Statistics

• Short Biography: As Vice Provost for Academic Affairs, I primarily work to support faculty success. As a statistician, I study statistical methods for computer simulation modeling problems. In my spare time, I am a rock climber.

• Cultural background: Fourth generation Cantonese on my father's side

• Language spoken: English, French

• Places lived: Born and raised in Hawaii

• Website

Computer Science and Engineering

• Short Biography: "Xin (Eric) Wang is an Assistant Professor of Computer Science and Engineering at UC Santa Cruz. His research interests include Natural Language Processing, Computer Vision, and Machine Learning, with a focus on building embodied AI agents that can communicate with humans through natural language to perform real-world multimodal tasks. Xin has served as an Area Chair for conferences such as ACL, NAACL, EMNLP, and ICLR, as well as a Senior Program Committee for AAAI and IJCAI. He has received awards and recognitions for his work, including the CVPR Best Student Paper Award (2019) and a Google Research Faculty Award (2022), as well as three Amazon Alexa Prize Awards (SimBot, TaskBot, and SocialBot, 2022-2023)."

• Cultural background: First-generation college graduate, an international scholar, Chinese

• Language spoken: English, Chinese

• Places lived: Santa Cruz, Santa Barbara, Hangzhou, Rizhao 

Electrical and Computer Engineering

• Short Biography: Yu Zhang is currently an Assistant Professor in the ECE Department of University of California, Santa Cruz. Prior to joining UCSC, he was a postdoc at UC Berkeley and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Dr. Zhang received the Ph.D. degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of Minnesota in 2015. His research interests span the spectrum from theory to real-world applications, with a focus on electric power systems.

• Language spoken: English, Mandarin

Electrical and Computer Engineering

• Short Biography: Dean, Baskin School of Engineering, UCSC (2001-2007); Chancellor, UC Merced (2007-2011); President, KAIST (2013-2017); Professor of ECE, UCSC (2001- present)

• Cultural background: First-generation college graduate

• Language spoken: English, Korean

• Places lived: Korea, U.S.

Mathematics

Mathematics

• Language spoken: English, Mandarin

Computational Media

• Cultural background: My parents are both from Taiwan (Taipei) and came here for graduate school. I grew up in the Bay Area. My wife is from mainland China (Chengdu).

• Language spoken: English, Mandarin

• Website

Applied Mathematics

• Language spoken: Chinese (Mandarin), English

• Places lived: China, U.S.

Statistics

• Language spoken: Korean, English

• Places lived: Korea

Applied Mathematics

• Short Biography: Dongwook Lee is a Professor and Graduate Director of the Applied Mathematics Department at UC Santa Cruz. Dongwook’s research interests emphasize developing numerical schemes of high-order shock-capturing methods for computational magnetohydrodynamics (MHD) and gas dynamics on large-scale computing architectures. Dongwook applies these numerical methods to investigate nonlinear flow problems in astrophysics and high-energy-density physics. Before joining UC Santa Cruz, he worked as a senior applied mathematician at the Flash Center for Computational Science at the University of Chicago from 2006 to 2014. Dongwook received his Ph.D. in Applied Mathematics and Scientific Computation from the University of Maryland at College Park in 2006.

• Cultural background: South Korean

• Language spoken: Korean

• Places lived: Seoul (Korea); Yongin (Korea); College Park, MD; Chicago, IL

Anthropology

• Short Biography: As a medical anthropologist, Nancy Chen focuses on healing practices and health institutions. She regularly teaches on the anthropology of food and focuses on changing meanings of food and medicine.She has conducted fieldwork in mainland China, primarily, with comparative research in the United States.  She also studies Chinese diasporas and expanding notions of Asian American Pacific Islander identify.

