List of University of California, Santa Cruz people

This page lists notable alumni and faculty of the University of California, Santa Cruz; alumni may have attended without graduating.

Notable alumni

Academia

• William Drea Adams – President of Colby College, Waterville, Maine
• Chester Dunning, B.A. 1971 - historian at Texas A&M University, specializes in Russian studies
• Kristen R. Ghodsee, B.A. 1993 - Professor of Gender and Women's Studies at Bowdoin College; winner of 2012 Guggenheim Fellowship
• Alexander Gonzalez, Ph.D 1979 – President of California State University, Sacramento
• Thyrza Nichols Goodeve, artist and writer, School of Visual Arts
• Caren Kaplan, Ph.D. - Professor of American Studies at UC Davis
• Steven G. Krantz, B.A - Professor of Mathematics at Washington University in St. Louis; winner of the Chauvenet Prize
• Annette Lareau, B.A. 1974 - Professor of Sociology at University of Pennsylvania
• Lisa Lowe, Ph.D. - Professor of Literature at Tufts
• Patricia Nelson Limerick - Professor of History at University of Colorado and a leading historian of the American West
• Tod Machover – MIT Media Lab
• Austin E. Quigley, Ph.D - Dean of Columbia College of Columbia University
• John R. Rickford, B.A. 1971 - Professor of Linguistics at Stanford University and African American Vernacular English or Ebonics expert
• Sally Sedgwick, B.A. 1978 - Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at University of Illinois at Chicago

Arts and letters

• Will Bagley, BA 1971 - historian of 1800s American West
• Michael A. Bellesiles, BA 1975 - author of a book "Arming America: The origins of a National Gun Culture" which won the Bancroft Prize in 2001; the prize was rescinded by Columbia University in 2002 as for having "violated basic norms of scholarship and the high standards expected of Bancroft Prize winners." Called a con-man by author Garry Wills, he was forced to resign from Emory University that year.
• Susie Bright - writer, sex activist and sex therapy focus leader
• Gail Carriger, MA 2008 - steampunk author
• William Finnegan- writer, journalist
• Laurie Garrett, BA 1975 - Newsday science reporter and author, Pulitzer Prize winner
• Philip Kan Gotanda - playwright
• Reyna Grande, BA 1999 - author, American Book Award winner
• Kira Lynn Harris, MFA 1998 - artist
• bell hooks, PhD 1983 - feminist social critic
• Miranda July - filmmaker and writer
• Jayne Ann Krentz, BA 1970 - New York Times bestselling author
• Katerina Lanfranco, BA 2001 - artist
• Deborah Madison, BA 1968 - cookbook author, founding chef of the Greens Restaurant
• Steve Martini, BA 1968 - bestselling mysteries author
• Omar Musa - award-winning Australian author, poet and rapper
• Kent Nagano, BA 1974 - conductor of the Los Angeles Opera and the Montreal Symphony Orchestra
• Larry Polansky, BA - composer
• Dana Priest, BA 1981 - Washington Post reporter and author; winner of the 2006 Pulitzer Prize for Beat Reporting and 2008 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service
• Michael Schennum, BA 2000 - photojournalist
• Lore Sjöberg - writer
• Andrea Smith, PhD 2002 - Cherokee activist and author
• David Talbot, BA - founder of Salon.com, author, journalist
• Mark Teague, BA 1985 - author and illustrator of children's books
• Hector Tobar, BA - Los Angeles Times columnist, author, winner of Pulitzer Prize in 1992
• Bernt Wahl, BA 1984, BS 1986 - author and entrepreneur, Fulbright Fellow. November 1985 coined UC Santa Cruz motto "Fiat Slug"
• Annie Wells, BA 1981 - photographer, filmmaker, winner of Pulitzer Prize for Spot News Photography in 1997
• Lawrence Weschler, 1974 - author
• Richard White – historian of American West, Native American history, and environmental history; MacArthur Foundation fellowship, 1995
• Daniel James Wolf, BA 1983 - composer
• Laurence Yep – author

Business

• Shel Kaphan, BA 1980 Mathenmatics Amazon's first employee and founding member of its technical team
• Jonah Peretti, BS 1996 - founder of BuzzFeed and Huffington Post
• Susan Wojcicki, MS - senior vice president, advertising at Google

