Dear COSMOS Students: 

Do you remember your first day of COSMOS? The day you checked in and registered? Do you remember feel‐ing a li le nervous? A li le excited? And possibly even a li le afraid?  Well, your portrait photo in this Memory Book was taken on that first day and I hope you look at that picture and say not only do you look great but that, a er 4 weeks with COSMOS, you are now a different person. 

Academically, you’re be er. Stronger. Many of you may not know this but you have been exposed to 1st year college material. Some material, I’m told by several professors, are 2nd year material. You now know far more than probably most, if not all, of your high school friends about your topic. Your knowledge base has increased tremendously. Thanks to your Professors, Teaching Assistants and High School Teacher COSMOS Fellows. They helped improve your academic abili es to something greater. 

Socially, you’ve changed too. Your Residen al Assistants introduced you to ice breakers, community bonding games, and ul mately asked you to step outside your comfort zone. Those structured games were more than just games. They were ways to get you to see something different in yourselves and in each other. Trying something new is always scary but the RA’s made sure you did so in a safe space. You opened up to new pos‐sibili es of who you are and what you can become. 

Ul mately, you’ve transformed academically and socially. A philosophy COSMOS believes in. We wanted you to be a be er individual — intellectually and psychologically. We want you to be future leaders in the science world and beyond. And so we made sure that those “games” and the final project helped build your social network as well as your intellect.  You were great coming into COSMOS. We wanted to make you be er. I hope we succeeded. 

In the end, the purpose of COSMOS was to inspire you all to con nue in the Science, Technology, Engineer‐ing, and Math (STEM) world. The faculty challenged you academically and the teacher fellows and teaching assistants supported your learning. The residen al assistants challenged you to open up and be more inclu‐sive in a fun and safe environment. Everything we have done is to make sure that your experience in the world of science was posi ve and sa sfying. 

It was my pleasure to have you in our program and I look forward to hearing about your great accomplish‐ments in the future.  

Stay in touch, 

 

 Raul Ebio COSMOS Director 

Message from the Director

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Acknowledgements

The UC Santa Cruz COSMOS Program Staff would like to extend a special thanks to the University Dining 

Services, University Conference Services, Office of Physical Educa on, Recrea on, and Sports (OPERS), 

Playfair, Innova on Minds, and the janitorial staff for their support throughout this Summer’s program.  

We would addi onally like to thank this year’s Discovery Lecturers: 

Dr. Raja Guha Thakurta, Professor of Astronomy and Astrophysics 

Dr. Robert Kuhn, Associate Director of the Genome Browser Project 

Dr. Steve Haddock, Research Scien st, Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Ins tute and Adjunct Associate 

Professor Ecology and Evolu onary Biology 

Dr. Howard Peters, Lawyer, Inventor, and Chocolate Connoisseur 

Dr. Marilyn Walker, Professor of Computer Science  

Theresa Duringer, Award Winning Independent Game Developer, Co‐Founder of Temple Gates Game 

Studio 

 

We would like to thank this year’s Extra Credit Speakers: 

Paul Hoffman, MIT Alumni and Director of VPN Consor um 

Ebony Lewis, Associate Director, UC Admissions Office 

Jessica Moore, UC Financial Aid and Scholarships 

Pooja Desai, COSMOS Alumni, Medical Student, Stanford Intern 

Hugo Mora‐Torres, Career Center Pre‐Health Advisor 

 

Finally, we would like to thank Ma  Jaffe & The Distrac ons, and Sco  Ferreter for their performance at this 

year’s COSMOS Concert. 

Special thanks to the many Instructors, Teaching Assistants, COSMOS Fellows, Residen al Advisors, and 

students who have contributed their pictures to the program for inclusion in the crea on of this book. 

An addi onal special thanks is given to the following students for submi ng their designs for considera on 

in this year’s cover design contest. 

Elise Liu (Front Cover), Carolyn Duan (Back Cover),  Rhee Kang, Ayush Jain, Sienna Kirk, Chloe Celniker, 

Yasmin Noriega, Katherine Wu, Julianne “JJ” Hamler, Logan Tomlin, Quynh Truong, Michael Yoo. 

 

The contribu ons of these people, as well as many others not men oned, have allowed for this year’s 

program to be such a great success. 

