🏆 Baskin Engineers made a HUGE splash at CruzHacks 2026, winning in sustainability, justice, and education projects! The event offers students the opportunity to design, build, and present original technology “hacks” for prizes equivalent to $500. Learn more about the projects: bit.ly/4aCET1c

🏆 Congrats to #BaskinEngineering alumna Saumya Bhatnagar (M.S. Computer Science), named a Top 50 Woman Chief Product Officer of 2026! She’s also a Forbes 30 Under 30 alum and one of IBM’s Top 100 Women in Tech. bit.ly/4qpRKs9

“...better and safer bike lanes, pedestrian options, trains, metro systems and the like," said Anne Criss, director of climate & sustainability initiatives at #BaskinEngineering. "There’s a lot that governments can do, both at federal, state and local levels, to facilitate that.” bit.ly/4kmkQYh

New research led by #BaskinEngineering faculty Alvaro Cardenas and Cihang Xie presents the first academic exploration of environmental indirect prompt injection attacks against embodied #AI systems. Read the full story: bit.ly/3YYAoaN #ArtificialIntelligence #Cybersecurity

🌪️⛈️ Weather #forecasting is computationally demanding—that's why #BaskinEngineering Assistant Professor @ashesh6810.bsky.social aims to use #AI to predict extreme weather using a fraction of the time, energy, and #computing power of today’s methods. Via @uofcalifornia.bsky.social: bit.ly/3ZrNDAU

Artificial intelligence is beginning to have serious real-world impact on a global scale. That’s why #BaskinEngineering experts are developing innovative solutions to steer #AI in the right direction. Learn about their work: bit.ly/4qQ6Vf1 #StandUpForUC @uofcalifornia.bsky.social

🎉 Congrats to #BaskinEngineering professors Holger Schmidt, David Deamer, Marcella Gomez, and alum & current Ph.D. student Ash Robbins, who were named "Titans" by SantaCruzWorks - recognizing their impact on our region’s technology, innovation, and entrepreneurship ecosystem. bit.ly/4jQ9DyP

📣 Mark your calendars! Join #BaskinEngineering Assistant Professor of Applied Mathematics @javigr.bsky.social for his @ucsantacruz.bsky.social KRAW Lecture ➡️ Sensing the Unseen: How Drones and Ground Sensors Reveal the Hidden Air Quality Impacts of Climate Change. 🗓️ Jan 21. Register: bit.ly/49FAlWj

“The folks contributing the least to climate change are the ones bearing the most of the brunt,” said #BaskinEngineering Professor @javigr.bsky.social, who is using drones to help empower farmworker communities impacted by air pollution. Via @mercurynews.com: bayareane.ws/49hZtSM

We made the top 6 @spectrum.ieee.org stories of 2025! Featuring #BaskinEngineering Professor Katia Obraczka's Pulse-Fi technology - which uses low cost WiFi devices to detect heart rate.💡 bit.ly/4jxj8D6

In his latest book, @baskinengineering.bsky.social Professor of Computational Media Noah Wardrip-Fruin explores why Animal Crossing: New Horizons became the comfort game of 2020, and what it revealed about comfort, community, care, and capitalism: https://bit.ly/4q4ck1J

Congratulations to #BaskinEngineering faculty David Deamer and David Haussler, who have been named Fellows of the National Academy of Inventors—the highest professional distinction awarded to academic inventors! Read more about their decades of impact: bit.ly/4aJCBxK @ucsantacruz.bsky.social

Genomics #postdocs: applications are open for our Next Wave of Faculty in Genomics Symposium (due Jan 15)!. Come share your science in Santa Cruz, home of redwoods, ocean views, and the world’s most unbothered mascot:🐌🌲🌊. Link: genomics.ucsc.edu/calendar_eve... @baskinengineering.bsky.social

Mentioned by @forbes.com! 50 student innovators at @ucsantacruz.bsky.social spent two days developing #AI powered solutions for wildfire mitigation and climate resilience at the “Reboot the Earth” hackathon co-hosted by the United Nations and #BaskinEngineering. bit.ly/4rE8iyt

New research led by #BaskinEngineering Prof @talsharf.bsky.social suggests the brain might be preloaded with a kind of internal template for reading the world, even before the world reaches us - via @discovermag.bsky.social bit.ly/4rFJMx8