Entertainment and broadcasting

• Lorin Ashton, aka Bassnectar - free-form electronic music artist and DJ
• Jello Biafra - singer and songwriter of the Dead Kennedys
• Matt Bettinelli-Olpin, BA, filmmaker (V/H/S, Southbound) and guitarist for Link 80
• Brannon Braga - award-winning film writer for Star Trek Generations and an executive producer of 24
• Bill Carter, BA Politics, Economics - documentary film director and author
• Rick Carter, BA, Oscar-winning art director and production designer
• John Craigie, BA Mathematics 2002 - folk singer
• Dennis Delaney, BA Anthropology 1976 - writer and actor
• Brett Dennen - singer, songwriter
• Jacob Aaron Estes, BA 1994 - film screenwriter and director
• Anne Flett-Giordano, BA 1976 - television writer and producer (Kate & Allie, Frasier, Desperate Housewives)
• Cary Joji Fukunaga, BA 1999 - Sundance Award-winning filmmaker (Sin Nombre)
• Matthew Gray Gubler, BA – actor (Criminal Minds') and director
• Richard Gunn, BA 1997 - actor (Dark Angel, Granite Flats, and For the Love of Money)
• Richard Harris - National Public Radio science reporter
• Antony Hegarty - attended in late 1980s - Composer and singer for Antony and the Johnsons, and visual artist
• Alice Inoue - former television presenter and author
• Ethan Klein, BA English Literature 2009 - YouTube video blogger and satirist
• Victor Krummenacher - bassist for Camper Van Beethoven, Monks of Doom
• David Lowery, BA 1984 - singer and songwriter for Camper Van Beethoven and Cracker
• Camryn Manheim, BA 1984 - actress
• Barry Mendel - film producer (Rushmore, Sixth Sense, Munich, Funny People)
• Stephen Mirrione, BA - Academy Award-winning film editor
• Bradley Nowell, singer and songwriter with Sublime
• Marti Noxon, BA - TV producer
• Joe Palca, PhD 1982 - National Public Radio science reporter
• Jack Passion, BA 2006 - competitive beard grower and star of IFC's Whisker Wars
• Chuck Ranberg, BA 1977 - television writer and producer, Frasier, Desperate Housewives
• Rebecca Romijn - supermodel, actress
• Maya Rudolph, BA 1995 - SNL cast member
• Andy Samberg, BA - Saturday Night Live cast member
• Tim Schafer - game designer for LucasArts and founder of Doublefine Productions
• Akiva Schaffer, BA - Saturday Night Live writer, filmmaker
• Stuart Schuffman, aka Broke-Ass Stuart, BA 2003 - travel writer, poet, host of IFC's Young Broke & Beautiful
• Jonathan Segel, BA 1985 - composer, multi-instrumentalist for Camper Van Beethoven
• Nikki Silva, BA 1973 - one half of The Kitchen Sisters, who are regularly featured on NPR
• Chris Tashima - actor, Academy Award-winning filmmaker
• Jesse Thorn, BS - host of NPR's Bullseye with Jesse Thorn
• Rubén Valtierra, BA - keyboardist for "Weird Al" Yankovic
• Ally Walker, BS - actress known for roles in Profiler, Sons of Anarchy, and The Protector
• Gillian Welch, BA 1990 - singer and songwriter
• Rich Wilkes, BA 1988 - writer, filmmaker (Billy Madison, Stoned Age, Beer Money, XXX, Airheads)

Law

• Vince Girdhari Chhabria, BA 1991 - judge, United States District Court for the Northern District of California
• Joan E. Donoghue, BA 1978 - judge, International Court of Justice
• Ellen Leonida, defense attorney for Scott Dyleski

Politics and public life

• Bettina Aptheker, PhD - leader in the Berkeley Free Speech Movement
• Katherine Canavan, BA - former United States Ambassador to the Republic of Botswana and United States Ambassador to Lesotho
• John Doolittle, BA 1972 - Member, U.S. House of Representatives, California 4th Congressional District
• Ron Gonzales, BA - Mayor of San Jose, California, 1999–2006
• Victor Davis Hanson, BA 1975 - Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution
• James Charles Kopp, BA Biology 1976 - murderer of Buffalo abortion doctor Barnett Slepian in 1998; convicted in 2003 and serving sentence of 25 years to life
• John Laird, BA 1972 - California Natural Resources Agency Secretary, former California Assemblyman, and Mayor of Santa Cruz
• Azadeh Moaveni, BA - journalist and writer
• Huey P. Newton, BA 1974, PhD 1980 - Co-founding member of the Black Panther Party
• Aaron Peskin, San Francisco Board of Supervisors member
• Drummond Pike, BA 1970 - Tides Foundation founder, philanthropist, and social entrepreneur
• Art Torres, BA 1968 - California Democratic Party Chairman, former California State Senator

