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NewMark Merrill Companies Completes AI Pioneer Program, Deploying 53 Employee-Built AI Solutions Across the Enterprise

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3 weeks ago

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Twelve-week, six-session program trains cross-departmental champions who together recover more than 3,700 hours of annual capacity

CALABASAS, Calif., Aug. 31, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — NewMark Merrill Companies, Inc., a leading owner, developer, and manager of retail shopping centers in California, Colorado, and Illinois, announced the completion of its AI Pioneer Program, a six-session enterprise initiative that trained 13 employees from across all departments in the organization to design and deploy artificial intelligence solutions for their own day-to-day work.

Rather than adopting a single off-the-shelf AI product, NewMark Merrill took a different approach: it taught its own people to build. Over six structured sessions delivered in partnership with Adaptig, two participants from different departments across the company — Accounting, Collections, Property Management, Leasing, Development, Acquisitions, Information Technology, Marketing and Human Resources — identified real bottlenecks in their own work and built working tools to address them. Who was in the room mattered as much as what they built. These weren’t necessarily managers, and deliberately weren’t technology experts. They were the people closest to the daily friction, chosen for their ability to spot a problem, build a practical solution, and bring their colleagues along with them.

“The AI Pioneer program at Newmark Merrill helped me identify roadblocks in our acquisition and development processes and build solutions we can roll out across the team,” said Taylor Kuchman, Acquisitions & Development Associate. “The time and expertise that Mateo at Adaptig and the team at Newmark Merrill devoted to this also opened my eyes to challenges other departments were facing and the solutions they were putting in place. Those solutions, and the companywide collaboration they created, made this program valuable.”

The results were measured throughout the entire process. Participants logged 53 completed solutions and documented 3,783 hours of recovered capacity annually, the equivalent of roughly 473 working days, or nearly two full-time positions returned to higher-value work. Self-assessed output quality rose from 3.2 to 4.3 on a five-point scale, a 34 percent improvement, with the largest gains in the depth and presentation of analytical work.

The solutions span the full breadth of the business. In Acquisitions, underwriting workflows that previously required eight hours of manual document review were reduced to under an hour. In Property Management, daily security patrol reports across multiple centers are now summarized automatically, with exceptions escalated for human review. In Accounting, CAM reconciliations that consumed a full day are now produced in minutes. In Information Technology, a manual Excel-based credit card allocation process was replaced entirely by an internally built web application.

“What impressed me most was not the technology — it was our people,” said Sandy Sigal, President and Chief Executive Officer of NewMark Merrill Companies. “We did not hand anyone a tool and tell them to use it. We gave them the skills and asked them to solve the problems they know better than anyone else does. Thirteen employees came back with fifty-three answers. That is the kind of change that lasts, because they own it.”

The program concluded recently with a showcase in which each participant presented their work to company leadership. Participants rated the program 4.2 out of 5 for satisfaction, with a Net Promoter Score of +70.

“We have run this program inside a lot of companies, and NewMark Merrill did something most organizations only talk about,” said Mateo Romano, Co-Founder of Adaptig. “Sandy deliberately filled that room with people who had no AI background and told them plainly that this would not come from the top — that leadership’s job was to remove obstacles, not hand out ideas. That gave the thirteen Pioneers the confidence to bring their real problems: the reconciliation that eats a full day, the report nobody wants to write, the workaround a system has forced on them for years. And because Accounting, Leasing, IT, Operations, Development, Marketing and HR were all around the same table, they solved those problems for each other instead of one department at a time. By the last session they had stopped being users of software and started being the people who build it — that is the change that stays with a company long after we leave.”

NewMark Merrill’s 13 AI Pioneer Champions are: Ivano Bufi, Delaune Cheney, Samantha Dubon, Chad Kaplan, Taylor Kuchman, Michael Mendez, Tim Murphy, David Rosenthal, Isak Sabzanov, Elijah Sigal, Holly Tartaglino, Artur Tarverdyan, and Larissa Yllescas.

About NewMark Merrill Companies, Inc.

