The Jack Baskin School of Engineering, known simply as Baskin Engineering, is the school of

engineering Engineering is the use of scientific method, scientific principles to design and build machines, structures, and other items, including bridges, tunnels, roads, vehicles, and buildings. The discipline of engineering encompasses a broad rang ...

at the

University of California, Santa Cruz The University of California, Santa Cruz (UC Santa Cruz or UCSC) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Santa Cruz, California. It is one of the ten campuses in the University of California syste ...

. It consists of six departments:

Applied Mathematics Applied mathematics is the application of mathematical methods by different fields such as physics, engineering, medicine, biology, finance, business, computer science, and industry. Thus, applied mathematics is a combination of mathematical s ...

, Biomolecular Engineering, Computational Media,

Computer Science Computer science is the study of computation, automation, and information. Computer science spans theoretical disciplines (such as algorithms, theory of computation, information theory, and automation) to Applied science, practical discipli ...

and

Engineering Engineering is the use of scientific method, scientific principles to design and build machines, structures, and other items, including bridges, tunnels, roads, vehicles, and buildings. The discipline of engineering encompasses a broad rang ...

, Electrical and Computer Engineering, and

Statistics Statistics (from German language, German: ''wikt:Statistik#German, Statistik'', "description of a State (polity), state, a country") is the discipline that concerns the collection, organization, analysis, interpretation, and presentation of ...

. The school was formed in 1997 and

endowed A financial endowment is a legal structure for managing, and in many cases indefinitely perpetuating, a pool of financial, real estate, or other investments for a specific purpose according to the will of its founders and donors. Endowments are of ...

with a multimillion-dollar gift from retired local engineer and developer Jack Baskin. Although it is a relatively young engineering school, it is already known in the

Silicon Valley Silicon Valley is a region in Northern California that serves as a global center for high technology and innovation. Located in the southern part of the San Francisco Bay Area, it corresponds roughly to the geographical areas San Mateo County ...

region and beyond for producing prominent tech innovators, including the founders of companies Pure Storage, Cloudflare, Concur Technologies, Five3 Genomics, and a host of other startups. It is a leader in the field of games and playable media, and was the first school in the country to offer a graduate degree in Serious Games. The school is also well-known for its research in genomics and bioinformatics, and played a critical role in the

Human Genome Project The Human Genome Project (HGP) was an international scientific research project with the goal of determining the base pairs that make up human DNA, and of identifying, mapping and sequencing all of the genes of the human genome from both a ...

. Researchers at UC Santa Cruz were responsible for creating the UCSC Genome Browser, which continues to be an important open-source tool for researchers in genomics.

Degrees offered

The Baskin School of Engineering offers degrees in the following areas: In addition to these degree programs, the Baskin School also offers emphases in Computational Media, Human Language Media and Modeling, Robotics and Control (graduate minor), Scientific Computing, and Statistics

Research

Research areas

Because of its proximity to

, the Baskin School of Engineering has strong ties to technology corporations and start-ups, and tends to focus its research on innovations in big data, cyber-physical systems, genomics, and computational media. Its current research areas include: *

Algorithms In mathematics and computer science, an algorithm () is a finite sequence of rigorous instructions, typically used to solve a class of specific problems or to perform a computation. Algorithms are used as specifications for performing c ...

logic Logic is the study of correct reasoning. It includes both formal and informal logic. Formal logic is the science of deductively valid inferences or of logical truths. It is a formal science investigating how conclusions follow from premises ...

and

complexity Complexity characterises the behaviour of a system or model whose components interaction, interact in multiple ways and follow local rules, leading to nonlinearity, randomness, collective dynamics, hierarchy, and emergence. The term is generall ...

Artificial intelligence Artificial intelligence (AI) is intelligence—perceiving, synthesizing, and inferring information—demonstrated by machines, as opposed to intelligence displayed by animals and humans. Example tasks in which this is done include speech re ...

and

machine learning Machine learning (ML) is a field of inquiry devoted to understanding and building methods that 'learn', that is, methods that leverage data to improve performance on some set of tasks. It is seen as a part of artificial intelligence. Machine ...