Science

• Richard Bandler, MA 1975 - co-creator of neuro-linguistic programming
• Joseph DeRisi, BA 1992 - molecular biologist, professor at UC San Francisco, MacArthur Fellow, known for work on SARS and malaria
• Alan Dressler, PhD 1976, staff astronomer at the Carnegie Institution for Science, member of the National Academy of Sciences, cosmologist, author
• J. Doyne Farmer, PhD 1981 - pioneer in chaos theory, Prediction Company, Santa Fe Institute
• Debra Fischer, PhD 1998, Professor of Astronomy at Yale University, planet finder
• Yoav Freund, PhD 1993 - computer scientist, professor at University of California, San Diego, inventor of AdaBoost
• John Grinder, PhD 1971 - linguist, co-creator of neuro-linguistic programming
• Howard Hang, BS 1998 - Professor of Chemistry at Rockefeller University
• Steven Hawley, PhD 1977 - astronaut, Professor of Physics at Kansas University
• Geoffrey Marcy, PhD 1982 - Professor of Astronomy at UC Berkeley, planet finder, and member of the National Academy of Sciences
• Lara Mahal, BA 1996 - Professor of Chemistry at New York University
• Marc Okrand, BA 1972 - linguist, creator of the Klingon language
• Mark M. Phillips, PhD 1978 - staff astronomer at Las Campanas Observatory, inventor of the Phillips relationship, pioneer in supernova cosmology
• Rob Shaw, PhD 1980 - MacArthur Award for work on chaos theory, 1988
• Pamela Silver, BA 1974 - Professor of Systems Biology at Harvard Medical School, first Director of Harvard University Systems Biology Graduate Program, synthetic biologist
• Kathryn D. Sullivan, BS 1973 - astronaut, science museum CEO (COSI Columbus), Under Secretary of Commerce for Oceans and Atmosphere, NOAA Administrator
• Nicholas B. Suntzeff, PhD 1980 - Professor of Astronomy at Texas A&M University; cosmologist; co-founder of High-Z Supernova Search Team, which discovered dark energy

