New Announcements

Announcements

Baskin Engineering PhD Hooding Ceremony May 20, 2023

As part of the 25th anniversary celebration of the Baskin School of Engineering, you are invited to participate in a Baskin Engineering hooding ceremony on Saturday, May 20, 2023 at 1 pm, followed by a reception for your friends, family members, advisors, and Baskin graduate student alumni. The events will take place in the Baskin Engineering Auditorium and courtyard. 

Please complete this form by April 4 to indicate your participation on May 20. 

Note that the campus will host the usual commencement ceremonies in June. In addition to the May hooding ceremony, you are welcome to participate in the Graduate Division Slug Crossing on Saturday, June 17, 2023. More information is available on the UCSC Commencement website.

Spring 2023 University Deadlines

Please note the following upcoming university deadlines, and ALWAYS check the Academic and Administrative Calendar for important dates and deadlines. Bookmark this year's Academic and Administrative Calendar and refer to it regularly.

Winter 2023 University Deadlines

Please note the following upcoming university deadlines, and ALWAYS check the Academic and Administrative Calendar for important dates and deadlines. Bookmark this year's Academic and Administrative Calendar and refer to it regularly.

Time Management Workshop

Scheduling demands, prep, and planning evolve as you progress through your graduate degree. It’s a challenge to manage coursework, TAing, exam preparations, and thesis considerations. There are strategies that can help you make the most of what time you have available, and support when it gets a bit much. Hear from other graduate students about how they prioritize responsibilities, respond to barriers and distractions, and the impact of burnout. 

This hybrid workshop provides graduate student attendees with tools and strategies for mapping their days, weeks, and quarters. Join us for coffee, snacks, and socializing as we debrief, commiserate, and look forward to the future. 

Coffee and snacks will be provided to in-person attendees. 

Click here to register. 

2024 UC-National Lab In-Residence Graduate Fellowship Opportunity Now Available

Key Dates
Program Information Sessions:
Tuesday, April 25, 9-10am Pacific Time (Register here)
Friday, April 27, 11am-12pm Pacific Time (Register here)

Letters of Intent (LOI) due: Thursday, June 1, 2023 at 12:00 noon Pacific Time
Full proposals due: Thursday, September 7, 2023 at 12:00 noon Pacific Time
Graduate Fellowship start date: April 1, 2024
 
You may contact us at UCRI@ucop.edu for additional guidance. Please check our website periodically for Program announcements throughout the application cycle:
http://ucop.edu/research-initiatives/programs/lab-fees/index.html
 
Thank you for your interest in this funding opportunity.

You’re invited! Graduate student career development survey

Are you an MS or PhD student in computer science?

You’re invited to join a research study on the career development of graduate students in computer science.

Take a 5-minute survey and enter into a drawing for one of three $50 gift cards.

Funding Opportunity - BE Fellowship for Anti-Racism Research

Overview

The Baskin School of Engineering is committed to advancing anti-racism in all that we do. The Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of African American History and Culture provides valuable resources and perspectives on anti-racism at the individual, interpersonal, institutional, and structural levels.

The Scholarship for Anti-Racism Research program was created to advance anti-racism research by supporting graduate student research at the intersection of engineering and social justice. Two awardees will each receive $6000 to support their work on an original project of their choice. Summaries of past research can be found here and additional example topics are provided at the end of this document. For additional questions, please contact Marcella Gomez (mgomez26@ucsc.edu), Associate Dean for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.

Eligibility and application instructions: 

Preference will be given to graduate students enrolled in a Baskin Engineering graduate program.  

Please submit a brief description of your proposed topic (no more than 500 words) outlining your research topic along with a statement describing how your background and current commitments will allow you to carry out the work. Finally, please include the name and email address of your designated mentor from the UCSC community. A letter from your mentor may also be provided but is not required. Applications are due by email to Marcella Gomez (mgomez26@ucsc.edu), Associate Dean for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion by May 15, 2023.  Selections will be made by June 1st and deliverables include a written report summarizing results. The project period within the academic year is flexible.

Example topics might include the following:

• An investigation of racism and/or bias inherent in some form of technology or one that explores tools to fight racism and bias through technology. 

