Preethi Periyakoil earned her BS in Computer Science and was an Associate Software Engineer at Salesforce in San Francisco. She recently began as an MD/PhD student in the Tri-Institutional Program at Weill Cornell Medical College. However, it was her experience volunteering as a crisis counselor for the San Francisco Suicide Prevention hotline that inspired her project — to start a university text line to reduce college campus suicides and suicide attempts.

Supported by Chang Prize funding, Periyakoil will explore launching a platform at Caltech and the University of California, Berkeley that will provide 24-hour immediate emotional support for those in need. Once the platform is live, she hopes to expand the program to other universities across the nation.

“College students are vulnerable to stresses that come from academic pressures, new living conditions, and interpersonal relationships,” Periyakoil says. “I propose to create a student support text line prototype that will enable college students to receive peer support and counseling in a safe, supportive, and secure online platform.”