BSOE Graduate Student Newsletter
Announcements
Key Winter 2025 DeadlinesPhi Beta Kappa members - apply for $10,000 Phi Beta Kappa Graduate Scholarships
Research Intern Training Time Provenance (Data Dignity) | Microsoft Careers
UCSA & UCGPC Optional Fees
Opportunities for Students and New Grads with the Cleveland Guardians
2025 SFI Education programs for graduate students
Announcements
Key Winter 2025 Deadlines
*Please note the following upcoming university deadlines, and ALWAYS check the official UCSC Academic and Administrative Calendar for important dates and deadlines. Bookmark this year's Academic and Administrative Calendar and refer to it regularly.
WINTER 2025 DEADLINES:
**Thursday January 16th - Deadline to Apply For Degree: If you plan to complete your MS or PhD this quarter (winter 2025), the degree application needs to be submitted to the BE Graduate Advising office. This is also the deadline to pay for the filing fee, if applicable. More guidelines for graduating are available on the Graduate Advising website.
Thursday January 16th - Deadline for Graduate Student Enrollment & Fee Payment: If you have not paid your registration fees or enrolled in the minimum number of courses by this date, you will be charged a $50 late fee for winter 2025.
Thursday January 16th - Deadline for Graduate Student Part-Time Status: This is the deadline to apply for reduced course load and fees for winter 2025. Part-time status forms must be approved/signed by your faculty advisor and submitted to the BE Graduate Advising office by the posted deadline. Part-time application forms are available on the Graduate Division's website.
Friday January 24th - Deadline to Add/Drop/Swap Courses: This is your last day to add, drop and swap courses for winter 2025. You will not be able to drop or withdraw from courses after this deadline has passed. If you are enrolled in a placeholder class, you MUST drop it by this deadline. More information on how to add, drop, and swap classes is available on the registrar website.
Saturday January 25th - Late Add by Permission/Petition Begins: The Add by Petition form requires the signatures of both the instructor and the department adviser and needs to be submitted to the Office of the Registrar for winter 2025.
Thursday March 7th - Deadline for Grade Change Option: This is your last day to change your grading option for any courses you are enrolled in for winter 2025. IMPORTANT: The system defaults to Satisfactory/Unsatisfactory grading. Instructions for how to change your grading option to letter grades (ABC) can be found here.
Friday March 8th - Deadline for Late Add Permission: Deadline to add a class by permission or petition for winter 2025.
Friday March 21st - Deadline for Removal of Incomplete: Deadline to file petition and submit class work for winter 2025. Graduate Incomplete grade within the last three quarters.
**Friday March 21st - Deadline for Completing Degree Requirements/Submission: Deadline to complete all degree requirements for winter 2025. *Students participating in commencement need to complete all requirements by May 31 to be listed in the program.
Phi Beta Kappa members - apply for $10,000 Phi Beta Kappa Graduate Scholarships
Graduate students who are Phi Beta Kappa members are encouraged to apply for $10,000 Phi Beta Kappa Graduate Scholarships awarded by the Phi Beta Kappa Northern California Association.
Applications are due by January 24, 2025, and can be directed to Andrea Cohen (pbk@ucsc.edu).
If you are interested in serving on our campus’s PBK Graduate Scholarship selection committee, please contact Andrea (pbk@ucsc.edu).
Research Intern Training Time Provenance (Data Dignity) | Microsoft Careers
Research Internships at Microsoft provide a dynamic environment for research careers with a network of world-class research labs led by globally-recognized scientists and engineers, who pursue innovation in a range of scientific and technical disciplines to help solve complex challenges in diverse fields, including computing, healthcare, economics, and the environment.
Training-time provenance is a research effort on estimating the influence of specific training data on outputs of large language models (LLMs).
We are attempting to demonstrate that LLMs can be trained in such a way that influence of specific training data on generated outputs can be efficiently and usefully estimated. You can read more about “Data dignity” in the article: There is no A.I. (The New Yorker).
Qualifications
For this Research Internship (summer 2025), we are seeking PhD students with a passion for fundamental Deep Learning research, particularly those with experience in training LLMs and other large AI models. The Research Intern's responsibilities will include (1) training small language models with novel schemes preserving provenance of data, (2) experimenting with these models to test their performance and reliability.
- Currently enrolled in a PhD program in Computer Science or a related STEM field. Exceptional candidates enrolled in a master’s program might also be considered.
- At have at least 2 years of research experience, including peer-reviewed publications, researching a topic closely related to the above description, such as natural language processing, deep learning, generative models, approximation methods, etc.
Other Requirements
- Research Interns are expected to be physically located in their manager’s Microsoft worksite location for the duration of their internship.