• What algorithms are currently being used to uncover racial bias in the massive data sets used in machine learning? What companies and organizations are leading the way in these efforts and/or what kind of policy exists or should exist to expand the use of such algorithms?

• Certain technologies use sensors to determine the proximity of a human being (e.g., automatic faucets in public restrooms), and in some cases that technology works better for fair skin than it does for darker skin. How can those technologies be improved to be able to sense all human skin, not just certain skin tones?

• What efforts can game developers make to avoid propagating racist stereotypes in their games, and even help promote anti-racist themes?

• The Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act (GINA) of 2008 protects Americans from discrimination based on their genetic information in both health insurance (Title I) and employment (Title II). Are there ways in which GINA should be expanded to protect individuals from being the target of racist actions or systems?

2023 Graduate Student Survey

 The UC Santa Cruz Graduate Student Survey is now open and will run through Spring quarter!  IRAPS holds this survey every two years, and prepares reports with results for department self-study, including for academic program review, containing aggregate results and suggestions. Students can start the survey by going to: gradsurvey.ucsc.edu.

The survey is a way for graduate students campus-wide to give confidential feedback and suggestions on program curriculum, teaching, mentoring, resources, and climate.  This year's survey has multiple places to provide suggestions about academic training, campus services, student well-being, and work as a TA, GSR, or GSI.

Also, in appreciation of students' time and to increase interest in participating, there are drawings for gift cards ($25 to $200) accepted at many downtown Santa Cruz restaurants and shops, plus gift cards for other stores and online retailers.

Apply Now for Stanford Propel - Fellowship Program for Diverse Postdocs in the Biosciences

Call for Papers: UCLA Q Grad

UCLA QGrad

Conference 2023

New Coalitions

Call for Papers

Queerness is where we can expand, rather than limit, the spaces of possibility for self
and collective expression and engagement with the world.
- Dr. Sa’ed Atshan, Keynote Speaker

UCLA LGBT Studies’ 26th QGrad Conference is seeking graduate student papers that speak to the theme: “New Coalitions.” We hope that this year's conference will generate rich discussions about past, present, and future solidarities between queer and other social justice movements across the world. We wish to foster intellectual and activist commitments that are intersectional, global, and anti-imperialist, and we encourage submissions from all fields of study. Possible submission topics include, but are not limited to, past, emerging, and potential connections between Queer/LGBTQIA+ theory/movements and one or more of the following:

• decolonization, anti-war, and non-violence movements.
• racial justice and prison abolition.
• economic equality and mutual aid.
• health, disability, and neurodivergence.
• reproductive rights.
• transgender and gender equality.
• climate and food security.

We also welcome submissions that consider:

• comparative modalities of activism, political engagement, and agency.
• thinking with, through, against, and beyond human rights frameworks.
• solidarities made possible or hindered by digital, transnational technologies.
• collaborations between theorists, activists, and artists.
• the affective contours of coalition building and sustaining.
• Intersections and disjunctures between humanist and posthuman discourses.

This list is by no means exhaustive, but as you consider your submission, keep in mind the overall theme of past, emerging, and potential connections across boundaries that have conventionally been kept or considered separate.

Apply here (Google Form):

https://forms.gle/sfkXmW17EcHV8noU8

The last day to submit to the CFP is Wednesday, March 15th, at 11:59pm PST. Contributions are welcomed from all disciplines and should be in alignment with the theme. Interested students should submit 500-word abstracts along with their CV and a short 150-word bio.

This year’s conference will be held on Friday, May 19, 2023 at UCLA, a land grant institution whose formation rests upon the dispossession of the Gabrielino and Tongva/Kizh peoples, the traditional caretakers of this land, whose history and presence resonates through this event and our every day.

The conference will be held entirely in person, and this year we are happy to offer conference participants from outside of UCLA partially subsidized accommodations at the UCLA Guest House (more information about this will be shared upon acceptance to present at the conference).