• Cultural background: Chinese American, 1.5 generation

• Language spoken: English, Mandarin

• Places lived: Louisiana, China

• Website

Psychology

• Cultural background: First-gen and international scholar

• Language spoken: Mandarin, Taiwanese

• Places lived: Taiwan, Illinois, before coming to Santa Cruz

Sociology

• Short Biography: Steve McKay is Associate Professor of Sociology and Director of the Center for Labor Studies at the UC Santa Cruz.  His research interests include work, gender, migration, race, and globalization. He is author of Satanic Mills or Silicon Islands? The Politics of High Tech Production in the Philippines (2006), and co-editor of Precarity and Belonging: Labor, Migration, and Noncitizenship (2021), and New Routes for Diaspora Studies (2012). His current research on Filipino merchant seafarers examines racialization and masculinity in global labor markets.  Since 2014, he has also led community-initiated student-engaged research (CISER) projects conducted across Santa Cruz County, focused on: low-wage labor (Working for Dignity), affordable rental housing (No Place Like Home), immigrant and mixed-status families (We Belong), and the legacies of early Filipino farm workers (Watsonville is in the Heart). 

• Cultural background: Filipino-American

• Language spoken: English, Indonesia, German, Tagalog

• Places lived: Indonesia, the Philippines, Singapore, Germany

Economics

• Language spoken: English, Korean

• Places lived: South Korea, Sweden, U.S.

Economics

Environmental Studies

• Short biography: Flora Lu is a Professor of Environmental Studies at UCSC and Provost of College Nine and John R. Lewis College. She earned her A.B. in Human Biology from Stanford University and her Ph.D. in Ecology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. As an ecological anthropologist, Flora is interested in human/environment dynamics in tropical rainforests, the political economy of oil extraction, resource governance, household economics, and environmental justice. Her longitudinal fieldwork among indigenous communities in the northeastern Ecuadorian Amazon has been featured in two programs on the National Geographic Channel, has been funded by $3 million in external grants, and has been published in four books and three dozen chapters and articles. A faculty member at UCSC since 2008, Flora is the recipient of the Division of Social Sciences “Golden Apple” Distinguished Teaching Award (2010); Committee on Teaching's Excellence in Teaching Award (2011); and Chancellor’s Diversity Award (2016, for the People of Color Sustainability Collective).

• Cultural background: Chinese-American, generation 1.5

• Languages spoken: English, basic Mandarin, conversational Spanish

• Places lived: California, North Carolina, Ecuador

Astronomy and Astrophysics

• Short Biography: Retired since 2014 after being an Astronomer and Professor of Astronomy and Astrophysics at UC Santa Cruz, which I joined in 1988. Got my A.B. from Cornell in 1972 and PhD from Berkeley in 1981. I continue to do research in cosmology on the evolution of galaxies  and enjoy living with my wife  of over 40 years (Anna Hackenbracht) on campus, amidst the awesome beauty of our Monterey Bay region. Our son and daughter are young adults still in search of their path and passions in life. 

• Cultural background: Culturally, I am predominantly Chinese American with accent-free fluency in English, having lived in San Francisco between the ages of 6-12.  I was, however, born in Thailand and lived abroad  for half my youth,  mostly in Taiwan where I attended English speaking schools from middle through high school -- this is my excuse for my illiteracy in Chinese.  Both my parents were raised in China and thus, culturally, fully Chinese.

• Language spoken: English with smidgen of Mandarin

• Places lived: Bangkok in Thailand; Hong Kong; Taipei, Tainan in Taiwan; San Francisco, Berkeley, Santa Cruz in California; DC; Ithaca in NY; Boulder, Colorado Springs in Colorado

Ocean Sciences

• Cultural background: 2nd generation Chinese Canadian

• Language spoken: English, Mandarin (5-yr old fluency), French

• Places lived: California, Massachusetts, Quebec (Canada)

Chemistry and Biochemistry

• Language spoken: English, Mandarin, Teochew

• Places lived: China, US

Chemistry and Biochemistry

• Cultural background: International scholar

• Language spoken: English, Mandarin, Cantonese

• Places lived: Shanghai and Hong Kong

• Website

Ocean Sciences

• Short Biography: I'm a Professor of Geosciences at Williams College and a Visiting Scholar in Ocean Sciences for 2021-2022.

