USC’s second annual Techstars Demo Day showcased eight innovative startups founded by members of the Trojan community after completing a three-month accelerator program. The startups presented solutions across industries including healthcare, artificial intelligence, robotics, family organization, influencer marketing, and consumer products. Featured companies included Avarie Femcare, Claimio, Drafted, FlexTogether, Jam, nowfluence, Sensate Robotics, and VascAI. The event highlighted USC’s growing entrepreneurship ecosystem, which supports founders through programs such as Startup Weekend, University Catalyst, and the USC and Techstars accelerator. University leaders emphasized the diversity of participants and the program’s role in helping founders transform ideas into scalable businesses with real-world impact.

- Prof. Sangmin Lee of POSTECH publishes findings in Nature, the world's most prestigious academic journal, through joint research with Prof. David Baker of the University of Washington, Nobel Prize laureate.

- Viral structural principles reproduced using AI, with promising applications as next-generation drug delivery systems.

A new memory framework known as DAAAM enables a robot to rapidly recall rich descriptions and precise locational information about objects it encountered while exploring its environment. This efficient approach could help an autonomous agent quickly answer complex queries about its environment in natural language. 

- ORNL researchers have developed advanced tools to immediately detect abnormal power grid conditions that lead to wildfires, equipment damage and blackouts. 

- The approach incorporates artificial intelligence to rapidly analyze grid data and automatically alert a utility to dangerous grid behaviors requiring immediate response. 

- ORNL is partnering with utility Southern California Edison (SCE) to validate the technology against five years of field-collected data.