I love the fact that [my lab] will encourage you no matter what you want to research on... They are really open to listening, and not just listening but also discussing, and they won’t put you down if your ideas don’t match theirs. There is a lot of healthy discussion going on all the time, even during lunch breaks.
Technology for a Changing World
Humans of BSOE
Computer Science and Engineering
I love the fact that [my lab] will encourage you no matter what you want to research on... They are really open to listening, and not just listening but also discussing, and they won’t put you down if your ideas don’t match theirs. There is a lot of healthy discussion going on all the time, even during lunch breaks.
Computer Science and Engineering
Even when I was a kid, I was really interested in making computers do things they weren’t supposed to... After school, I worked for the National Security Agency for a long time, and it really motivated me to see how important it is to secure computers when lives are on the line.
Computer Science and Engineering
My research revolves around preventing pressure injuries... A lot of research is about developing a specific new technology that will prevent pressure injuries, but I am kind of taking a more system approach for which you can use any technology and apply it.
Computer Science and Engineering
I would ask the incoming class of female engineers to join clubs like Society of Women Engineers, AMC-W, and Girls Who Code to build a strong network of women around them... That is what has helped me get through high school and college, and I really want incoming students to find a strong group of women to help them as well.
Bimolecular Engineering and Bioinformatics
I feel like I have had such incredible mentors at UCSC, and so much of what I have learned and the passion that I have developed for bioinformatics has been a product of the wonderful mentorship that I have had around me, so it has been really great to be able to take that full circle and provide that same thing for other undergraduate students.
Electrical Engineering
I would say to any incoming students, if you see any club or any activity that really inspires you or seems like something you would want to do, even if you are not really sure, just go for it. When I started school here, I was a very shy person so I pushed myself to become a global leader, and that really pushed me outside of my comfort circle.
Computer Science and Engineering
My research focuses mainly on different applications of machine learning and deep learning in the medical field for diagnosing different diseases. For example, I am working with the UC San Francisco Epilepsy Lab to try to predict the onset of seizures in patients and detect if there is a way to identify factors that have to do with initiation and termination of seizures so that we can kind of control patients between these two.
Biomolecular Engineering
Currently, my project is engineering zymomonas mobilis, a unique organism that has a specific metabolic pathway that helps increase the production of biofuels, specifically ethanol and butanol... Fossil fuels are quickly becoming depleted and are very toxic, so if we were able to find a sustainable synthetic source of fuel, it would be extremely beneficial for overall environmental health.
Technology and Information Management
If I have any advice that I would give to incoming students about starting something, I would say just start going to a club meeting. Find a community or an organization that you enjoy, that you are passionate about, and just start being a presence.
MESA Engineering
I spend a lot of time encouraging and acknowledging their natural brilliance and their right to be here. That’s something I really love to do for our students. It’s important, particularly for engineers, for those in what we call the hard sciences there’s not a lot of warm fuzzies floating around, not a lot of the human touch and as humans we are starved for that.
Electrical and Computer Engineering
Everyone should study engineering. It opens up so many opportunities. Once you learn the basics of, not just how our world works, but how to make things, nothing is beyond your capabilities anymore and I absolutely love that.
Computer Science and Engineering
I’m doing both computer science and the game design major because they’re both computer science degrees, so there’s a lot of overlap but there are significant differences. I get a lot more practical experience that I can apply toward industry with game design, but because of the academic focus of computer science degree I also get that foresight on technology and where I should be applying my insight. I feel like a much more well-rounded person doing that.
Electrical Engineering
I joined the Applied Optics Lab under Professor Holger Schmidt. There I worked with grad students on microfluidic distributed feedback lasers. These are basically lasers made of microscopic channels of liquid, with corrugated walls. My role was to increase the accuracy of our theoretical expectations for how the laser chips behave in the lab.
Computer Science and Engineering
I work with the Internetworking Research Lab. I’m proposing a protocol that will make devices that run on batteries last longer by making more efficient transmissions. That’s going to be huge in the future because everything’s going to be transmitting information and data is everywhere and we need it and want it, but batteries are a big constraint right now.
Computer Engineering
I’m a co-lead of the SlugSat micro-satellite project on campus. Our goal is to launch a small satellite that’s roughly the size of a loaf of bread into lower earth orbit carrying a science experiment from the Santa Cruz Institute for Particle Physics and a linear transponder radio built by students within the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department.
Computer Science and Engineering
Being a computer engineer you can have a lot of choices, whether it’s directly related to computers and making them better and programming applications that do necessary things or whether it’s doing biology, chemistry, physics.
Electrical and Computer Engineering
My interest in engineering kind of came from the mechanical side of things. I was a construction worker and really liked the mechanical aspect. Studying robotics has really given me a chance to learn 3D modeling and 3D printing, and to interface that and actually be able to make something move has been extremely rewarding.
Biomolecular Engineering
I study different animal species both living and extinct by analyzing their genomes. One project, specifically, is studying the genomic health of puma populations.
Computer Science and Engineering
I’m working on large archival storage systems—things like capturing scientific data which you’re going to store for a long time and slowly process it and how to make them cheaper, more reliable, more energy efficient. Currently a lot of scientific institutes capture a lot of data and they slowly go through it, step by step.
Computer Science
My research work is on something that I’m defining as casual creators, which is a genre of creativity software that nobody has identified yet but a lot of examples of these exist. It turns out there’s this entire other genre of software that’s for casual creators, people who are using this thing autotelically, which means for its own purpose.
Electrical and Computer Engineering
"I’m working on a multifocus microscope that is able to capture 3D images. With most conventional microscopy techniques you can look at the image of only one plane at the same time and you have to move your sample and scan through that sample. But in this case we get all the information at once."
Biomolecular Engineering
I work with a method called EVIP, which stands for expression-based variant-impact phenotyping, and basically what that means is we use expression data, like RNA-Seq, to predict the function of different mutations that happen in cancer.
Electrical and Computer Engineering
"The great thing about Baskin School of Engineering is the fact that it provide great mentorship and easy transition to graduate programs."
Electrical and Computer Engineering
"I like that there’s a sense of community here. I also like that it’s very interdisciplinary. Collaborating with biologists keeps me on my toes because I have to learn biology and all these other things."