* Bayesian statistics * Bioinformatics and

genomics Genomics is an interdisciplinary field of biology focusing on the structure, function, evolution, mapping, and editing of genomes. A genome is an organism's complete set of DNA, including all of its genes as well as its hierarchical, three-dim ...

Communications Communication (from la, communicare, meaning "to share" or "to be in relation with") is usually defined as the transmission of information. The term may also refer to the message communicated through such transmissions or the field of inquir ...

signals In signal processing, a signal is a function that conveys information about a phenomenon. Any quantity that can vary over space or time can be used as a signal to share messages between observers. The ''IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing'' ...

, and digital image processing *

Computational biology Computational biology refers to the use of data analysis, mathematical modeling and computational simulations to understand biological systems and relationships. An intersection of computer science, biology, and big data, the field also has fo ...

Computer hardware Computer hardware includes the physical parts of a computer, such as the computer case, case, central processing unit (CPU), Random-access memory, random access memory (RAM), Computer monitor, monitor, Computer mouse, mouse, Computer keyboard, ...

architecture Architecture is the art and technique of designing and building, as distinguished from the skills associated with construction. It is both the process and the product of sketching, conceiving, planning, designing, and constructing building ...

chip design Processor design is a subfield of computer engineering and electronics engineering (fabrication) that deals with creating a processor, a key component of computer hardware. The design process involves choosing an instruction set and a certain ...

FPGAs A field-programmable gate array (FPGA) is an integrated circuit designed to be configured by a customer or a designer after manufacturinghence the term '' field-programmable''. The FPGA configuration is generally specified using a hardware de ...

, and

electronic design automation Electronic design automation (EDA), also referred to as electronic computer-aided design (ECAD), is a category of software tools for designing Electronics, electronic systems such as integrated circuits and printed circuit boards. The tools wo ...

Computer games A personal computer game, also known as a PC game or computer game, is a type of video game played on a personal computer (PC) rather than a video game console or arcade machine. Its defining characteristics include: more diverse and user-deter ...

Computer security Computer security, cybersecurity (cyber security), or information technology security (IT security) is the protection of computer systems and networks from attack by malicious actors that may result in unauthorized information disclosure, the ...

and

privacy Privacy (, ) is the ability of an individual or group to seclude themselves or information about themselves, and thereby express themselves selectively. The domain of privacy partially overlaps with security, which can include the concepts of a ...

Computer vision Computer vision is an interdisciplinary scientific field that deals with how computers can gain high-level understanding from digital images or videos. From the perspective of engineering, it seeks to understand and automate tasks that the hum ...

visualization Visualization or visualisation may refer to: *Visualization (graphics), the physical or imagining creation of images, diagrams, or animations to communicate a message * Data visualization, the graphic representation of data * Information visualiz ...

, and graphics * Cyber-physical systems * Database systems *

Data science Data science is an interdisciplinary field that uses scientific methods, processes, algorithms and systems to extract or extrapolate knowledge and insights from noisy, structured and unstructured data, and apply knowledge from data across a br ...

* Distributed systems *

Electronic circuit An electronic circuit is composed of individual electronic components, such as resistors, transistors, capacitors, inductors and diodes, connected by conductive wires or traces through which electric current can flow. It is a type of electrical ...

* Human–computer interaction * Mathematical modeling and

numerical analysis Numerical analysis is the study of algorithms that use numerical approximation (as opposed to symbolic computation, symbolic manipulations) for the problems of mathematical analysis (as distinguished from discrete mathematics). It is the study of ...

* Nanoscience and nanotechnology *

Natural language processing Natural language processing (NLP) is an interdisciplinary subfield of linguistics, computer science, and artificial intelligence concerned with the interactions between computers and human language, in particular how to program computers to pro ...

* Networks * Photonics and electronic devices *

Power systems An electric power system is a network of electrical components deployed to supply, transfer, and use electric power. An example of a power system is the electrical grid that provides power to homes and industries within an extended area. The e ...

and energy engineering * Programming languages * Real-time systems *

Remote sensing Remote sensing is the acquisition of information about an object or phenomenon without making physical contact with the object, in contrast to in situ or on-site observation. The term is applied especially to acquiring information about Earth ...

and

environmental technology Environmental technology (envirotech) or green technology (greentech), also known as ''clean technology'' (''cleantech''), is the application of one or more of environmental science, green chemistry, environmental monitoring and electronic device ...