Please direct questions to uclalgbtq@gmail.com 

More about the Keynote

Upon his graduation from Swarthmore College, our distinguished Keynote speaker, Dr. Sa’ed Atshan, received an award the institution named that year—the Edward Said/Audre Lorde Scholar-Activist Award. The critical legacy memorialized in this honorary title aptly captures Professor Atshan’s commitments, and is evident across his work: from his efforts to work with Israelis and Germans to repair the wretched reality in Palestine/Israel; to his current research about the parallels and disjunctures between African-American and Palestinian Quakers; to his ongoing study about LGBTQ movements across North Africa and the Middle East. The UCLA LGBT Studies program shares professor Atshan’s conviction that new coalitions are the way forward.

Interested in Volunteering?

LGBTQ Studies is currently seeking volunteers who are interested in supporting this year’s conference on Friday, May 19^th. Volunteer activities include registration support, reception set up, room management, and other general activities. For those interested, please reach out to the conference organizers at UCLALGBTQ@gmail.com.

Womxn in ECE/CSE Lunch Series

Connect, network, inspire!

Any womxn who does research related to electrical engineering and/or computer science is welcome to join the weekly Womxn in ECE/CSE Lunch Series, which is intended to build inclusion in the Baskin Engineering research community.

When: Thursdays at 12 p.m. during spring quarter 2023, with the last lunch taking place on June 8th

Where: Baskin Engineering 2 Lanai (if raining, please meet in E2-599).

Join the mailing list: eecs-lunch-group@ucsc.edu

Project from Wright Brothers Institute

We launched a project/challenge with Wright Brothers Institute & The T-REX Innovation Center -GEOINT – Analysis of Cause for Human Displacement

Link to challenge/project: https://www.mindsumo.com/contests/geoint-challenge-series-population-displacement

Could you please forward this note to students that you think will be interested? The top 10% of submissions also win from a prize pool of $2,600!

Note - students are encouraged to use their .edu IDs when logging in to make sure they pass any restrictions we have in place for non .edu solvers.

Feel free to reach out to me (isha@mindsumo.com) if you/your students have any questions and hope to see some of your students participate!

GANAS Doctoral Summer Bridge (Participant Application Deadline EXTENDED)

We hope your Spring quarter is in full-bloom and going well! We are happy to share some GANAS Doctoral Summer Bridge program updates with everyone. We are currently interviewing our potential graduate student mentors and look forward to confirming our 3 new mentors next week! We here at GANAS Graduate Pathways are especially elated to be accepting participation applications from incoming MFA & MA students in addition to incoming PhD students for this year's bridge program. We have also decided to extend the participation application deadline to midnight on May 31st to give any and all interested incoming students the opportunity to finish working on their applications.

As a reminder our DSB program will be taking place on-campus from July 22nd - July 29th this summer! Participating students will be provided with room and board throughout the program and will also receive a $500 participation stipend to be paid out in the Fall quarter of this year. We are excited to be including a number of campus partners in this summer’s programming including, the UCSC Basic Needs Team, the Disability Resource Center; CAPS counseling services; the Graduate Student Commons;,  the Teaching and Learning Center, with more campus partners being confirmed everyday.

We can’t wait to welcome 15 incoming graduate students from across campus disciplines to take part in this summer’s program! I'm including an updated  program flier, participant FAQ's, and the informational DSB slide presentation I've been sharing with folks as it's suitable for all interested individuals (students, staff, etc). I also wanted to note that I'm more than happy to schedule group and/or 1:1 info sessions with anyone who would like to learn more about the program and/or participant application process. Let us know if you have any questions or if there's anything else we can do to help support these outreach efforts from our end of things.

Jobs

Software Engineering Research Opportunity

We are looking for a software engineer, who wants to contribute to our Phased Array technology at Yektasonics. Our Phased Array is a hardware-software co-designed system, which is an order of magnitude lower cost than other Phased Arrays in the market with performance breakthroughs. The technology has applications in a wide range of medical and non-medical fields. In medicine, Focused Ultrasound is a revolutionary medical therapy, which uses harmless sound waves to cure cancer with no chemo-therapy or surgery, and brain treatment without opening the skull, to name a few. Our technology drives the transducers, which generate these sound waves at ultrasound frequencies, with fine phase and power control. We have launched our Power Module successfully, which is the power stage of our Phased Array.