NewMark Merrill Companies, Inc. owns and/or manages a portfolio of over 110 shopping centers valued at more than $3 billion. Since 1987, President and Chief Executive Officer Sandy Sigal has led the company of shopping centers representing over 2,000 tenants and 13 million square feet in California, Colorado, and Illinois. The Company has founded and invested heavily in BrightStreet Ventures, its technology company, which is working on leading edge solutions for landlords and tenants to succeed in today’s retail environment. For more information, please visit NewMarkMerrill.com.  

About Adaptig

Adaptig helps organizations adopt artificial intelligence through structured, methodology-driven training. Its SHIFT AI Pioneer Program builds internal AI capability by training cross-functional champions to design and deploy solutions for their own work, with measured results at every stage. Learn more at adaptig.ai.

CONTACT: David Ebeling, david@ebelingcomm.com

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SOURCE NewMark Merrill Companies

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iScreen Reaches No. 1 in Graphics & Design Across 94 Markets Following iOS 27 Update

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54 minutes ago

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September 20, 2026

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Extra-large widget experiences, iOS 27-inspired themes and new customization tools drive iScreen’s latest global growth

LOS ANGELES, Sept. 20, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — iScreen, a mobile customization app for iOS and Android, announced that it has reached No. 1 in the Graphics & Design category across 94 countries and regions following its latest iOS 27-focused update.

The update expands iScreen’s Home Screen customization experience with new extra-large widgets, iOS 27-inspired themes, layouts optimized for new screen proportions, and AI-assisted design tools.

Extra-Large Widgets

Built for the larger widget canvas available in iOS 27, iScreen’s new extra-large widgets go beyond simply scaling up existing formats. The collection includes Photo, Album, Music, Calendar, Interactive Refrigerator and Quick Launch widgets, among others. Users can also customize content, layouts and visual styles to create more functional and expressive Home Screen experiences.

iOS 27-Inspired Themes and iPhone Duo Theme Support

iScreen has introduced new iOS 27-inspired themes that combine coordinated wallpapers, transparent-style widgets, icons and other visual elements into complete Home Screen setups.

Selected themes have also been optimized for iPhone Duo’s screen proportions and display dimensions, with wallpapers, widgets and icons adjusted to better fit the new format while maintaining a cohesive visual experience.

AI-Assisted Home Screen Design

iScreen is also testing AI Home Screen Designer with a limited group of users. The feature generates coordinated design suggestions based on users’ preferences for style, color and visual elements, combining wallpapers, widgets and icons into a unified setup.

“The latest iOS update has opened up new possibilities for mobile personalization,” said the iScreen team. “We want to turn those capabilities into practical and creative experiences that make Home Screen design easier and more expressive.”

About iScreen

iScreen is a mobile customization app offering widgets, wallpapers, themes and Home Screen customization tools for iOS and Android devices. With more than 100 million users worldwide, iScreen has ranked No. 1 in Graphics & Design across 94 countries and regions and has been featured by Apple Editorial in 128 countries for five consecutive days.

Official Website: iScreen – Phone Style, iScreen it!
iOS Download: ‎‎iScreen – Widgets & Wallpaper App – App Store
Android Download: iScreen Google Play

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JACC: Clinical Electrophysiology Publishes 12-Month Outcomes from Field Medical’s First-in-Human Field PULSE Trial: 94.2% Per-Vein PVI Durability with Optimized Waveform

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3 hours ago

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September 20, 2026

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Late-breaking HRX data advance Field Medical’s “instantaneous ablation” workflow and expand the clinical evidence for high-voltage focal PFA with the FieldForce™ PFA System

ATLANTA and CARLSBAD, Calif., Sept. 20, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Field Medical, Inc., advancing high-voltage focal pulsed field ablation (PFA) for complex arrhythmias, today announced publication of 12-month results from the first-in-human Field PULSE trial in JACC: Clinical Electrophysiology. The findings were presented simultaneously as a Late-Breaking Clinical Trial at HRX Live 2026.

Field Medical developed the FieldForce™ PFA System around a high-voltage focal PFA architecture designed first for the ventricle, where depth, stability and control are among the most difficult challenges in ablation. Field PULSE extends that work into the atrium and evaluates a subsecond point-by-point workflow Field Medical terms “instantaneous ablation.” In this study, the approach was associated with procedural efficiency, durable pulmonary vein isolation (PVI) and flexibility beyond the pulmonary veins, without the need for prolonged catheter stability.

