Discovery Lectures Series

Renowned scientists, engineers and mathematicians will host lectures on a plethora of research topics during the four weeks COSMOS operates. The lecturers usually focus on their current research, as the presentations are designed to introduce students to the wide variety of STEM subjects and research taking place at UCSC and beyond, expanding their learning outside of their cluster topics. Discovery Lectures are required by all COSMOS students to attend and are also open to the entire campus community.

The list of speakers and topics is updated every year.

COSMOS 2025 Discovery Lectures:

Date Day Speaker Title
7/7 Monday Tim Johnstone (C8) How we understand what molecules look like
7/8 Tuesday Alvaro Cardenas (C13) AI and the Cyber Frontier: Hero, Villain, or Wildcard?
7/9 Wednesday Raja Guhathakurta The Universe of Galaxies and the James Webb Space Telescope
7/10 Thursday Zhu Wang (C3) How to maintain an organ: stem cells and cancer
7/11 Friday Yu Zhang (C6) TBA
7/14 Monday David Belanger and Scott Oliver (C12) Unlocking the properties of materials by scattering X-rays and neutrons
7/15 Tuesday Steve Haddock Who glows there? Biodiversity and bioluminescence of deep-sea animals?
7/16 Wednesday Michael Oye (C10) Semiconductor Processing and Device Engineering
7/17 Thursday Ali Yanik (C7) Neural Recordings Reimagined: Brain-Machine Interfaces at the Light Speed
7/18 Friday Mauricio Rojas-Andrade TBA
7/21 Monday Ryan Baumbach (C4) Bacteriophages: Small but Powerful
7/22 Tuesday Holger Schmidt Single molecule detection on a chip with integrated nanopores
7/23 Wednesday Jimmy Shanks (C9) Bacteriophages: Small but Powerful
7/24 Thursday Jason Eshraghian (C11) Are brains computers?
7/25 Friday Tamara Duplantis (C5) Spatialized Audio in Games
7/28 Monday Bob Hingtgen (C1) Infinity, Size & Length
7/29 Tuesday Shaowei Chen (C2) Nanoscale Chirality
7/30 Wednesday Alison Galloway Life of the Dead
7/31 Thursday
8/1 Friday