Yektasonics has received numerous awards and recognitions, such as a recent award from the National Science Foundation - Innovation Corps program in 2023, a second prize from the UC Santa Cruz chancellor at launchpad 2022, being a finalist of American Heart Association in the Bay Area in 2022, being a finalist of the University of California Big Ideas Competition in 2021, and being part of UC Berkeley Incubator Citris Foundry in 2020, to name a few.

Our Phased Array consists of different software modules, such as our embedded computing interface, our Yektasonics OS, our feedback processor, and more. A strong candidate will mostly code in C/C++ in our challenging environment. If you are interested and ready for the next level in your career, please email your resume with your transcripts to Navid Gougol at gougol@yektasonics.com. The work place will be at Baskin with possible remote arrangement. Compensation arrangements will be made mutually.  

Navid is the the CEO/Founder of Yektasonics. You can check out the company website for more information at www.yektasonics.com.    

Optimization Engineer

https://jobs.lever.co/jitxinc/67cd47a6-7f01-4423-a59c-48b7d2ca48fe 

Paid Part-Time Summer Opportunity for PhD Students

Opportunity for Advanced Graduate Students & Postdocs

I write with a course development and teaching opportunity that may be of interest to advanced PhD candidates or postdocs in your department. I am looking specifically to have a number of lower-division courses developed over Summer and Fall 2023 terms, and taught in Fall 2023 and Spring 2024 terms. These courses will be based on professional certificates offered by Coursera, in the following areas:

• Google IT Support
• Google UX Design
• IBM Cybersecurity Analysis
• Meta Front- and Back-End Development

These are an asynchronous online course and will be taught entirely remotely. The stipend to develop each course is $5,760. The stipend to teach each course section is another $5,760.

Title IX is Hiring Graduate Student Interns

The Title IX/Equity and Equal Protection Office is hiring graduate student interns interested in working on projects related to education, policies/procedures, and media and public awareness efforts concerning sex discrimination, including sexual violence and sexual harassment (SVSH). See flyer below.

Roles and responsibilities may include:

• Co-developing trainings and presenting to various student groups and campus partners

• Designing programming and events related to SVSH prevention

• Maintaining WCMS for Title IX website

• Conducting surveys and research 

Pay: $26/hr

Hours: 3-6/week (flexible with additional hours over the summer as desired)

• Remote hybrid work opportunities available

We also encourage graduate students to propose their own ideas for projects and events to address SVSH. 

For more information and to apply, please see the posting on Handshake (# 7549227; https://ucsc.joinhandshake.com/emp/jobs) or email Laura Young at lyounghi@ucsc.edu

Postdoc Opportunity

Jennifer Doudna <https://doudnalab.org/> and Benjamin Rubin
<https://www.therubinlab.org/> are recruiting a jointly supervised postdoc
to work on in situ DNA editing of microbiomes at UC Berkeley. The candidate
will join a highly collaborative team of researchers in the two labs, who
are tightly integrated with the broader Innovative Genomics Institute’s
Precision Microbiome Editing Initiative
<https://innovativegenomics.org/precision-microbiome-editing/>. Projects
will build on proof-of-principle community editing experiments
<https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34873292/> to enact precise and efficient
modification of microbiome members. This work relies on developing and
using novel CRISPR-Cas editing systems, sequence-based tracking of edits,
and next-generation tools for in situ control of edited organisms. The
postdoc will collaborate with a multidisciplinary group from UCSF, LBNL,
JBEI, and Cedar-Sinai to apply microbiome editing to understand and control
impactful microbial communities such as those in the human gut, cow rumen,
and the rhizosphere. Potential projects range from identifying and
modifying microbes with causal roles in inflammatory bowel disease and
asthma, to mitigating methane emissions from livestock.


If you are interested you can find more information and apply here
<https://aprecruit.berkeley.edu/JPF03866>.

Molecular Biologist/Biochemist - Tenure Track - Rhode Island College

Job Description: 2023B_MolecularBiologist_Poster.pdf

Cellular Biologist/Biochemist - Tenure Track - Rhode Island College

Job Description: 2023A_CellBiologist_Poster.pdf