• Cultural background: 2nd generation Korean American

• Language spoken: English

• Places lived: VA, MA, CA

Ocean Sciences

• Cultural background: Mixed race: Filipinx, Latinx

• Language spoken: English

History

• Short Biography: I am a historian of China and the Chinese diaspora. I am a UCSC Ph.D. alum. 

• Cultural background: I am an immigrant and first-generation scholar.

• Language spoken: Cantonese, Mandarin

• Places lived: Hong Kong, Vancouver (BC, Canada), Victoria (BC, Canada), Madison (Wisconsin).

Literature

• Cultural background: Chinese-American

• Language spoken: English, Cantonese

• Places lived: Indiana, Massachusetts, Hong Kong, Texas, Singapore

Literature and Classical Studies Program

• Cultural background: Chinese American

• Language spoken: English, French, German, Mandarin Chinese

• Places lived: Oakland, Berkeley, St. Louis, St. Paul, New Jersey

• Website

Feminist Studies, South Asian Studies

• Short Biography: Anjali Arondekar, Feminist Studies, and founding Co-Director, Center for South Asian Studies, University of California, Santa Cruz. Her research engages the poetics and politics of sexuality, caste, and historiography, with a focus on Indian Ocean Studies and South Asia. She is the author of For the Record: On Sexuality and the Colonial Archive in India (Duke University Press, 2009, Orient Blackswan, India, 2010), winner of the Alan Bray Memorial Book Award for best book in lesbian, gay, or queer studies in literature and cultural studies, Modern Language Association (MLA), 2010. She is co-editor (with Geeta Patel) of “Area Impossible: The Geopolitics of Queer Studies,” GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies (2016). Her second book, Abundance: Sexuality, Historiography, Geopolitics (forthcoming Duke University Press), grows out of her interest in the archival figurations of sexuality, caste and capital in colonial British and Portuguese India.

• Cultural background: South Asian, born and raised in Bombay (now Mumbai), queer, Bahujan

• Language spoken: Marathi, Hindi, Kannada, Konkani, Spanish, Portuguese, French

• Places lived: India, UK

Critical Race and Ethnic Studies

• Short Biography: Christine Hong is the author of A Violent Peace: Race, Militarism, and Cultures of Democratization in Cold War Asia and the Pacific (Stanford University Press, 2019). Along with Deann Borshay Liem, she co-directed the Legacies of the Korean War oral history project. She serves on the board of directors of the Korea Policy Institute, an independent research and educational institute, and she is the co-editor of the journal of Critical Ethnic Studies. She also co-edited a two-volume thematic issue of Critical Asian Studies on Reframing North Korean Human Rights (2013-14); a special issue of positions: asia critique on The Unending Korean War (2015); and a forum of The Abusable Past on “White Terror, ‘Red’ Island: A People’s Archive of the Jeju 4.3 Uprising and Massacre.”

• Language spoken: English, some Korean, a little French

• Places lived: Seoul, South Korea; Kathmandu, Nepal; Oakland, CA

History

• Cultural background: Mixed race Caucasian and Japanese

• Language spoken: English, Japanese

• Places lived: U.S., Japan

Film and Digital Media

• Cultural background: Korean American

• Places lived: Iowa City, Chicago, Northampton, Los Angeles, Berkeley

Performance, Play & Design

• Short Biography: Amy Mihyang Ginther (she/they) currently is an assistant professor within the Department of Performance, Play & Design at UC Santa Cruz. She is a queer, transracially adopted theatre maker and accent designer who publishes and performs around themes of identity, embodied trauma, power, and representation. Ginther's edited volume, Stages of Reckoning: Antiracist and decolonial actor training, is due 2023 with Routledge and she is currently working on a musical about contestants of color who were eliminated from The Bachelor/ette, titled No Danger of Winning. Ginther is a Master Teacher of Acting and Singing with Archetypes, and is a certified teacher of Knight-Thompson Speechwork and Tectonic Theatre Company’s Moment Work devising method.

