Stories of Technology, Innovation, & Entrepreneurship in the Southeast

From the Georgia Institute of Technology:

In a bold move to ignite Atlanta’s entrepreneurial spirit, renowned tech entrepreneur and Georgia Tech alumnus Christopher W. Klaus announced during his Georgia Tech Commencement address on May 2 that he will personally cover the incorporation costs for any graduating student aspiring to launch a start-up.​

“This is about more than just covering fees — it’s about lighting a spark,” said Klaus. “Every founder needs someone to believe in them early. Through this gift, we’re offering that belief and giving graduates the chance to start building with purpose and confidence.”

Klaus is a driving force in Atlanta’s tech and start-up community. While still a student at Georgia Tech, he founded Internet Security Systems, which went public and was later acquired by IBM for nearly $2 billion. Today, he leads Fusen, a start-up accelerator that connects students with founders, mentors, investors, and early stage funding to launch new ventures. In 2000, Klaus donated $15 million to help create Georgia Tech’s Christopher W. Klaus Advanced Computing Building, an innovation hub at the Institute. He also co-founded CREATE-X, Tech’s flagship entrepreneurship program, which celebrated its 10^th anniversary in 2024 and has launched more than 500 student start-ups.

From the University of South Carolina:

Aging in a familiar space and environment helps foster a sense of autonomy and independence, says Shaun Owens, an Associate Professor in the University of South Carolina’s College of Social Work. His research focuses on how technology can be used to support older adults, their caregivers, and care partners to promote healthy aging in place, potentially delaying or reducing the need for expensive assisted living or institutionalized care.

Owens has received a four-year grant from the National Institute on Aging focused on technology to support healthy aging, particularly for African Americans in rural areas who may have limited access to specialty and long-term care. The Research and Entrepreneurial Development Immersion (REDI) grant is a unique effort to bridge the gap between research and entrepreneurship.

“It’s not only about helping older adults to remain in their homes but also maintaining connections in their community, daily routines, and familiar relationships,” Owens says. “This is why it is important that we as academics not only develop interventions to support aging in place but ensure these products reach people outside the walls of our labs.”

The REDI grant enables researchers to gain the expertise to meet that goal, he says.

The project involves installing the ORCATECH Technology Platform remote monitoring system in 10 households to assess its effectiveness, feasibility, and acceptance among rural, lower-income African Americans living with cognitive decline and their care partners. According to the Alzheimer’s Association, older Black Americans are twice as likely as older whites to have Alzheimer’s disease or a related dementia and are less likely to have access to care.

From Florida Atlantic University:

In a landmark move to redefine artificial intelligence (AI) autonomous systems test and evaluation (T&E), Florida Atlantic University’s (FAU) Center for Connected Autonomy and Artificial Intelligence (CA-AI) has secured a $799,759 grant from the United States Department of Defense (Air Force Office of Scientific Research). The grant will fuel the development of a cutting-edge platform for computational T&E of connected AI autonomy, solidifying FAU’s role as a national leader in next-gen networked AI autonomous systems research.

With this grant, FAU is poised to become one of the nation’s first research institutions to house a high-end NVIDIA GPU infrastructure for AI-driven autonomous system T&E.

FAU’s CA-AI will leverage the new funding to unlock new capabilities of physical AI by acquiring and developing state-of-the-art hardware and software infrastructure, including:

1. NVIDIA Omniverse infastructure to support the development of high-fidelity, physically based virtual environments required to represent the real environment and generate synthetic data necessary for training physical AI for robotics and next-generation wireless networks.
2. Camera, LiDAR sensors, and AR/VR headsets to collect and render real video and image scenes, which could be then multiplied with 3D-to-real photo generation software in Omniverse.
3. The NVIDIA DGX H200 platform to train or fine-tune AI models. Once trained, the model and its software stack can be validated in simulation using reference applications like NVIDIA Isaac Sim™ and NVIDIA Aerial Omniverse Digital Twin for 6G.
4. NVIDIA Jetson platforms to deploy the optimized stack and policy model to run embedded in autonomous robots.