Congrats to the 2025 @ucsantacruz.bsky.social iGEM team for placing 2nd at this year's iGEM competition!🥈 The team of #BaskinEngineering undergraduates developed a novel, accessible method for removing aflatoxin B1—a common microtoxin—found in fruits, nuts, rice and grains. Read on: bit.ly/4pmdjdH

🧠 Are we born with built-in instructions for navigating the world? #BaskinEngineering Prof Tal Sharf found that early brain activity occurs in structured patterns before outside input—suggesting our brains are preconfigured with instructions for understanding the world! 🤯 Read on: bit.ly/3K8dr19

Inspiring Change: Help us invest in expanding life-changing educational opportunities and advance world-changing ideas and solutions that benefit all of us💫

In a new opinion piece, #BaskinEngineering Dean Alexander Wolf highlights growing concerns about the U.S. government-university-industry ecosystem and calls on our community to come together and address the challenge. bit.ly/4i8gpyW

UC Santa Cruz was ranked the #1 public research university in the world for highly cited researchers over the past 10 years (2014-2024) by Clarivate.

Jenya Meydbray, a #BaskinEngineering alum, has spent two decades focused on how quality and reliability shape #solar commercialization. After founding Kiwa PVEL and holding roles at Cypress Creek Renewables and Nevados Engineering, he now serves as a vice president at Nextpower.⚡️ bit.ly/4p9Q6Ld

😷 Ever had a stomach bug? New #BaskinEngineering research brings us one step closer to stopping one of its viral causes! Prof Rebecca DuBois's lab revealed how human astroviruses—a cause of the stomach bug—bind to human cells, paving the way for future therapies and vaccines. bit.ly/3JfDrqY

Can lab-grown brain tissue learn like #AI? 🧠🤖 @ucscgenomics.bsky.social researchers led by #BaskinEngineering prof Tal Sharf will explore whether brain organoids can learn from experience, respond to feedback, and solve tasks in real time. bit.ly/4howct5

From @baskinengineering.bsky.social, ​​Arsema Moges (College Nine, technology and information management) is a product manager at Apple, and Ricardo Esquivel (John R. Lewis, computer science) is a software engineer at Microsoft.

👋 BIG news! We're collaborating with the United Nations to bring the “Reboot the Earth” hackathon to the West Coast for the first time! The event will gather aspiring developers to create open source technological solutions to address the climate crisis. 🌎 Learn more and get involved: bit.ly/3J8VrD3

Thank you to all who joined us for the #SFTechWeek event " #AI Frontier: Data, Agents & Robots” co-hosted by #BaskinEngineering GenAI Center! Major themes emerged during discussions including #cybersecurity, #verifiability, and #scalability. Learn more: bit.ly/4nLwNaB

🌊 Research led by #BaskinEngineering Assistant Professor of Applied Mathematics @ashesh6810.bsky.social shows that regional ocean dynamics in the Gulf of Mexico can be better emulated with #AI models—offering new possibilities for navigation and extreme weather monitoring. Read on: bit.ly/4n0AHvj

Exciting news! UC Santa Cruz has been named a National Center of Academic Excellence in Cyber Research by the U.S. National Security Agency. This recognition highlights #BaskinEngineering's research and educational contributions to advancing #cybersecurity. Read more: bit.ly/3VO9xN7

🏆 Our students made waves at the @acm.org SIGBED International Student Research Competition! Ph.D. student Morgan Masters won 1st in the grad category and Caden Jacobs [pictured] was runner-up in the undergraduate category. Both are co-advised by Profs Colleen Josephson and Steve McGuire.

🧠 Researchers at #BaskinEngineering have a developed an #AI - powered #seizure prediction method that improves performance by up to 44.8%—led by one of our computer science undergrads! #deeplearning Read more: bit.ly/4nPqO4Z

Join us in welcoming three new #BaskinEngineering faculty for the 2025–26 academic year! They bring expertise in #AI, #machinelearning, #security, computational biology, and more—helping to mentor the next generation of engineers and advance innovative research.

💡We hosted the 2025 conference on #Neurosymbolic Learning and Reasoning, the longest-standing gathering for the discussion of cutting-edge research in neurosymbolic #AI! “It is the first time the conference was held in the U.S. as a full conference rather than a workshop," said prof Leilani Gilpin.

