UT Dallas Launches First Brain Health Prize to Tackle Student Stress
The University of Texas at Dallas has launched the first Brain Health Prize, a student competition aimed at boosting brain health through science-backed innovation. The initiative highlights a growing focus on cognitive wellness in higher education, with a $5,000 top award to support winning ideas.
At the heart of this effort is the Brain Healthy Campus concept, which reshapes traditional wellness programmes by prioritising cognitive skills, emotional balance, and critical thinking as core parts of student life.
The competition's winning project, Resilience Neighborhoods, blends physical and digital strategies to build support networks that help students manage stress adaptively. Runners-up included The Rewrite Project, which uses interactive storytelling to strengthen cognitive flexibility, and Project Perihelion, designed to expose students to positive stress stimuli daily.
Epidemiological research underscores the importance of early intervention during university years to establish lifelong brain health habits. The Brain Healthy Campus Collaborative—a partnership between the Center for BrainHealth, Hilarity for Charity, RADical Hope, and Waves—is driving this shift, integrating brain health into campus culture. Dr. Lori Cook, director of clinical research at the Center for BrainHealth, notes that ongoing advancements in brain science are making real-world applications more accessible.
Philanthropic backing from donors like Waves, Perkins&Will, Marie Park, Joe Hardt, and RADical Hope has helped fund the initiative. Organisers stress the need to empower students as leaders in tackling stress-related mental health challenges among young adults. While no exact number of additional universities has been confirmed, expansion plans aim to bring the model to multiple US campuses by late 2026, with further participants to be announced in August 2026.
The Brain Health Prize marks a step toward embedding cognitive wellness into university life. With $5,000 awarded to the winning team—split between a stipend and project funding—the initiative encourages student-led solutions to brain health challenges. Expansion efforts will see more institutions adopting the model in the coming years.
