters include students from as well as from sister campuses who came to UCSC for summer experiences in undergraduate research. The research being presented spans a broad array of disciplines, from bioengineering, physical sciences, biological and environmental sciences.

We hope you will stop by Red Square on Science Hill from 11am - 1pm this Friday and check it out!

(Photos from the 2022 summer symposium)

Fun in the sun and learning too! marine ecology students out in the field with Professor Mark Carr in Monterey, CA. A team of undergrad students help grad students in research working towards a better understanding of the structure and dynamics of populations and communities of nearshore marine organisms and their ecosystems.

Check out Professor Carr’s lab of ecologists and evolutionary biologists and all of the amazing research and work they are doing:

Howard Hughes Medical Institute - HHMI has named UC Santa Cruz chemist Carrie Partch, a 2024 HHMI Investigator.

A professor of chemistry and biochemistry, Partch was selected for her leading research in circadian rhythms and the molecular basis of circadian timekeeping. Her lab aims to build on this understanding of biological clocks in order to improve human health and wellbeing on Earth and beyond.

Partch, along with 25 others, will join HHMI’s community of over 250 Investigators in pursuit of groundbreaking research, with HHMI investing more than $300 million in this newest cohort over the next seven years to enable each Investigator to push the boundaries of science.

Check out the full article: https://news.ucsc.edu/2024/07/partch-hhmi-investigator.html

Join us virtually on Monday, July 8, from 6:30pm to 8pm to learn about how the at catalyzes local climate action in the Monterey Bay area and how a blue whale skeleton is becoming the headline act for the work! 🌊 🐋 ➡️ register at the link in our bio

“We live in a world full of barriers and frontiers, countries, states, religions, ethnicities. We are used to thinking in terms of us, and them. Imagine a world without these barriers—sin fronteras—where we embrace our humanity and acknowledge every human being as our sibling. Wouldn’t that drastically improve this world? Wouldn’t that alleviate the suffering of billions of people across our planet, and the constant cycle of hate and war and bring peace to the world?”

~ César Rojas-Bravo, astronomy Ph.D. candidate at UC Santa Cruz, on how the cosmos connects humanity. His was the closing talk at on on April 13. Watch now and hear this much-needed message: https://youtu.be/uYjkTU4SYxk?feature=shared

With June being Alzheimer's & Brain Awareness Month, we thought we'd share a few neuro-images from Professor Yi Zuo in the Molecular, Cell, & Developmental Biology Department at UC Santa Cruz. The first is of dendritic spines of neurons in the visual cortex of a living mouse.

The second photo is of participants from this year's Advanced Techniques in Neuroimaging Workshop, held at UCSC in April and co-hosted by Stanford University's Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute. This one-of-a-kind workshop combines lectures on modern microscopy by world-class experts with experiments demonstrating the latest techniques.

Neuroimaging is essential for monitoring disease progression, evaluating treatment effectiveness, and detecting potential complications. Patients experience suboptimal care and outcomes without access to these critical technologies.

UC Santa Cruz will be rooting for our very own Natalie Pedicino in the thesis throw-down tomorrow against Ph.D. students from across the UC system. Be sure to watch the livestream if you can't attend the event in person.

Learn more about Natalie and where you can catch the contest from the comfort of our beautiful campus 🌲🌲 https://news.ucsc.edu/2024/04/grad-slam-pedicino.html

We've got AAAS Fellows! Three UC Santa Cruz faculty members have been named 2023 fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), one of the world’s largest general scientific societies and publisher of the Science family of journals.

Diane Gifford-Gonzalez: Emerita distinguished research professor of anthropology recognized for distinguished contributions to the field of anthropological archaeology, particularly zooarchaeology as it relates to the origins and spread of pastoralism, and for professional leadership and undergraduate student mentoring.

Robert Irion: Long time journalist and emeritus director of UC Santa Cruz’s science communication master’s degree program recognized for distinguished contributions to the development of professional science writers, both in the academic setting and through professional societies, and for excellence in popular communication of astronomy.

Beth Shapiro: Acclaimed paleo-geneticist and professor of ecology and evolutionary biology recognized for distinguished contributions towards the understanding of how species and populations evolve, and for the ability to communicate science to the public.