Sports

• Anton Peterlin - soccer player

Notable faculty

• Ralph Abraham - Professor Emeritus of Mathematics, notable for founding the Visual Mathematics Institute and for his pioneering work on chaos theory
• Bettina Aptheker - Professor of Feminist Studies and History
• Elliot Aronson - Professor Emeritus of Psychology; author of The Social Animal and Nobody Left to Hate: Teaching Compassion after Columbine; creator of the Jigsaw Classroom model; one of the few psychologists to win the American Psychological Association's highest honor in all three fields
• Reyner Banham - late Professor of Art History and a preeminent architectural historian, in particular of the modern era
• Tom Banks - Professor of Physics. Known for work on string theory, elementary particle physics, and cosmology
• Gregory Bateson - late lecturer and fellow of Kresge College; anthropologist, social scientist, linguist, visual anthropologist, semiotician and cyberneticist
• George R. Blumenthal - Professor of Astronomy and Astrophysics, and Chancellor of the University of California, Santa Cruz
• Norman O. Brown - late Professor Emeritus of Humanities
• William L. Burke - late Professor of Physics (cosmologist); chaos theory "godfather"
• James H. Clark - Assistant Professor of Information Science, founder of Silicon Graphics and Netscape
• James Clifford - Professor of History of Consciousness, known for publications of postmodernist and postcolonial interpretations of anthropology and ethnography
• David Cope - Professor of Music; notable for his experiments in A.I. and computer-created musical compositions
• Angela Davis - Professor of History of Consciousness, writer, activist
• John Dizikes - Professor Emeritus of American Studies, author, won the 1993 National Book Critics Circle Award
• Frank Drake - Professor Emeritus of Astronomy and Astrophysics; proposed the Drake Equation; member of the AAAS (elected 1974)
• William Everson - late lecturer and poet-in-residence
• Sandra M. Faber - Professor of Astronomy and Astrophysics; instrumental in inventing cold dark matter theory and fundamental work in the field of galaxy formation and evolution; member of the NAS (elected 1985), the AAAS (elected 1989), and the American Philosophical Society (elected 2001)
• Alison Galloway - forensic anthropologist who worked in identifying the physical remains of Laci Peterson in the Scott Peterson Trial
• Craig Haney - Professor of Psychology and instrumental researcher in the Stanford Prison Experiment
• Donna Haraway - Professor of History of Consciousness; doctorate in biology; often-cited author of feminist history of science and culture studies of cyborg
• David Haussler - Professor of Biomolecular Engineering; he and his team assembled the public draft human genome and developed the Genome Browser as part of the Human Genome Project; member of the AAAS (elected 2006) and the National Academy of Sciences
• George Herbig - emeritus Professor of Astronomy and Astrophysics, pioneer in the study of star formation, discoverer of the Herbig Ae/Be stars and Herbig-Haro Objects, member of the National Academy of Sciences
• George Hitchcock - late lecturer, poetry and theater
• David A. Huffman - deceased; founding faculty of the Information and Computer Science Board; developed Huffman coding
• Frederic Jameson - Professor of History of Consciousness; cultural critic and theorist of the post-modern; published the essay "Postmodernism, or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism", a significant investigation into contemporary culture and the political economy
• Jim Kent — Associate Research Scientist in the Department of Biomolecular Engineering; directs the genome browser development and quality assurance staff of the UCSC Genome Bioinformatics Group; created the computer program that assembled the first working draft of the human genome sequence; participates in the public consortium efforts to produce, assemble, and annotate genomes
• Robert P. Kraft - Professor of Astronomy and Astrophysics, stellar astronomer, member of the National Academy of Sciences
• Tom Lehrer - lecturer in American Studies and Mathematics; known for his satire and songwriting
• Darrell Long - Professor of Computer Science and Engineering, Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) and the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)
• Chip Lord - Professor of Film and Digital Media; member of Ant Farm, a groundbreaking, experimental art and architecture collective he founded in 1968 with fellow architect Doug Michels
• Nathaniel Mackey - poet and editor
• Dominic W. Massaro - Professor of Psychology and Computer Engineering; originator of the fuzzy logical model of perception, one of the leading theories of speech perception
• Claire Ellen Max – Professor of Astronomy and Astrophysics, member of the AAAS (elected 2002) and the National Academy of Sciences
• Gordon Mumma - Professor Emeritus of Music, composer
• Richard Abel Musgrave – member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (elected 1961)
• Jerry Nelson - Professor of astronomy and astrophysics; pioneered the use of mirror segments, making the Keck telescopes possible; member of the NAS
• Harry Noller - Professor of Biology. RNA research; member of the [American Academy of Arts and Sciences (elected 1969) and the National Academy of Sciences (elected 1992)
• Donald E. Osterbrock – member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (elected 1968) and the National Academy of Sciences (elected 1966)
• Micah Perks - fiction writer and memoirist
• Joel Primack - Professor of Physics, noted cosmologist; renowned for Cold Dark Matter Theory proposed along with Sandra Faber (see above) and Sir Martin Rees
• Geoffrey Pullum - Professor of Linguistics and Distinguished Professor of Humanities; co-author of Cambridge Grammar of the English Language; member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (elected 2003)
• Adrienne Rich - late professor, poet and essayist
• Page Smith – Historian
• Michael Ellman Soule – member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (elected 2005)
• Ben Stein – former professor of economics, more notable for his work as a comedian, actor and political commentator
• Stephen Thorsett - Professor of Astronomy and Astrophysics; Dean of Physical and Biological Science; known for work on properties of compact stars
• Anna Tsing - Professor of Anthropology; Guggenheim Fellow and Niels Bohr Professorship
• Noah Wardrip-Fruin - Associate Professor of Computer Science, digital media and interactive fiction researcher
• Hayden White – member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (elected 1991)
• Jim Whitehead - Chair of Computer Science and creator of WebDAV
• Harold Widom – member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (elected 2006)
• Stanford E. Woosley - Professor of Astronomy and Astrophysics; noted for his work on supernova gamma ray bursts; member of the NAS (elected 2006) and American Academy of Arts and Sciences (elected 2001)
• Karen Tei Yamashita - author and playwright