Category: Features

Confronting COVID
From developing faster tests to building prediction models of the spread of the infection, campus researchers are applying their skills in response to the COVID-19 pandemic

Fiction forward
Students, alumni, and community members are participating in a "Deep Read" on the bleak dystopian futures of Margaret Atwood in advance of the Booker Prize–winning author's on-stage discussion during Alumni Weekend

Beating crime by a hair
Biomolecular engineer Ed Green's new technique to extract DNA from hair samples to help identify killers and victims could help solve thousands of cold cases

Instituting change
UC Santa Cruz’s Institute for Social Transformation incubates, funds, and helps amplify important social sciences research, aiming for wide audiences and maximum impact

A growing movement
An 18-month project around art and incarceration—including the striking participatory landscape art piece called “Solitary Garden"—is a comment on mass incarceration and racial injustice in the prison system

A catalyst for change
UC Santa Cruz’s new chancellor is a distinguished chemist fascinated by both the transformation of matter and the transformative power of a UC education

Rising above
A stubborn strength propelled alumnus Dr. Ramon Resa, who went from working in the fields by the age of 3 to successful pediatrician with a practice in the Central Valley

Thinking really big
From the time before time to potential existential dangers of the future, physicist Anthony Aguirre peers into the mysteries that define our reality

Hire power
Three new strategic faculty hires come with résumés of pioneering work and plans to focus on game-changing objectives

A chancellor looks back
With his time as chancellor drawing to a close, George Blumenthal reflects on his 13 years in UC Santa Cruz’s top job and a lifetime on campus

Escuchar, Compartir, Comunidad: The power of voice
A unique partnership trains young people from Watsonville in the broadcasting basics and helps them publish their podcasts

Lamat Program: Shooting for the stars
The bright—but previously unrecognized—young scientists of UC Santa Cruz’s Lamat program have found their destiny by turning their eyes to the heavens

Hope for housing
With housing costs becoming a crisis both locally and statewide, an ambitious UC Santa Cruz project called No Place Like Home seeks to inform the debate—and the quest for solutions—through research