A team of #BaskinEngineering researchers at @ucsantacruz.bsky.social is using #AI and #bioelectronics to speed up wound healing! Their #WearableTech device tracks healing stages and delivers personalized treatment—speeding healing by ~25% in preclinical trials! 🤯

💻🌱 Through the QB3 Biotech Summer Internship program, #BaskinEngineering CS student Levi Laden tested #AI + #VR tools at ImmergoLabs, and bioinformatics student Alice Gerchanovsky developed #DNA sampling methods at Ohalo—gaining hands-on industry experience! Read on: bit.ly/48AM35r

New + returning Slugs checked out all the amazing #BaskinEngineering clubs and orgs we have to offer. Excited to see how you'll make your mark this year! @ucsantacruz.bsky.social

💡New research from #BaskinEngineering explores how privacy of the surrounding space, dimensionality (2D vs. 3D), and dynamics (image vs. video) influence comfort with sharing and viewing augmented reality (AR) content on social media. bit.ly/48vtHCU

Alexander Wolf, Dean of #BaskinEngineering will moderate a discussion at the eighth annual US-India Conference about the emerging competition over AI standards, access to critical technologies, and regulatory influence.

The public can’t verify how data is handled by surveillance company Flock Safety, said #BaskinEngineering prof Ram Sundara Raman—raising concerns about encryption, AI training, internal oversight and potential for leaks. Via Santa Cruz Local: bit.ly/3VOr0Vt

Big step forward in #solarscience! 🔭☀️ #BaskinEngineering researchers created the first self-consistent model that can reproduce the mysterious tachocline layer of the Sun—which could help predict solar events that disrupt #powergrids and #satellites. bit.ly/461EMtX

👀 Check it out! New technique developed by #BaskinEngineering researchers uses WiFi to monitor heart rate!

Join us in congratulating #BaskinEngineering alumnus Aviv Elor, recipient of the UC Santa Cruz Outstanding Recent Alumni Award! As co-founder of Immergo Labs, Elor is revolutionizing physical rehabilitation through immersive virtual reality telehealth platforms.

Baskin Engineering is proud to drive real-world innovation that helps anchor @ucsantacruz.bsky.social as the leading institution in the Santa Cruz/Watsonville metro area—ranked Top 16 nationwide in research output! 🌟 Read more: bit.ly/45PbE95

UC Santa Cruz’s Pulse-Fi shows how cheap WiFi chips can measure heart rate with clinical accuracy, no wearables needed. Via Interesting Engineering: bit.ly/4g4Zz3f

New research from #BaskinEngineering shows that household WiFi devices can achieve clinical-level heart rate monitoring without the need for wearables. 🤯 The technique is highly accurate, and works with with low-cost WiFi devices—useful for low resource settings. Learn more: bit.ly/4p2yvpd

🎉 UC Santa Cruz was named in the top 15 alt-Ivies! “Already a longtime global leader in genomics and bioinformatics... the university now has one of the fastest growing engineering programs in the country," wrote Town & Country. bit.ly/41sWALX

Some countries are world-famous birdwatching destinations, while others with incredible biodiversity struggle to attract ecotourists. #BaskinEngineering Prof Luca de Alfaro teamed up with env. researchers to build statistical models to understand why: bit.ly/3JyYapm

"It can happen to Half Moon Bay,” says #BaskinEngineering prof Yu Zhang, stressing fire can still strike coastal communities. Moving power lines below ground is a long-term solution, but it can cost $2-5 million per mile of wire—not viable for PG&E’s budget from the taxpayers. bit.ly/45UByas

This week, Rep. Zoe Lofgren visited UC Santa Cruz to meet with students and researchers from UCSC Center for Agroecology to learn about the AgTech Alliance—a collab between #BaskinEngineering and social sciences to develop innovative technologies that support sustainable food production. 🌱

🚨 New from our group! A stable AI framework for high-res regional ocean modeling-- joint work with Fujitsu Research and NC State led by @baskinengineering.bsky.social PhD students Lenny and @moeindarman.bsky.social. Now out in JGR: Machine Learning & Computation 🌊🤖 🔗 doi.org/10.1029/2025JH000851 🧵

👏 And that's a wrap! The 2025 @ucsantacruz.bsky.social Contributor Catalyst program concluded this month, introducing a third cohort of students from Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) to #opensource software programming! Led by #BaskinEngieering postdoc Emily Lovell.