- In addition to the qualifications below, you’ll need to submit a minimum of two reference letters for this position as well as a cover letter and any relevant work or research samples. After you submit your application, a request for letters may be sent to your list of references on your behalf. Note that reference letters cannot be requested until after you have submitted your application, and furthermore, that they might not be automatically requested for all candidates. You may wish to alert your letter writers in advance, so they will be ready to submit your letter.
Preferred Qualifications
- Demonstrated ability to develop original research agendas.
- Ability to collaborate effectively with other researchers and product development teams.
- Experience in training large AI models.
- Experience in approximation methods for deep learning systems.
- Proficient interpersonal skills, cross-group, and cross-culture collaboration.
- Ability to think unconventionally to derive creative and innovative solutions.
Certain roles may be eligible for benefits and other compensation. Find additional benefits and pay information here: https://careers.
Microsoft accepts applications and processes offers for these roles on an ongoing basis.
UCSA & UCGPC Optional Fees
Did you know that you can opt out of the UCSA or UCGPC Association charges by submitting an online form before the third-week deadline of the affected quarter? If you opted out and wish to opt-in, you will need to complete the same form. Follow the navigation below to access the form in your MyUCSC portal.
Instructions:
MyUCSC >> Graduate Student eForms tile >> UCGPC Registration Fee Opt-out link in the left navigation
Reminder: After the third week of instruction (the Add/Drop/Swap Deadline on the Academic and Administrative Calendar) you are no longer able to opt out of the fees for the current quarter, but you may opt out for future quarters. A refund of current fees may be directed to the UCSA or UCGPC.
Opportunities for Students and New Grads with the Cleveland Guardians
At the Cleveland Guardians, they are committed to fostering an inclusive and innovative workplace while pursuing excellence on and off the field. Partnering with colleges and universities can help them identify and nurture top talent to join our team and thrive in roles like their Baseball Operations Analyst position. Please see the job description for this exciting role that recently opened up:
The Cleveland Guardians are particularly interested in building relationships with athletic departments and academic programs that focus on:
· Statistics
· Mathematics
· Computer Science
· Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning
· Information Technology
· Operations Research
· Biomechanics
· Exercise Science/Kinesiology
· Sport Science
· Physiology
· Economics
· Business Analytics
· Finance
· Operations Management
This partnership would provide students and recent graduates with:
-Access to internships and full-time opportunities with their organization.
-Insights into how analytical thinking and evidence-based practices are transforming professional baseball.
-Professional development resources tailored to preparing for careers in sports.
-Additionally, they value diverse perspectives and actively encourage candidates from historically underrepresented groups to apply. Their mission is to create an inclusive environment where everyone feels they belong.
Contact: kamponsah@cleguardians.com
2025 SFI Education programs for graduate students
The nonprofit Santa Fe Institute (SFI) focuses on research and training in the quantitative modeling of complex systems, including social, cultural, and political systems, and economies. We would be grateful if you could circulate the opportunities below to interested graduate students, postdocs, and other early-career researchers:
- Complex Systems Summer School:
- intensive 4-week residential program consisting of seminars, workshops, and group research projects.
- June 8 - July 4, 2025
- For eligibility, cost, and more information: https://santafe.edu/csss
- Application deadline: January 28, 2025: https://apply-sfi.smapply.org/prog/csss2025
- Graduate Workshop in Computational Social Science Modeling & Complexity:
- 2-week residential workshop, where graduate students (2nd year or later) add computational & modeling approaches to their existing thesis research.
- June 22 - July 4, 2025
- For eligibility, cost, and more information: https://santafe.edu/gwcss
- Application deadline February 27, 2025: https://apply-sfi.smapply.org/prog/gwcss2025
**Scholarships are available based on need.
Events
2025 UC Santa Cruz Grad Slam - Registration Open
Event Date and Time: 02/06/2025 7:00 pmEvent Location: Graduate Student Commons (Prelim Rounds)
The 2025 UC Santa Cruz Grad Slam will take place on
Saturday, March 1
7:00–9:00 p.m. (Pacific Time)
Kuumbwa Jazz Center
With Live Stream and People’s Choice Voting
Preliminary divisional rounds to determine the finalists will take place the first full week of February at the Graduate Student Commons, 7:00–9:00 p.m. every evening.
- February 3: Social Sciences Division
- February 4: Physical and Biological Sciences Division
- February 5: Humanities Division
- February 6: Baskin School of Engineering
- February 7: Arts Division
Register to participate in your academic division’s preliminary round by completing the form below. The deadline to register for any of the preliminary rounds is January 29, 5:00 p.m. Pacific Time.
https://graduate.ucsc.edu/events/grad-slam/