As far as California schools go, Stanford University dominates the tech scene. But the University of Southern California has been quietly churning out start-ups at an impressive clip,

The University of Southern California (USC) will be sharing some numbers about its startup funding activities at First Look L.A. tomorrow, an invitation-only event it’s organizing in partnership with UCLA and CalTech. These numbers are nothing to sneeze at: in less than two years, USC has managed to raise an impressive $115 million in funding for 15 startups.

A new study released by the Kauffman Foundation titled “The Anatomy of an Entrepreneur,” led by co-authors Vivek Wadhwa, Raj Aggarwal, Krisztina “Z” Holly, and former BusinessWeek tech editor Alex Salkever is an attempt to get a feel for the background and motivation of American entrepreneurs, including their level of education, socioeconomic status, and work experience.

BusinessWeek's panel of 42 academics, designers, consultants, and business managers helped whittle a list of 115 schools down to 30.

College students are pouring onto campuses across the country. This annual ritual arrives with an important set of questions for these emerging leaders: What do you want to get out of your college experience? What kind of leader do you want to be when you graduate? What contributions do you want to make to the world around you?

Paul Debevec and several researchers at the University of Southern California's Institute for Creative Technologies have built a teleconferencing system that captures a person's face and head and instantaneously displays it as a 3-D image.

For most of its 25 years, TED (for "technology, entertainment and design") was an exclusive, seaside gathering of a few hundred of the globe's top techies and thinkers. Now, TED, the granddaddy of all tech summits, is on a path to becoming a global brand.

Two years in, the USC Stevens Institute for Innovation – a licensing office that is itself a startup – has expanded the vision of a traditional technology transfer office to encourage and entice both faculty and students to dream big.

Why the Dodgers' dreadlocked bad-boy is the best thing to happen to L.A. since skateboarding and margaritas

The USC Stevens Institute for Innovation released the beta version of its new Facebook application MatchYard in late February 2008, which it hopes will enable interdepartmental and interdisciplinary students to come together to develop future programs for USC students interested in innovation.

Krisztina Holly's letter to the Editor in The New York Times on December 30, 2007.

As talks between screenwriters and producers reach a stalemate, there's a lot more to worry about than finding ways to monetize content

USC Associate Professor Peter Beerel knows how to get his message across to sleep-deprived electrical engineering students and effectively present his research to peers at professional conferences.

But last Wednesday he was a newbie struggling to get his message across to deep-pocketed investors who could bankroll his entrepreneurial dream.

Michael Aherne's invention defeats the gravity of the moon. Kaveh Motamed's deflects the gravity of the Earth.

And tucked between Aherne's home-brew lunar lander and Motamed's do-it-yourself pelvis protector Thursday were three dozen other inventions -- some even more far-out, and others more down-to-earth.

It was USC's first student innovator showcase, and fledgling entrepreneurs...