University of Southern California’s Post

Navigating life without GPS? Quantum to the rescue! USC Information Sciences Institute researchers are miniaturizing atomic accelerometers to replace GPS, ensuring you’re never lost again. 📶

A window to your brain? USC researchers have developed a transparent skull implant that allows functional ultrasound imaging to record brain activity. This breakthrough could transform patient monitoring and treatment for serious head injuries.

Knock, knock. Who’s there? Bot. Bot who? Bot-tom line: USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences research reveals AI jokes are funnier than human ones, suggesting humor doesn't require emotions. While this is great for people who want to elevate their daily communications with humor, it may pose a serious employment threat to professional comedy writers.

Men are from Mars, women are from Venus — and so are their mitochondria! USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences study finds vast sex differences in cellular activity, pointing to the need for tailored disease treatments.

Trojan athletes may fall, but they rise again thanks to these heroes! Meet the Keck Medicine of USC doctors who keep USC athletes and the L.A. Kings in top shape. 🏥

Dementia's financial toll goes beyond medical bills. An A-list of USC researchers is building a comprehensive cost model, revealing how dementia strains caregivers' retirement savings and children's college funds, leading to intergenerational financial vulnerability. This initiative, backed by an $8.2M grant, aims to provide families with better planning tools and inform health care policy.

Remember when prank calls were just silly human tricks? Now it’s AI, and it’s hyper-realistic fakes are a serious threat. New Hampshire voters recently got fake calls from ‘Biden’ discouraging them to vote. USC Sol Price School of Public Policy experts are working on ways to identify these tricks and implement policies to protect our electoral process. 📞

July 4, 1776: A turning point not just for America, but for the world. USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences historian Nathan Perl-Rosenthal's new book uncovers how the quest for independence ignited revolutions across the globe. 🇺🇸

We all marvel at spacecrafts launching into the vast unknown, but their fiery demise upon return to Earth can deplete the ozone layer with aluminum oxide. USC Viterbi School of Engineering student José Pedro Ferreira is leading the charge to mitigate these environmental impacts. Recently honored with the Space for Sustainability Award from European Space Agency - ESA, Ferreira’s research focuses on developing tools to assess these impacts during the design phase of space missions. 🌠

How do you top a career building satellites and working with Howard Hughes? If you're Mike Neuman, you go back to school at 73. Neuman’s journey started at Hughes Aircraft, founded by the legendary aviator and filmmaker, where he helped pioneer communication technologies. By 50, feeling his engineering expertise wane, he sought to enhance his technical skills at USC. One class led to another, culminating in two master’s degrees over 20 years. Now, he's pursuing a Ph.D. in AI and cellular networks. “When I was working, the people who worked for me, or anybody I’d meet, I would really push them: ‘Go take a course.’ Because it helped me so much in my job” he says, his passion for engineering burning as bright as ever. 💡