Cluster Life
Catch up with the latest labs, lectures, and field trips!
Photo by Nevaeh Maldonado-Alcala
2. Nanochemistry & Nanotechnology
Our final week of COSMOS was one full of laughter and lifelong memories. Though we were tired at the beginning of the week, our spirits lifted once we found out we had won the COSMOS Olympics!
In our last lab, we measured the anodization of bismuth. It was cool to observe the color changes as the bismuth pellets turned from grayish to sparkly purple. Additionally, our cluster visited a spectroscopy lab, where we got to witness a Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM) in action, allowing us to look at the nanoparticles we synthesized over the course of the program. We even got to engrave Prof. Chen’s face into some of the samples we placed in the SEM!
When we weren’t preparing for our final projects, Prof. Terrill lectured on Quantum Mechanics. We watched a movie on the Discovery of the Higgs Boson, an important discovery in the realm of physics, and learned about various spectroscopy methods, such as Raman Spectroscopy and Vibrational Spectroscopy. To better explain the complicated concepts, Prof. Terrill picked students to interact with each other as electrons.
During our cluster meetings, we signed each other's shirts, sang Disney songs, and practiced our special chant for Prof. Chen’s Discovery Lecture. As a reward for winning the Olympics, we were treated to a cluster Movie Night, where we watched Inception!
Though it's hard to believe that COSMOS has already come to an end, being a part of the close-knit Cluster 2 community made COSMOS even more enjoyable. We want to express our gratitude to the professors, RAs, Cluster Fellows, Lab Assistants, and Cluster mates for making this an unforgettable moment. After these 4 weeks, everyone in Cluster 2 has the lyrics to Viva La Vida memorized, and an obsession with Buckyballs!
By Shrijani Buruganahalli
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3. Bugs and Bones
Week 4 has made us increasingly aware of the short time left at COSMOS. Our Monday was a rush to finish our posters, using every second available to perfect the graphs and rewrite sentences. We felt a sense of completion as we sent our posters off to be printed, our past four weeks finally coming to fruition.
Though we finished our projects, Cluster 3 was far from idle the rest of the week. On Tuesday we had our final field trip: the UCSC greenhouses, located on the roof of the Thimann Labs. After a brief presentation on insect and plant relationships and a few examples of insect-infested plants, we were sent off to look around at all the beautiful foliage. As we wandered, our professor pointed out interesting insects and described various insect processes we could see, like aphids sucking the sap out of leaves.
We dug into our mammal lessons as we dissected owl pellets: the indigestible parts of an owl’s meal, consisting of feathers, fur, and, of course, bones! We tore through them, looking for bones to later be identified and glued to a paper for our own COSMOS souvenir. With the time remaining, we finished pinning insects for our private collections and practiced a bit more with our insect-identifying skills, paying close attention to the bristle placement on flies and the number of tarsomeres on a beetle. We ended the week ready for the poster session, rewarded with boba from our RAs that we shared at our last cluster meeting.
This has been a unique experience for everyone, and we learned so much about the complex world surrounding us. I know we will all carry this special experience with us forever, and look back fondly on the memories of bug collecting, field trips, and so many other special moments.
By Kinley Renger
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5. Video Game Design
The final week of COSMOS was full of work for Cluster 5. We kicked off the week learning about the game design document, or a document where a group of game developers carefully track their steps in making a game. The document also contains the team charter and studio name, which we decided before our work began on our final projects. In addition to this, we also made the cover art for our games which included our game title and studio name.
Later, we began the process of developing our games. From exciting new 3D models and code to adventurous, decision-based games, our cluster had a vast array of games being developed. Many of us used the game engines that we formally learned during the second week of class, such as Unity and Gameboy Studio, however, some used other engines such as Godot.
On Wednesday and Thursday, we were able to playtest our games and see our final projects come together into a playable game. We got feedback on what to improve and bugs to fix, allowing us to make our game better for Friday’s Symposium.
At the STEM Symposium, we showcased our games to an assortment of students, and showed off our hard work. Overall, Cluster 5 had an amazing experience learning about the theory, process, and implementation of game design over this four-week course!
By Raghav Garimella
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6. Sustainable Power
Cluster 6 had a wonderful time in the final week at COSMOS, despite the looming end of the program. The week began with the COSMOlympics, where our teamwork brought us four wins. We did especially well in the volleyball game, which we managed to win even after an RA stepped in to support our opponents.
Cluster 6’s final week at COSMOS was a busy one, filled with exploration of renewable energy types, as Prof. Yu Zhang taught us the theory and mathematics behind green power. We covered solar power, wind power, and hydropower, and applied our knowledge in practical labs with Cluster Assistant Jing Xiong. In these labs, we measured solar panel placement viability and built and raced solar-powered toy cars.
We also had the opportunity to visit the large solar array over UCSC’s east parking lot, which sustainably serves 20% of UCSC’s power demand. Our guide from UCSC’s sustainability office went into depth about the advantages and shortcomings of the solar project, as well as describing her work with mapping out the future of the campus’s energy generation.
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7. Microbiology and Environmental Toxicology
We had a week full of labs!