Robotics Robotics is an interdisciplinary branch of computer science and engineering. Robotics involves design, construction, operation, and use of robots. The goal of robotics is to design machines that can help and assist humans. Robotics integrat ...

and

control Control may refer to: Basic meanings Economics and business * Control (management), an element of management * Control, an element of management accounting * Comptroller (or controller), a senior financial officer in an organization * Controlling ...

Systems biology Systems biology is the computational modeling, computational and mathematical analysis and modeling of complex biological systems. It is a biology-based interdisciplinary field of study that focuses on complex interactions within biological syst ...

Software engineering Software engineering is a systematic engineering approach to software development. A software engineer is a person who applies the principles of software engineering to design, develop, maintain, test, and evaluate computer software. The term '' ...

Storage systems Storage may refer to: Goods Containers * Dry cask storage, for storing high-level radioactive waste * Food storage * Intermodal container, cargo shipping * Storage tank Facilities * Garage (residential), a storage space normally used to store car ...

Vaccines A vaccine is a biological preparation that provides active acquired immunity The adaptive immune system, also known as the acquired immune system, is a subsystem of the immune system that is composed of specialized, systemic cells and pro ...

and antiviral therapeutics

Role in sequencing the human genome

In May 1985, Robert L. Sinsheimer, then Chancellor of the

, conducted a workshop on the feasibility of sequencing the human genome. Sinsheimer and his colleagues in the Biology Department had determined that the project would require developing more powerful methods for genetic mapping and cloning, an automated means of sequencing, and improved means of data storage, and invited leading scientists in all these areas to the workshop. The group determined that the task was feasible, but was split on whether it would be worth the time and funding. It would take another several years before an academic consortium could obtain the funding needed for the task. The publicly-funded

was officially launched in 1990, with the backing of the NIH and other organizations throughout the world. In 1998, the private

Celera Corporation Celera is a subsidiary of Quest Diagnostics which focuses on genetic sequencing and related technologies. It was founded in 1998 as a business unit of Applera, spun off into an independent company in 2008, and finally acquired by Quest Diagnostic ...

started a parallel sequencing project that was able to proceed more quickly and at a lower cost than the public project because it made use of the data that the academic consortium had made openly available. Researchers in the consortium became nervous that if Celera was able to complete the sequencing project first, it would patent the results and restrict the redistribution and scientific use of the data. In May of 2000,

Jim Kent William James Kent (born February 10, 1960) is an American research scientist and computer programmer. He has been a contributor to genome database projects and the 2003 winner of the Benjamin Franklin Award. Early life Kent was born in Hawa ...

, a biology graduate student at UC Santa Cruz who had a background as a computer programmer, approached Computer Science Professor David Haussler and offered to write an assembly program using a sampler strategy. Haussler had rigged together a makeshift supercomputer out of 100 Dell Pentium III processor workstations for the genome project, but Celera was working with one of the most powerful computer systems available at the time, and their chances looked grim. Desperate to try anything that might allow academics to keep the genomic data open-source, Haussler gave Kent the go-ahead. In what has been described by other scientists as an almost miraculous feat, Kent took less than a month to write a program, GigAssembler, that allowed the Human Genome Project to assemble and publish the first human genome sequence on June 22, 2000, just a few days before Celera completed theirs. After UC Santa Cruz published their draft of the human genome online, Kent began programming the UCSC Genome Browser to allow researchers to search 21 tracks of information aligned with the DNA sequence to help them identify genes. The Browser continues to be an important

open-source Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open-source model is a decentralized sof ...

tool for uncovering the causes of disease and develop new treatments. In 2004, David Haussler became the inaugural member of the Biomolecular Engineering Department at UC Santa Cruz. Today he is the scientific director of the UC Santa Cruz Genomics Institute, as well as the scientific co-director of the California Institute for Quantitative Biosciences (QB3). Jim Kent is currently the director of the UCSC Genome Browser Project and a research scientist with UCSC’s Center for Biomolecular Science & Engineering. The Santa Cruz Genomics Institute continues to be leaders in the field of genomics, with a commitment to open-source research.