Congrats to all! Read more: https://bit.ly/4aFwsjv

The eclipse may be done, but skygazing remains full of thrills and adventure. University of Washington's Emily Levesque will share the tales of astronomers who have braved blizzards and gunfire, to wild bears loose in an observatory.

Join us tomorrow at 7:30 p.m. at the Rio Theater for our seventh Mandel Lecture, "The Last Stargazers: True Stories and Adventures in Astronomy," presented by the UC Santa Cruz Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics and UC Observatories: https://calendar.ucsc.edu/event/mandel_lecture

🤯️ "Jaw-dropping" finding published in Science today shows certain chromosomes have telomere lengths that are consistently longer or shorter than others, shocking even Nobel Prize winner & telomere expert Carol Greider. Telomere length plays a role in longevity and cancer.

Prior scientific consensus held that human chromosomes in healthy individuals share the same average telomere length, but sequencing with Oxford Nanopore Technologies sequencing has allowed Greider and her team at UC Santa Cruz & Johns Hopkins Medicine to discover a wide variance conserved across individuals. https://news.ucsc.edu/2024/04/telomere-lengths.html

Earlier this month, nine UC Santa Cruz students traveled to UCLA to attend UC Global Health Day, an event that showcases global-health research and education across the University of California system and beyond.

The students, in addition to one faculty member and a couple staff, attended the event to learn, network, and represent the UCSC Global & Community Health program, which was launched in Summer 2022 and began offering B.A. and B.S. degrees that fall.

“UC Global Health Day really locked me into what I want to do with my future. I was so inspired by all of the talks and meeting so many people doing this research,” said Jamie Gonzales, a student in the Global & Community Health program at UC Santa Cruz. “It's also true that global health has so much doomism. But this event brings so many people together to inspire hope.”

Heather Gardner, managing director of the program, reflected that the event showed how inclusive the broader public-health community is.

“Our goal is to prepare our students so that they are trained in a way that is holistic enough to meet the needs of their career pathway, coupled with a critical understanding that health is anchored in social determinants like housing and issues of racism,” Gardner said. “Health equity is at the center of the program.”

Learn more about UCSC’s Global & Community Health program at https://gch.ucsc.edu/

March is Hummingbird Month at the Arboretum! 🌺

The Arboretum & Botanic Garden is a largely self-supporting unit of UC Santa Cruz located on the west side of the UCSC campus.

This time of year, the Arboretum hosts a huge number of hummingbirds. “You can watch them feeding on flowers, you can watch their courtship, you can watch them chasing different species. It’s a great opportunity to see some pretty amazing hummingbird biology,” says Bruce Lyon, professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology.

Check out the Arboretum’s website for their calendar of activities, including photographer tips for photographing hummingbirds, docent-led bird walk, and natural history talk by UCSC faculty.

Hummingbird Month This time of year the Arboretum hosts both Anna’s and Allen’s hummingbirds, the two most common species in Northern California. “The density of hummingbirds—the number per area in the Arboretum—is ridiculously high,” says Bruce Lyon, professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at UCSC...

Congratulations to Roxanne Beltran & Jacqueline Kimmey— two UC Santa Cruz professors who were recently awarded Sloan Research Fellowships, one of the most prestigious honors bestowed on early-career scientists! This honor, given with the intention to improve the welfare of all through the advancement of scientific knowledge, is awarded based on a candidate’s research accomplishments, creativity, and potential to become a leader in their field.

This award will allow them to delve into new areas of research in their respective fields of marine ecology and microbiology. Join us in giving them a round of applause, and read more here:

Two UC Santa Cruz scientists named 2024 Sloan Research Fellows Assistant Professors Roxanne Beltran and Jacqueline Kimmey have been awarded Sloan Research Fellowships, one of the most prestigious honors bestowed on early-career scientists, each receiving $75,000 to delve into new areas of research in their respective fields of marine ecology and microbiology.

Save the date for the 2024 UC Santa Cruz Sinsheimer Lecture: "Escape from the Planet of the Cows". Patrick Brown, MD, PhD will speak at the Rio Theatre in Santa Cruz on March 14.

