About Us
What We Do
The Baskin School of Engineering includes departments of Applied Mathematics and Statistics (AMS), Biomolecular Engineering (BME), Computational Media (CM), Computer Engineering (CE), Computer Science (CS), Electrical Engineering (EE) and Technology Management (TM). At our school, a close interrelationship exists between all departments, and with other divisions of UC Santa Cruz. A collegial atmosphere encourages cooperative interaction as School of Engineering faculty 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 and provides a shared goal among faculty, staff and students.
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. 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.
The dean and Associate Deans
Alexander Wolf serves as Dean of the Baskin School of Engineering and is a Distinguished Professor in the departments of Computer Science and Computer 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.
Tracy Larrabee is the Associate Dean for Undergraduate Affairs and a Professor in the Computer Engineering department.
Tracy received her B.S. in Engineering from Caltech and her M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Computer Science at Stanford University. Her research areas include test pattern simulation and generation, fault modeling, fault diagnostics, design verification, and logic simulation.
Since arriving at the University of California, Santa Cruz, Tracy has demonstrated a passion for educating students. For her dedication and exemplary teaching, Tracy received the UCSC 2016 Excellence in Teaching award. She has served on many UC-systemwide and UC Santa Cruz committees, including as the Chair of both the systemwide and the UC Santa Cruz committees on Educational Policy.
Abel Rodríguez is a Professor of Applied Mathematics and Statistics and Associate Dean for Graduate Affairs at the Baskin School of Engineering. He is also the Associate Director of the Center for Data, Discovery and Decisions (D3).
Abel obtained his undergraduate degrees at Universidad Católica Andrés Bello, Venezuela and Universidad Simón Bolívar, Venezuela, majoring in Law and Industrial Engineering, respectively. In 2000, he completed his M.S. in Statistics then moved to the U.S. to pursue a Ph.D. in Statistics and Decision Sciences at Duke University.
Abel is currently an Associate Editor for the Annals of Applied Statistics and for Bayesian Analysis, also serving as a member of the Board of the International Society of Bayesian Analysis. He is interested in Bayesian statistics and machine learning, especially nonparametric methods, spatial temporal models, network analysis and extreme value theory. With these tools, Abel develops statistical methods for complex problems in biology, social sciences, and engineering.
Holger Schmidt 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. He was elected Fellow of the Optical Society of America in 2014 and Fellow of the IEEE in 2017.
