{"id":353841,"date":"2026-06-09T23:55:07","date_gmt":"2026-06-09T23:55:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/353841\/"},"modified":"2026-06-09T23:55:07","modified_gmt":"2026-06-09T23:55:07","slug":"after-global-innovation-win-usc-dornsife-graduate-aims-to-make-calling-for-help-safer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/353841\/","title":{"rendered":"After global innovation win, USC Dornsife graduate aims to make calling for help safer"},"content":{"rendered":"

Just weeks after graduating from the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences, Darnell Adler won the top prize in a global innovation competition for students and first-time founders.<\/p>\n

Adler\u2019s startup, Lifeline AI, won Red Bull Basement\u2019s 2026 World Final<\/a> in San Francisco, earning $100,000 in equity-free funding, $25,000 in Microsoft Azure credits and mentorship from Red Bull Ventures.<\/p>\n

The competition drew more than 135,000 ideas from 40 countries. Adler\u2019s winning concept is a personal safety platform designed to help people discreetly call for help in moments when taking out a phone and speaking or dialing 911 may be unsafe.<\/p>\n

For Adler, who graduated in May with a degree in economics<\/a> from USC Dornsife, the victory capped a whirlwind few weeks that included final exams, graduation and two rounds of high-stakes pitching. It also brought him back to his hometown, where his family was in the audience when Lifeline AI was named the global winner.<\/p>\n

USC Dornsife News spoke with Adler about the idea behind Lifeline AI, what it was like to win on a world stage and how his USC Dornsife experience helped prepare him to build something he hopes will make people safer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Just weeks after graduating from the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences, Darnell Adler won the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":353842,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[2080,94792,965,48,52,51,47,50,49],"class_list":["post-353841","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-awards-and-honors","tag-economics","tag-la","tag-la-headlines","tag-la-news","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-headlines","tag-los-angeles-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/353841","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=353841"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/353841\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/353842"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=353841"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=353841"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=353841"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}