In 2010, Pat dedicated his focus on the roots of climate change and founded Impossible Foods to replace beef as a major carbon emitter on earth.

This event is free, and seating will be on a first-come first-served basis. More info:

2024 Sinsheimer Lecture: Escape from the Planet of the Cows Patrick O. Brown, MD, PhD is Professor emeritus at Stanford and founder of Impossible Foods. Pat received his BA, MD and PhD at the University of Chicago. He was a postdoctoral fellow at University of California San Francisco with Drs. Michael Bishop and Harold Varmus. As a Professor at Stanford, Pa...

Follow the quest to recover DNA from millions of years ago with UC Santa Cruz ecology & evolutionary biology professor, Beth Shapiro. Tune into the PBS premiere of “Hunt for the Oldest DNA” on NOVA l PBS on February 21 at 6PM PST! Watch the trailer and find streaming and broadcast information here: https://to.pbs.org/49zmjUA

Congratulations to UC Santa Cruz distinguished professor of physics emeritus Joel R. Primack who has been awarded the prestigious 2024 Philip Hauge Abelson Prize from the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

The 2024 AAAS Abelson Prize not only celebrates a lifetime of achievements but also acknowledges Joel Primack's indelible mark on astrophysics, science policy, and the enduring spirit of scientific inquiry.

Primack is one of the main architects of the modern theory of the universe, Cold Dark Matter. His research has provided profound insights into the formation and distribution of galaxies, revolutionizing our comprehension of the large-scale Universe.

Three cheers for Professor Primack!

https://bit.ly/49qkuJC

Are you curious about the habitat, flora and fauna along the Santa Cruz coast? 🌼 Join a free public tour at the Younger Lagoon Reserve to learn about diverse coastal habitats in one of the few relatively undisturbed wetlands remaining on the California Central Coast. Space is limited. Reserve your spot today: https://seymourcenter.ucsc.edu/visit/younger-lagoon-tours/

Five years ago, Anne Kapuscinski and a forward-thinking group of other UC Santa Cruz faculty envisioned a new opportunity to train rising leaders in coastal conservation and climate solutions. 🌊 The Coastal Science and Policy graduate program soon emerged, and since then, has prepared six cohorts of students to identify, innovate, and implement scalable and socially just solutions to sustainability changes around the world. Learn more about the program and what's next:

Coastal Science & Policy Program celebrates five years at UC Santa Cruz Coastal Science and Policy Program Director Anne Kapuscinski reflects on the last five years and looks ahead to the future.

UC Santa Cruz professor and ecologist, Ari Friedlaender, will be featured in an upcoming CNN program, "What Whales Tell Us." The episode premieres on Sunday, February 4 at 8pm ET/PT. More info, including the trailer, can be found here: https://cnnpressroom.blogs.cnn.com/2024/01/29/cnns-bill-weir-reports-from-antarctica-in-what-whales-tell-us-for-the-whole-story-with-anderson-cooper/

Today, the first pup of the 2024 breeding season was born! The mother is a flipper-tagged seal GA402 (who was born at Año Nuevo Reserve in 2014). Despite her age, she has only raised one previous pup to weaning age (about 1 month). Data from seals like her help us understand the variation across individuals within the population - something we can't do easily in most other marine mammals.

Photo credit: G.Shipway

Año Nuevo State Park, UC Santa Cruz Science, University of California Natural Reserve System, UC Santa Cruz

Cal Teach Santa Cruz will co-host the STEM Education Central Coast Conference on February 3 in Monterey. Teachers and teachers-in-training from across the region will gather to share strategies for student success, facilitate community-building among educators, and exchange ideas on science topics to help engage students. The event is also part of a broader effort to recruit and train STEM teachers in California. Students from UC Santa Cruz and other colleges who are interested in teaching will also participate in order to connect with the local STEM education community and learn more about the challenges and rewards that come with the career.

STEM Education Central Coast Conference connects teachers with each other and a wealth of local resources UC Santa Cruz faculty and staff helped to organize an upcoming conference that will share strategies for student success in STEM and connect teachers from 11 local school districts and offices of education with more than 20 local organizations to exchange ideas on region-specific science topics to e...