In Environmental Toxicology, we performed the domoic acid test from the previous week (refer to last week’s cluster recap for more information), this time using the shellfish extracts we took. We made it through all the steps this time (a significant accomplishment). Then, we used the dilution factor of our shellfish solutions and the domoic acid values in each of our four standards (ng/mL) to find the amount of domoic acid in the shellfish (ng/g).
In Microbiology, we did a set of labs evaluating water pollution using E. coli as a microbial indicator. First, we filtered different amounts of a water sample (my group’s sample was from the Santa Cruz wharf) and transferred the filter to a petri dish. Over the next two days, we isolated the DNA from the bacteria that had grown on the plates. This was a complex process involving various series of extractions, centrifuging, vortexing, and incubating–all to end up with a 100-microliter solution! We then got the chance to perform gel electrophoresis with our DNA samples; it took a lot of pipetting discipline.
On our last day of class, we visited the UCSC Greenhouse! We explored both the tropical and cool houses and learned about conservation efforts at the Younger Lagoon and Fort Ord Natural Reserve. UCSC students have the opportunity to study plant morphology and evolution at this magical plant house.
Lastly, our final presentations ranged from microplastics to gut-brain axis research! It was so rewarding to present and have a final sing-along with our talented professor, Peter Weiss. This Cluster 7 has made unforgettable memories and developed a true love for STEM at UCSC. We’re leaving here knowing we are anything but basic. We will always do as we otter.
By Ana Cabrera
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8. Wonders of the Ocean
This week, we became crime scene investigators as we revisited the Long Marine Lab for a harbor porpoise necropsy! Cluster 8 learned how scientists take measurements, such as for length and blubber thickness, and held the porpoise’s blubber, muscles, heart, liver, and kidney. The next day, we took on a jawsome skull lab, for which we compared the skulls of sea otters, elephant seals, manatees, dolphins, and porpoises, just to name a few, and felt different types of whale baleen. We learned how to identify marine mammals by their skulls, and gained an understanding of how to detect evolutionary patterns and why some skulls are shaped a certain way.
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9. Building Blocks of Life: Molecular and Cell Biology
Cluster 9’s week started out with a trip to Roaring Camp Railroad on Saturday then COSMOlympics the following day. At COSMOlympics, students participated in everything from a watermelon eating contest to ultimate frisbee. We took a staggering 8th place, but won in both volleyball and soccer.
During the academic week Cluster 9 returned to the lab. With all research complete, students were able to analyze their sequenced bacterial DNA received from UC Berkeley the previous week, then concisely summarize all data on posters to be presented program-wide on our final day here at UCSC. Every student was able to contribute significantly to Dr. Shanks’ research project and create their own CV (curriculum vitae) for future opportunities.
To conclude all four weeks of lectures with Dr. Wang, Cluster 9 toured his lab at the UCSC campus. This experience helped to show how all the lectures and learning are applied to research that is making an impact in the valuable field of cancer research.
Our final chant was unique to Shaowei Chen, our beloved program director; “Cluster 9 it’s Shaowei time.”
As a Cluster, we would like to thank all of the COSMOS staff, professors, RAs, and cluster fellows, with special thanks to James Shanks, Zhu Wang, Julia Mooney, Mery Ter-Avetisyan, Amit James, and Bianca Pacheco. This has been an incredibly valuable experience for all of us and it wouldn’t have been possible without all of you. Thank you!
By Carly Ackerman
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11. Artificial Intelligence
Last week, it was ChatGPT; this week, it was Stable Diffusion.
The week started off slow, with lectures on the high-level architecture of many state-of-the-art machine learning models (i.e. image captioning models, image transfer models, etc.). We then dove straight into generation models, getting all the way to diffusion models; the single-best image generation model.
Cluster 11 learned a fairly key lesson this week: simpler is always better. Most of the generation models were based on elegantly simple, yet novel, ideas.
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On Monday, following the Cluster Olympics, Cluster 12 showed up to class tired but excited to continue to prepare for the COSMOS Symposium at the end of the week.
Throughout Monday and Tuesday, we practiced delivering both longer-style presentations and quick one-minute elevator pitches. Although everyone struggled initially, there was a noticeable improvement and most of us felt ready for Friday.
On Wednesday, Cluster 12 had its first and only in-person field trip, which was at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory near Stanford University. Within SLAC, we toured both the LCLS (Linac Coherent Light Source) and the SSRL (Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Lightsource), research facilities studying quantum materials through spectroscopy.
At the LCLS we navigated long tunnels to different labs that were using the X-rays for each of their different projects. Excitingly for many cluster members, each different project was color coded. The purple project, which, littered with “Hello Kitty” stickers, had purple hardhats, purple clocks, AND purple file cabinets, and was a certified cluster favorite.
Cluster 12 also learned about the multitude of experiments using the SSRL, ranging from archaeological research to medical advancements. We learned about both hard and soft spectroscopy, as well as the different environments necessary for each.
Thursday marked our last “normal” day as a cluster and we spent a large part of it preparing for the symposium. Thankfully, we were granted a break from the presentation grind, during which we traveled to Dr. Myriam Telus’ lab in the Earth and Planetary Sciences department at UCSC and examined the gold nanoparticles that we had previously synthesized in the lab under a Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM) machine.
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