Thank you, 

 

Admin i s t ra t i ve  S ta f f  

Kaitlyn Anderson Academic Coordinator

Sierra Schneider-Williams Residential Program Manager

Raul Ebio Director

Brett Bell Coordinator For Residential Education

Vanessa Mariscal Program Assistant

Eva Bedolla Program Assistant

Tiffany Lee Senior Resident Assistants

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Oscar Vazquez Senior Resident Assistants

Sean Sjahrial Wireless Lab Assistant

CLUSTER 1Number Theory and Discrete Math

Sara Hancock Kimberly Hou Suchita Joshi Jorge Juarez Duarte Taejong Kim

Jonathan Ko Alexander Lee Jerry Lin Ryan Liu Vanesa Luis

Miriam Almaraz Thomasin Bernhardt Fiorellla Chen John Chong Alvin Duong

Simrin Makhijani Bowen Mince Ashley Nguyen Henry Poskanzer Andrew Shao

Rahul Tewari Michael Wang Edward Yang Lindsay Yang Josh Yen 4

CLUSTER 1Number Theory and Discrete Math

Teacher Fellow

Ben Long

Instructors

Richard Gottesman

Joe Ferrara

Teaching Assistants

Bob Hingtgen

Connor Jackman

Residential Advisors

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Megan Taylor

John Hayes

CLUSTER 1

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CLUSTER 2

Nikki Livitsanos Amy Luu Aditi Mittal Shayok Neogi Congying Xiang

Alec Barajas Jonathan Chon Maggie Dong Annie Doris Josh Douglas

Ishani Karmarkar Caroline Kim Vincent Lao Max Lee Wellington Lee

Nanochemistry and Nanotechnology

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Claire Yin

CLUSTER 2Nanochemistry and Nanotechnology

Instructors

Ben Long

Shaowei Chen

Jazmin Briones

Residential Advisors

Roger Terrill Samantha Sweeney Jia Lu

Teaching Assistants

Rene Mercado Gustavo Chata

8 Residential Advisor Teacher Fellow

Shawn Strong Mark Gianino

CLUSTER 2

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CLUSTER 3

Brendon Lin Caton Lu Clarissa Nava Jane Park Jennifer Ramos

Mia Arvizu Amod Bhole Adriana Bibo Samantha Castillo Mallika Chatterjee

Kevin Dominguez Keely Fuller Kelly Goedde-Matthews JJ Hamler Saumitra Kelkar

Under the Sea: Marine Organisms and Oceanography

Lydia Sun Logan Tomlin Avani Vaid Katherine Wu Audrey Zhang

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CLUSTER 3Under the Sea: Marine Organisms and Oceanography

Teacher Fellow

David Stahl

Instructors

Shawn Noren Kramer

Baldo Marinovich

Teaching Assistants

Jen Maresh

Cynthia Carrion

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Residential Adviors

Gerardo Miranda

Andrea McDade

CLUSTER 3

12

CLUSTER 4

Kore Lum Amanda Milkovits Nhu Nguyen Michelle Niu Saddy Preza

Ze’ev Bernstein Jeffrey Campuzano David Chen Tom Condon Aska Fujimori-Smith

Daphne He Fenglan Jiang Rabab Karimjee Matt Kim Hannah Lee

Everyday Chemistry: From Perfumes to Pollution

Hannah Richter Mickey Vande Voorde Michelle Zhou

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CLUSTER 4Everyday Chemistry: From Perfumes to Pollution

Instructors

Manel Camps

Ian Jones

Chad Saltikov

Teacher Fellow

Kathryn Kriscunas

Teaching Assistants

Aimee Kaur

Joel Villalobos

Residential Advisors

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Jen Toc

CLUSTER 4 

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CLUSTER 5Video Games: The Design of Fun from Concept to Code

Harrison Ki Angela Li Alice Lim Elise Liu Shannon Lu

Alexis Camacho Annie Dao Carolyn Duan Robert Grassian Damian Grimes

Kelly Ho Caetano Hyams Ayush Jain Rhee Kang Inderpal Kaur

Elijah Mendez Areg Nersisyan Isabella Shulman Miranda Tang Ailyn Tong

Helen Wu Raymond Xu Sera Yang 16

Teaching Assistant

Corey Brennan

Teaching Assistant

Alexandra Riggs Takeshi Kaneko

Teaching Assistant

Ben Spalding Takeshi Kaneko

Instructor

Deirdra “Squinky” Kiai Ramon Torres

Residential Advisors

CLUSTER 5Video Games: The Design of Fun from Concept to Code

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Instructor

Marcelo Viana Nieto

COSMOS Fellow

John Wright

Residential Advisor

Laura Acevedo

CLUSTER 5 “Staying alive ah ah ah”

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CLUSTER 6

Sienna Kirk Saketh Kurnool Sabrina Liu Edwin Lopez Tammy Mok

Divya Chandrupatia Xavier Chua Alan Dang Adina Epstein Meryem Esa

Dennis Feng Jesus Gomez Sabelle Huang Lauren Hui Soumya Kalluri

Computer Networking and Robotics

Suryaa Murali Terry Nguyen Arun Sugumar

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Alanna Zhou Michael Yoo Jeffrey Xu Christine Wu

Jenny Wang Michael Wan

CLUSTER 6Computer Networking and Robotics

Teaching Assistants

Maxwell Lichtenstein

Max Dunne

Instructors

Gabriel Elkaim

Tracy Larrabee

Residential Advisors

Christopher Seruge Amorina Andersen

Teacher Fellow

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Christina Magana

CLUSTER 1 CLUSTER 6

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