Baskin Engineering researchers are leading major projects to address climate crisis issues, including green computing, conservation genomics, more efficient greenhouses, smart power, climate-wise agricultural technology, wildfire management and more. These initiatives leverage engineering expertise and partnerships to provide meaningful contributions that are improving our resilience to climate change. Innovative technical solutions are reducing greenhouse gas emissions, helping communities adapt, and providing a deeper understanding of the impacts of climate change.
Engineering faculty take on innovative climate resilience projects
Understanding the threat of sea level rise is crucial for protecting coastal areas. This project will employ a machine learning-based algorithm to analyze changes in the Santa Cruz shoreline and nearshore dynamics such as rip currents using video from a network of webcams in the study area. The shoreline data captured at various time scales and rip current occurrence data can be used for climate modeling, prediction, and policy making, such as long-term studies on sea level rise and rip currents to help with beach safety. The software will be open source so it can be replicated for other settings and extended for future projects.
Research in action
UC Santa Cruz research will harness advanced AI to better measure, predict climate-change impacts
Two UC Santa Cruz research projects designed to leverage advanced forms of artificial intelligence to improve how scientists measure and predict the effects of climate change have won funding from a $20 million investment by the National Science Foundation.
SpikeGPT: researcher releases code for largest-ever spiking neural network for language generation
Using neuromorphic (“brain-like”) computer architectures to imitate the computational principles of the brain and drive down the energy cost of artificially intelligent systems.
Study shows significant decline of snow cover in the Northern hemisphere over the last half century
Snow cover plays a major role in global energy balance, continental thermal stability, and regional temperatures.
Multidisciplinary team will develop advanced rhizosphere carbon imaging for climate change research with support of major DOE grant
Researchers are focused on exploring the ongoing debate surrounding the rhizosphere’s contribution to the global carbon cycle.
A new project will develop safer, highly accurate GPS alternative
Developing a resilient system in rural forested territory will improve tracking and navigation of aerial vehicles for search-and-rescue, emergency services, and more.
Innovative climate resilience projects supported by 2022 CITRIS Campus Seed Funding awards
Grants will fund research on green hydrogen, robotic ecological monitoring, self-driving electric tractors, and a no-waste home water system.
BE experts
Shiva Abbaszadeh
Ashesh Chattopadhyay
Yihsu Chen
Anne Criss
Luca De Alfaro
Nathan Ellis
Jason Eshraghian
Becca Fenwick
Javier Gonzalez-Rocha
Matthew R Guthaus
Katherine Isbister
Colleen Josephson
Nobby Kobayashi
Heiner Litz
Robert Lund
Patrick Mantey
Michael Matkin
Steve McGuire
Katia Obraczka
Alex Pang
Jose Renau
Marco Rolandi
Ricardo Sanfelice
Magy Seif El Nasr
Norman Su
Xin Eric Wang
Yu Zhang
For media inquiries contact: Emily Cerf, Engineering Writer and Media Relations Officer: ecerf@ucsc.edu
AgTech
Innovations in agricultural technology that contribute to addressing climate impacts and supporting sustainability are examples of Baskin School of Engineering’s priority of developing technology for societal benefit and UC Santa Cruz’s long history of thoughtful leadership in agroecology and sustainable food systems.
Green computing
Smart innovations, like spiking neural networks that emulate the brain and biological systems to process information more efficiently, are addressing the environmental impact of the energy demands of AI-related neural networks and large language models.
Smart power
Baskin Engineering researchers are developing innovative strategies to optimize energy efficiency and sustainability in power systems by integrating artificial intelligence and data analytics technologies, as well as new materials and hardware solutions.