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 University of California campuses, 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 2023 Discovery Lectures:
Date | Day | Speaker | Title |
7/10 | Monday | Raja Guhathakurta | The Universe of Galaxies and the James Webb Space Telescope |
7/11 | Tuesday | Abraham Wolcott (C12) | Tuning a Quantum Nanoprobe: Advancements in diamond chemistry using halogens, low-Z precursors and metal oxides |
7/12 | Wednesday | Rebecca DuBois | TBD |
7/13 | Thursday | Yihsu Chen (C6) | Retail electricity retail tariff design in the presence of roof-top solar households: balancing energy equality and economic efficiencies |
7/14 | Friday | Priya Crosby | Circadian rhythms: How do we measure time and use it to control our biology? |
7/17 | Monday | Tamara Duplantis (C5) | Designing Spatialized Audio in Games |
7/18 | Tuesday | Eric Martin | Bringing the Lab Into the Ocean: Designing Scientific Robotic Vehicles |
7/19 | Wednesday | Peter Weiss/Nettie Calvin (C7) | Microbes and Mercury - how anerobic bacteria make mercury super toxic |
7/20 | Thursday | Xin Eric Wang (C11) | Building Generalizable, Scalable, and Trustworthy Embodied Agents |
7/21 | Friday | Zhu Wang (C9) | How to maintain an organ: stem cells and cancer |
7/24 | Monday | Holger Schmidt | Single molecule detection on a chip with integrated nanopores |
7/25 | Tuesday | Burcak Artun (C8) | Understanding Bioluminescence: Ecology to Biotechnology |
7/26 | Wednesday | Mike Oye (C10) | Semiconductor Processing and Device Engineering |
7/27 | Thursday | Steve Haddock | Who glows there? Biodiversity, bioluminescence, and biotechnology of deep-sea organisms |
7/28 | Friday | Jairo Velasco, Jr. (C4) | Imaging and Probing Atomically Thin Quantum Devices at the Nanoscale |
7/31 | Monday | Richard Gottesman (C1) | Discovering Infinity |
8/1 | Tuesday | Gizelle Hurtado and Andy Kulikowsk (C3) | From Natural History to Scientific Research |
8/2 | Wednesday | Alex Ayzner | TBD |
8/3 | Thursday | Shaowei Chen (C2) | Chiral Molecules and Nanostructures |
8/4 | Friday |