The Dean and Associate Deans

Alexander Wolf serves as Dean of the Baskin School of Engineering and is a Distinguished Professor of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

Alex's research interests span the areas of distributed systems, networking, and software engineering. His achievements include seminal work in software architecture, business analytics, and information-centric networks. His more recent projects concern cloud computing, data-center networking, and service-based systems hosted on MANETs.

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Jim Whitehead is the Associate Dean for Undergraduate Affairs and a Professor of Computational Media.

Jim received his B.S. in Electrical Engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Information and Computer Science from the University of California, Irvine. His research interests include procedural content generation for games, testing autonomous vehicles, automation of software testing, software repository mining, software bug prediction, and level design in computer games.

A leader in education about computer games, Jim led the creation of the BS Computer Science: Computer Game Design degree, and was a key figure in the first five years of the Games and Playable Media MS program. He served as Chair of Computer Science from 2010-2014, and Chair of Computational Media from 2017-2019.

Matthew Guthaus is the Associate Dean for Graduate Studies and a Professor of Computer Science and Engineering. He received his BSE in Computer Engineering and MSE and PhD in Electrical Engineering, all from The University of Michigan.

Matt is a Senior Member of ACM and IEEE and a member of IFIP Working Group 10.5. His research interests are in low-power computing and electronic computer-aided design including new circuits, architectures, algorithms, and software to address challenges in modern design flows. Matt is the creator of the OpenRAM memory compiler and has interests in open-source computer-aided design and design flows.

Holger Schmidt, Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, is the Associate Dean for Research for the Baskin School of Engineering and is the Director of the W.M. Keck Center for Nanoscale Optofluidics.

Holger received an M.S. degree in physics from the University of Stuttgart, Germany and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical and computer engineering from the University of California, Santa Barbara. After serving as a postdoctoral fellow with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, he joined the University of California, Santa Cruz. Holger has authored over 400 publications and several book chapters in various fields of optics. He received an NSF Career Award in 2002 and a Keck Futures Nanotechnology Award in 2005. Holger was elected Fellow of the Optical Society of America in 2014 and Fellow of the IEEE in 2017.

The Faculty

Faculty members in the Baskin School of Engineering are leaders in their fields, with active research portfolios and engaging teaching programs. Many of our faculty have strong ties to industry, including nearby Silicon Valley as well as right here in Santa Cruz. Some of our faculty lead thriving research centers, others run international summer programs, while still others bring together large groups of interdisciplinary researchers to solve global challenges. We invite you to get to know our faculty through their photos and web pages.

Meet the faculty

The Staff

Baskin School of Engineering staff are an integral part of the school’s community. Whether they’re helping students navigate the sometimes knotty world of engineering degrees, assisting faculty with course materials, or managing the school’s webpages, BSOE staff are dedicated to the education and research endeavors of the school.

Find staff

The Students

The students of the Baskin School of Engineering are hardworking, innovative and engaged. They benefit from hands-on research and learning, as well as a collaborative and supportive environment. Many of our students thrive in student-run organizations; some even take leading roles in these organizations, learning and sharing professional skills and connecting with peers to form the foundations of a strong professional network.

Meet some of our students

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What We Do

The Baskin School of Engineering includes departments of Applied Mathematics, Biomolecular Engineering, Computational Media, Computer Science and Engineering, Electrical and Computer Engineering, and Statistics. At our school, a close interrelationship exists among all departments, and with the other divisions of UC Santa Cruz. A collegial atmosphere encourages cooperative interaction as School of Engineering faculty and students carry out joint research projects with faculty of other divisions and with other universities as well as industry and government research laboratories. A commitment to academic excellence with a focus on engineering for social good gives meaning to our work.

Nearby San Jose, one of the world's most active centers for research and innovation, is only 45 minutes from campus. Faculty and students work with a variety of technology corporations, including Amazon, Cisco, Diffbot, Google, Hewlett-Packard, Samsung, Seagate, Western Digital and more, and the growing local high-tech industry in Santa Cruz provides additional opportunities for exciting collaborations.

Who We Are

The faculty, staff, researchers and students of the Baskin School of Engineering comprise a diverse group of individuals with a wide array of interests in teaching, research and extracurricular pursuits. But we share many common goals: to be the best educators, engineers and administrators that we can be; to lead the way in areas such as big data, cyber-physical systems, genomics and computational media; and to work together to ensure that each person has opportunities to collaborate, contribute and grow within our community.