Student demographics

Undergraduates

In the 2018-2019 school year, there were 4,165 undergraduate students associated with the Baskin School of Engineering, 3.1% whom were African American/Black, 42.1% Asian, 15.4% Hispanic/Latino, 0.6% Pacific Islander/Native Hawaiian, 26.1% white, and 9.8% international. Women make up 21% of the undergraduate population in the Baskin School, while men make up 78%.

Graduates

For the 2018-2019 school year, there were 562 graduate students associated with the Baskin School of Engineering, 1.7% of whom were African American/Black, 11.7% Asian, 6.3% Hispanic or Latino, 24.3% of White, and 48.3% international. The graduate population of Baskin Engineering is 28% female, and 71% male.

Centers and institutes

Centers

Research centers within the Baskin School of Engineering include * W.M. Keck Center for Adaptive Optical Microscopy * Center for Biomolecular Science and Engineering (CBSE) * Center for Games and Playable Media * Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society (CITRIS) * W.M. Keck Center for Nanoscale Optofluidics * Center for Research in Open Source Software (CROSS) * Center for Research in Storage Systems (CRSS) * Center For Sustainable Energy And Power Systems (CenSEPS) *Cyber-Physical Systems Research Center (CPSRC) * Data, Discovery and Decisions (D3) Research Center *Storage Systems Research Center (SSRC)

Institutes

Research institutes within the Baskin School of Engineering include * California Institute for Quantitative Biosciences (QB3) * Institute for the Biology of Stem Cells (IBSC) * Institute For Scalable Scientific Data Management (ISSDM) * UC Santa Cruz Genomics Institute

Deans

* Founding Dean: Patrick E. Mantey, July 1997- December 2000 * Sung Mo "Steve" Kang, January 2001- February 2007 * Acting Dean: Michael S. Isaaccson, January 2006- June 2006, March 2007-April 2009 * Arthur P. Ramirez, May 2009-June 2014 * Interim Dean: Joseph P. Konopelski, July 2014-June 2016 *

Alexander Wolf Alexander Wolf (born 21 December 1978) is a former German biathlete. At the 2008 World Championships in Östersund, he won bronze medals in the 12.5 km pursuit and the 4 × 7.5 km relay. Biathlon results All results are sourced fr ...

, 2016–present

Connection to Silicon Valley

The main UC Santa Cruz campus is located just thirty miles from one of the largest global centers of technology and innovation in the

and has spent decades cultivating relationships with industry leaders in the area through its Silicon Valley Initiatives. Faculty and students regularly collaborate with industry on research projects, which has led to many students getting internships and permanent jobs at leading companies, including Amazon, Apple, Google, and Facebook. Business Insider has ranked UC Santa Cruz one of the top twenty schools to land a person a job in the Silicon Valley. The Baskin School of Engineering conducts classes, career training, and professional development programs at the UC Santa Cruz Silicon Valley satellite campus located on Bowers Avenue in Santa Clara,

California California is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States, located along the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the List of states and territori ...

to further facilitate relationships between university researchers and industry leaders. The satellite campus currently houses a professional masters program in games and playable media, a distance education site for some BSOE graduate level courses, shared satellite offices for BSOE faculty, the BSOE corporate development staff offices, and a shared office for BSOE administration and BSOE local IT staff support. The Santa Clara location opened in April 2016 and is the co-location of the UCSC Extension and UCSC Silicon Valley Academic Operations.