Key Findings:

Procedural efficiency with subsecond focal PFA: 13-minute median elapsed PVI ablation time, with a fastest time of 7.7 minutesDurable PVI with the optimized waveform: 94.2% per-vein durability reflecting progressive improvement with waveform evolutionFlexible focal ablation: 49% of patients received non-PV ablation for additional atrial targetsNo primary safety events were observed80% freedom from atrial arrhythmias at 12 months with the optimized waveform

“Field PULSE demonstrates the feasibility of truly instantaneous focal PFA,” said Vivek Reddy, M.D., co-principal investigator, lead author and electrophysiologist at Mount Sinai Health System. “Delivering the full application in less than 200 milliseconds reduces the need for prolonged catheter stability while preserving the flexibility of point-by-point ablation. The procedural efficiency, safety and pulmonary vein durability observed with the optimized waveform support continued clinical development of this approach.”

The publication builds on Field Medical’s peer-reviewed clinical work in ventricular tachycardia. Six-month outcomes from the company’s first-in-human VCAS trial were published in Circulation in 2025. Field PULSE now adds first-in-human, peer-reviewed atrial data evaluating the same high-voltage focal PFA architecture through a distinct focal workflow in a different cardiac substrate.

“We designed FieldForce to solve some of the hardest problems in focal cardiac ablation, beginning in the ventricle,” said Mark A. Turco, M.D., president and chief executive officer of Field Medical. “Field PULSE demonstrates that the same high-voltage focal PFA architecture can support an ‘instantaneous ablation’ workflow in the atrium. This growing body of evidence reinforces the range of the platform: depth and focal control in the ventricle, speed and precision in the atrium, and the versatility to address very different cardiac substrates through a familiar point-by-point approach. These results add important clinical evidence as we continue to advance our differentiated PFA platform.”

The study, “High-Voltage Focal PFA Catheter for ‘Instant’ Point-By-Point Ablation: The First-In-Human FIELD-PULSE Trial to Treat AF,” was published online in JACC: Clinical Electrophysiology concurrent with the HRX presentation. DOI: 10.1016/j.jacep.2026.09.001.

About Field Medical®, Inc.
Field Medical is a clinical-stage medical technology company committed to advancing pulsed field ablation (PFA) solutions for complex cardiac arrhythmias. The company was founded by Steven Mickelsen, M.D., CTO, a pioneer and global thought leader in PFA whose work has helped shape the evolution of the field. The FieldForce PFA System integrates a focal catheter design with proprietary FieldBending™ energy designed to safely deliver efficient, precise ablation with the goal of improving outcomes in ventricular and atrial arrhythmia treatment. In 2024, Field Medical earned Breakthrough Device Designation and gained entry into the FDA TAP Pilot Program for its ventricular tachycardia indication. In October 2025, the VCAS trial was published in Circulation.

For more information, visit fieldmedicalinc.com and follow us on LinkedIn and YouTube.

The FieldForce™ PFA System is an investigational device and is limited by federal (or United States) law to investigational use.

Media Contact
Holly Windler
619.929.1275
media@fieldmedicalinc.com

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GameSir Announces Official Fortnite Mobile Controller Collection

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4 hours ago

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September 20, 2026

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Officially Licensed Fortnite Edition Mobile Controllers Deliver Console-Level Precision and Premium Collectible Designs

ORLANDO, Fla., Sept. 20, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — GameSir, a global leader in gaming peripherals, announced its collaboration with Fortnite, introducing an all-new collection of officially licensed mobile controllers that combine GameSir’s award-winning technology with one of the world’s most iconic games.

Launching with the GameSir G8 Plus Fortnite Edition and GameSir X5 Lite for XBOX Fortnite Edition, the collection is designed for mobile players who demand more from every match. Featuring premium controller technology that delivers console inspired performance, authentic Fortnite-inspired designs, and an in-game bonus item with every controller, the collection delivers an experience that extends well beyond the hardware.