• Cultural background: Transracially adopted person from Korea

• Language spoken: English

• Places lived: US (east and west coast), Dublin, London, Buenos Aires, Seoul

Film and Digital Media

• Places lived: China, U.S.

Asian American/Pacific Islander Resource Center (AA/PIRC), SAEI Resource Centers, Division of Student Affairs and Success

• Short Biography: I am a queer Filipino/x American child of immigrants. I am from the Bay Area (Ohlone/Patwin land), and my love languages include quality time, laughter, and me time. I also love walking outside for fresh air, conversations that are both deep and light, and sleeping a minimum of 8 hours a night. 

• Cultural background: 2.5 generation Filipino/x American child of immigrants; first in family to graduate with a graduate degree

• Language spoken: English, some Tagalog & Spanish

• Places lived: American Canyon & Vallejo, CA; San José, CA; Burlington, VT; Santa Cruz, CA

• Website

CHES, College Student Life, Cowell and Stevenson Colleges

• Short Biography: Janine was born and raised in Tracy, California and has a passion for social justice, a loud voice, a commitment to humor, and probably more eye makeup than most people. Before arriving at UCSC, Janine has served four years as a full-time residence life professional at UCLA, UC Berkeley, and the University of Oregon. Janine obtained a Bachelors of Arts in Critical Race, Gender, and Sexuality Studies from Humboldt State University and a Masters degree in Higher Education and Student Affairs from the University of Vermont. Over the years, Janine has developed a passion for restorative justice, sexual assault prevention, residential curriculum development, and student of color advocacy. Outside of work, you can find Janine usually getting a manicure done to match their San Jose Shark’s hockey jersey.

• Cultural background: Pilipino American; 1.5 generation college graduate 

• Language spoken: English

• Places lived: US (east and west coast), Dublin, London, Buenos Aires, Seoul

• Website

Dean of Students Office, Student Affairs and Success

• Cultural background: Hapa, Japanese American, First-gen

• Language spoken: English, basic conversational Spanish

• Places lived: Oakland CA, New York NY, Burlington VT, and Santa Cruz County

Mary Porter Sesnon Art Gallery, Arts Division

• Cultural background: First-gen college graduate, 2nd generation Chinese-American (Macau)

• Language spoken: Cantonese

UCSF Farm / Center for Agroecology 

• Short Biography: I work as a manager and instructor at the Center for Agroecology farm, helping people build skills and knowledge to transform the food system, supporting the Black Lives Matter garden, and the BIPOC centered UCSC community herb garden. I focus on the preservation of story and culture through preserving seeds of the Asian diaspora. 

• Cultural background: Queer Yonsei 4th-gen Japanese/Chinese American

• Website

Academic Senate 

• Cultural background: Transracial Transnational Adoptee 

• Language spoken: English

Counseling and Psychological Services

• Cultural background: 1.5 generation Korean American

• Language spoken: Basic Korean

• Places lived: Korea, Utah, Canada (British Columbia), Rhode Island, Connecticut, New Jersey, Michigan

Division of Global Engagement

• Language spoken: English

• Anything you would like to share: I am interested in learning Tagalog. My parents did not teach me because it was discouraged in the 1970s.

SOMeCA

• Short Biography: Sayo Fujioka has deep roots in the San Francisco and Monterey Bay Areas as well as the UCSC community, graduating with a degree in Sociology. Prior to serving as Director, Sayo managed and organized successful electoral campaigns and citywide cultural festivals in Watsonville.  She was recruited to UCSC to design leadership trainings then served as a student organization advisor. Sayo attributes her love of collaborative, fast-paced environments to her ten years in the Bay Area restaurant industry, including her work as a Field Representative for the hotel and restaurant employees union.

• Cultural background: Japanese American

• Language spoken: English

• Website

SOMeCA / Division of Student Affairs & Success