From the University of Pittsburgh:

Leidos, an industry and technology firm serving government and commercial customers with digital and mission innovations and an office in Oak Ridge, is committing $10 million to accelerate the use of artificial intelligence (AI) for detecting and managing diseases. It’s a collaboration with the University of Pittsburgh’s Computational Pathology and AI Center of Excellence (CPACE).

The initial focus of the five-year collaboration, in mid-April 18, will be developing AI-powered tools for quicker detection of diseases, such as heart disease and cancer, reducing diagnostic turnaround times, and enabling earlier, more effective care management.

“Our investment is aimed at using the transformative power of artificial intelligence to speed detection, diagnosis and treatment of diseases that affect millions of people annually,” said Leidos Chief Executive Officer Tom Bell. “These efforts will also focus on developing future health care specialists and expanding the care that’s available to underserved communities, including our veterans.”

For more than 25 years, Reston, VA-based Leidos has operated the National Cancer Institute’s Frederick National Laboratory for Cancer Research, supporting progress in the fight against cancer. The company also brings more than two decades of experience in applying AI to areas such as health care, national security, and energy, and helps improve care for military families and veterans by strengthening delivery, access, and continuity of care.

From Arizona State University:

For nearly 60 years, global giant Applied Materials has been hard at work engineering technology that continues to change how microchips are made. The company’s products power everything from flat-panel televisions to smartphones to electric vehicles. Applied Materials has been awarded more than 22,000 patents, and its influential 1980s-era Precision 5000 chip fabrication system sits in the Smithsonian’s permanent collection.

But the largest U.S. manufacturer of semiconductor equipment is also advancing something else: the spirit of innovation.

The company is investing in an array of initiatives within the Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering at Arizona State University (ASU) that are designed to accelerate discoveries, help researchers respond to real-world challenges, and train the workforce of the future.

In that spirit, Applied Materials recently awarded a slate of research grants to Fulton Schools faculty members. The projects aim to combine core Applied Materials technology and new research by ASU experts to advance the microelectronics industry. The company has also launched an endowed scholarship that supports an annual cohort of six students in engineering fields.

“When we came to ASU, we found world-class faculty doing world-class research,” says Satheesh Kuppurao, Applied Materials Vice President for Business Development and Growth in the Semiconductor Products Group. “We thought that we could put down roots here and work together to solve the toughest challenges.”

Meanwhile, construction of the Materials-to-Fab Center was announced in 2023 and continues at a brisk pace. Once complete, the $270 million shared development and prototyping facility at ASU Research Park will serve as a collaborative environment where ASU and Applied Materials will provide students and faculty with opportunities for hands-on learning and research.

ASU is the largest university partner of Applied Materials, saidDavid Wahls, Executive Director of Development at the ASU Foundation.

From the University of Utah:

The Lassonde Family Foundation, led by Pierre Lassonde, a renowned mining entrepreneur, University of Utah alumnus, Canadian native, and philanthropist for education and the arts, has made another landmark $25 million gift to support the continued growth of the top-10 ranked Lassonde Entrepreneur Institute.

The Lassonde Family Foundation has already donated about $25 million, so the new donation doubles the total commitment. Managed by Pierre Lassonde, and his children, Julie and Christian Lassonde, the foundation’s sustained support underscores the family’s belief in the institute’s mission and its impact on future generations of entrepreneurs and business leaders.

The generous new gift is another major investment in the Lassonde Entrepreneur Institute, an interdisciplinary division of the David Eccles School of Business that has rapidly grown from one small program in 2001 to a globally recognized center for student entrepreneurship and innovation, and a leading driver of Utah’s reputation for business and entrepreneurship. The gift also comes as the institute anticipates its 25^th anniversary in 2026.

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