Facilitated by IMG Licensing, the collaboration brings console-quality precision, comfort, and customization to mobile gaming—whether players are dropping into Battle Royale, Zero Build, Reload, or developer-made games.

“Fortnite has built one of the most passionate communities in gaming, and we’re honored to collaborate on products worthy of that community,” said Eric Bright, Vice President of Partnerships & Product Strategy, North America at GameSir. “Our goal wasn’t simply to build another controller. We wanted to create the ultimate Fortnite experience—from the premium hardware to the authentic character-inspired designs.”

“Fortnite continues to set the standard for how gaming brands connect with players through innovative products and meaningful experiences,” said Louie Sandoval, Vice President of Global Gaming at IMG Licensing. “GameSir has built a strong reputation for delivering high-quality gaming peripherals, making them an outstanding partner for this collaboration. We’re excited to see Fortnite fans around the world experience this collection.”

GameSir G8 Plus – Fortnite Edition

The flagship controller for players seeking the ultimate competitive experience.

Drift-resistant Hall Effect sticks for lasting precisionMappable rear buttons for faster edits and personalized controlsConsole-inspired ergonomics for extended gaming sessionsMulti-platform compatibility across today’s leading gaming devicesFortnite-inspired artwork and premium collectible packagingFortnite digital in-game bonus item included with every controller. Depending on which controller, players will get the Bully Emote, Burpee Emote, Gun Show Emote,Page-Turner Emote, Go! Go! Go! Emote, or Harmony Emote with their purchase.

GameSir X5 Lite for XBOX – Fortnite Edition

Designed for Fortnite wherever life takes you.

Ultra-lightweight portable designResponsive wired performanceComfortable controls optimized for mobile gameplayFortnite-inspired stylingFortnite digital in-game bonus item included with every controller. Depending on which controller, players will get the Extra Cheese Glider, Storm Sigil Glider, Cerberus Glider, Snow Squall Glider, or On Your Mark… Emote with their purchase.

Choose Your Legend

Fortnite has always been about expressing your unique style. Whether it’s your outfit, your loadout, or your strategy, every player leaves their own mark on the Island.

The GameSir Fortnite Collection celebrates that individuality with collectible character-inspired editions built for every type of player. Whether you choose the flagship G8 Plus, the ultra-portable X5 Lite for XBOX, or your favorite Fortnite character edition, every controller delivers the premium performance GameSir is known for.

Coming Soon

The GameSir Fortnite Collection launches this fall through GameSir.com and select retail partners worldwide, including Amazon, Best Buy, AliExpress, TikTok Shop and Walmart.

Additional product details, pricing, launch timing, and the included digital in-game bonus will be announced soon.

Follow GameSir on X, Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, Discord, and Reddit for launch updates, creator reveals, livestreams, gameplay demonstrations, and community events.

Join the conversation using:

#PlayFortnite
#ChooseYourLegend
#MyGameSir

About GameSir

GameSir is one of the fastest-growing gaming peripheral brands in the world, delivering award-winning controllers and accessories designed for mobile, PC, console, and cloud gaming. Known for pioneering Hall Effect technology, innovative product design, and strategic collaborations with the world’s leading gaming and entertainment brands, GameSir creates premium hardware that helps players perform at their best while bringing their favorite gaming experiences to life.

Trusted by millions of players worldwide, GameSir partners with many of the world’s leading entertainment and gaming brands to create officially licensed products that blend iconic franchises with industry-leading hardware. With a commitment to innovation, quality, and accessibility, GameSir empowers players of every skill level to play with confidence—whether at home, on the go, or on the competitive stage.

To learn more, visit www.gamesir.com or follow GameSir on X, Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, Discord, and Reddit.

About IMG Licensing

IMG Licensing is the global leader in brand licensing, managing licensing programs for the world’s best-known brands and trademarks. With over 25 offices worldwide, IMG Licensing provides a unique one-stop-solution for innovative brand growth across a diverse portfolio of clients from business, entertainment, fashion, food, gaming and sports. IMG Licensing is part of WME Group, a global network of businesses that represent the world’s leading talent, intellectual property, and brands. For more information, visit imglicensing.com.

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