UT Dallas Students Win First Brain Health Prize With Peer-to-Peer Stress Resilience Plan

College students report stress at record levels. Mental health services struggle to keep pace. A new competition launched at the University of Texas at Dallas is trying a different approach: put students in charge of designing solutions.

The Brain Health Prize - piloted in early 2026 as part of BrainHealth Week - invited undergraduates to submit proposals for improving brain health on campus, then awarded $5,000 to the most promising idea. Half the prize goes to the winning team as a stipend; the other half funds actual implementation. The design ensures that winning proposals do not simply live as concepts on a slide deck.

The science behind the theme

This year's competition theme was "Stress for Action," drawing on neuroscience research distinguishing harmful chronic stress from eustress - moderate, manageable stress that can sharpen focus, improve motivation, and support productivity. The distinction matters because most campus mental health messaging treats all stress as negative. Eustress research suggests that teaching students to recognize and direct productive stress could be more effective than pure stress-reduction framing.

According to the National Alliance on Mental Illness, 75 percent of lifetime mental health conditions emerge by age 24, making the college years a critical window. The World Economic Forum has identified analytical thinking, resilience, and creative problem-solving as the top skills employers demand - all capacities linked to brain health. The competition was designed with both facts in mind.

The winning proposals

First place went to Shreeyalaxhmee Rao and Riya Acharya, whose Resilience Neighborhoods proposal creates a campus-wide system pairing in-person peer advocates with a digital, gamified resilience platform. The concept integrates community connection with structured skill-building, using game mechanics to encourage ongoing engagement rather than one-time participation.

Two runner-up prizes were also awarded. Elena Tran's Rewrite Project proposes interactive pop-up "Rewrite Walls" where students document and share stories of resilience and belonging, building a living archive accessible to future students. A second runner-up team - Alekya Tanikella, Aiswarya Saravanan, Isha Rojanala, and Jyotsna Tera - submitted Project Perihelion, which aims to build a Eustress Coalition and develop daily practice tools that reframe academic pressure as a potential driver of performance rather than purely a threat.

The organization behind the initiative

The Brain Healthy Campus Collaborative - a new coalition including the Center for BrainHealth at UT Dallas, Hilarity for Charity, RADical Hope, and Waves - organized and funded the competition. UT Dallas serves as the pilot campus; additional institutions are expected to join the initiative in August 2026 as it expands nationally.

"Peer-driven strategies to support brain health are the most effective ways to help students thrive," said Liz Feld, CEO of RADical Hope. "The Collaborative is a catalyst to turn this approach into action, wherever students are."

The Center for BrainHealth contributes its BrainHealth Index - a tool that tracks cognitive health trajectories over time - and its Strategic Memory Advanced Reasoning Tactics training program, both developed through three decades of research. The Hoglund Foundation and Meadows Foundation provided early philanthropic support for the broader initiative, with Waves funding the student prize directly.

The broader context

Children represent 22 percent of the U.S. population, but college-age adults are the group most likely to develop their first mental health condition. Building brain-healthy habits before those conditions emerge - and before the cognitive demands of careers intensify - is an argument for campus-level intervention that the Collaborative is making through both programming and prize incentives.

"It's never too early to take care of your brain," said Alexandra Villano of Hilarity for Charity. "By empowering students to adopt brain health habits as young adults, we can protect cognitive health, reduce dementia risk, and change the trajectory of Alzheimer's disease and related dementias."

The competition model - requiring that winners implement their proposals, not just present them - distinguishes the Brain Health Prize from typical student idea competitions and gives its outcomes a practical dimension that most academic programs lack.