Facilities

The Baskin School of Engineering is housed in the Jack Baskin Engineering building, located on High Street at the north-most end of the UC Santa Cruz main campus. The structure was completed in 1971 and was originally the Applied Sciences Building before the engineering department was formed in the 1990s. In the summer of 2004, UC Santa Cruz completed construction on a 212-seat Baskin Engineering Auditorium and Engineering 2 building to provide more space for the growing department, right across from the original engineering building. The Physical Sciences Building began providing additional space for biomolecular engineering programs and groundbreaking for a new Biomedical Sciences Building began in 2010. In 2019, the UCSC Genomics Institute, an Organized Research Unit (ORU) based in the Baskin School of Engineering, moved to a new facility at 2300 Delaware on the west side of Santa Cruz, and were later joined by Baskin Engineering labs that work with smart power and robotics/motion-capture. The facility, known now as the Westside Research Park, is an enormous complex with three buildings encompassing 240,000 gross square feet of space. It is located three blocks from

Natural Bridges State Beach Natural Bridges State Beach is a California state park in Santa Cruz, California, in the United States. The park features a natural bridge across a section of the beach. It is also well known as a hotspot to see monarch butterfly migrations. T ...

and includes state-of-the-art clean rooms, office space, loading docks, luncheon areas, and a thirty-foot tall, net-enclosed arena to provide airspace for robotics testing.

Startups and spinoffs

Research conducted at the Baskin School of Engineering has led to the development of a number of new technologies that are currently being used in industry, medicine, and security. Students and faculty have engaged in collaborative research projects with industry partners at companies such as

Adobe Inc. Adobe Inc. ( ), originally called Adobe Systems Incorporated, is an American multinational computer software company incorporated in Delaware and headquartered in San Jose, California. It has historically specialized in software for the crea ...

Amazon Amazon most often refers to: * Amazons, a tribe of female warriors in Greek mythology * Amazon rainforest, a rainforest covering most of the Amazon basin * Amazon River, in South America * Amazon (company), an American multinational technology c ...

Apple Inc. Apple Inc. is an American multinational technology company headquartered in Cupertino, California, United States. Apple is the largest technology company by revenue (totaling in 2021) and, as of June 2022, is the world's biggest company b ...

eBay eBay Inc. ( ) is an American multinational e-commerce company based in San Jose, California, that facilitates consumer-to-consumer and business-to-consumer sales through its website. eBay was founded by Pierre Omidyar in 1995 and became a ...

Facebook Facebook is an online social media and social networking service owned by American company Meta Platforms. Founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with fellow Harvard College students and roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin M ...

Google Google LLC () is an American multinational technology company focusing on search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, artificial intelligence, and consumer electronics. ...

Hewlett-Packard The Hewlett-Packard Company, commonly shortened to Hewlett-Packard ( ) or HP, was an American multinational information technology company headquartered in Palo Alto, California. HP developed and provided a wide variety of hardware components ...

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology corporation producing computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at the Microsoft Redmond campus located in Redmond, Washing ...

, and IBM. Affiliates of the Baskin School of Engineering have also gone on to develop a number of startups and companies, some of which have spun off directly from technologies they researched and developed at the university.

Companies founded by professors

Companies founded by professors at Baskin Engineering include *Astrea Forensics *Dovetail Genomics *Fluxus *HiPic *Maverix Biomics *MagArray *Pinpoint Science *Rulai

Companies founded by students, alumni, and postdocs

Companies founded by students, alumni, and postdoctoral researchers at Baskin Engineering include * Aether Biomachines *Alphonso Inc *Brilliant Smart Home Technologies * Ceph *ClaretBio * Cloudflare *Code Naturally * Concur Technologies *Confluent Inc *CruzFoam *Digital Nest *

eGain eGain Corporation (formerly known as eGain Communications Corporation) is a cloud-based software company with its headquarters at Sunnyvale, California. eGain provides applications for customer service, knowledge management, and analytics, that ...

*Five3 Genomics * Ontera (Formally Two Pore Guys) *

Pure Storage Pure Storage is an American publicly traded technology company headquartered in Mountain View, California, United States. It develops all-flash data storage hardware and software products. Pure Storage was founded in 2009 and developed its product ...

* Shopkick *Realtime *UpVoice *Vibrado Technologies * WhoWhere?

References

External links

Jack Baskin School of EngineeringPhotographs of Jack Baskin School of Engineering from the UC Santa Cruz Library's Digital Collections
{{DEFAULTSORT:Jack Baskin School Of Engineering Baskin School of Engineering, UC Santa Cruz Engineering universities and colleges in California Baskin School of Engineering, UC Santa Cruz Baskin School of Engineering, UC Santa Cruz Educational institutions established in 1997 1997 establishments in California