Students Tackle Mental Health Challenges with AI at First UA Little Rock Hackathon

A diverse group of students from across Arkansas gathered at UA Little Rock this summer to design and pitch artificial intelligence solutions aimed at improving mental health during the university’s first AI and Mental Health Hackathon.

The weeklong event in June brought together high school, undergraduate, and graduate students to form interdisciplinary teams focused on real-world challenges such as social anxiety, attention deficits, emotional communication, and access to mental health services. Participants used modern AI tools to create rapid prototypes of digital products, with support from mental health professionals, academic mentors, and industry leaders.

“This hackathon was a great opportunity to improve my AI skills, meet new people, and collaborate across education levels,” said recent computer science graduate Rana Olwan.

Her team created Story Buddy, a tool to help elementary-aged students express their emotions through AI-generated stories and imagery.

“It gives kids a way to talk about how they feel, especially boys, who often don’t speak up,” Olwan added.

Hackathon organizer Marla Johnson, UA Little Rock’s tech-entrepreneur-in-residence, said she considered the event a success for its impact on both learning and collaboration.

“Everyone learned a lot about mental health, about AI, and about practically working to bring those two together to create something impactful in a team environment,” she said. “Seeing the participants present their solutions was my favorite moment. I knew how much effort went into each of those presentations.”

Participants attended morning training sessions covering topics such as AI tools for rapid prototyping, prompt engineering, and regulatory and ethical considerations. Many also earned NVIDIA AI certifications, including coursework on retrieval-augmented generation and agentic AI.

Teams presented their projects to a panel of judges from Arkansas Children’s Hospital, Arkansas Blue Cross and Blue Shield, the Central Arkansas Veterans Healthcare Systems, and the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences. The winning team, Focus Coach, developed a web-based assistant to help users combat distraction and boost productivity through real-time monitoring and mindfulness techniques.

“The idea behind Focus Coach is to help users recognize when they’re getting off task and nudge them back into focus using summarization, timers, and wellness breaks,” said James Dempsey, a senior computer science major at UA Little Rock. “Everyone struggles with focus. This is a universal problem.”

Johnson said the Focus Coach team stood out for addressing a widely shared issue.

“There is a big need for the tools they built into their solution,” she said. “When Dani DeVito of NVIDIA met with the Focus Coach team, she said she would use it and especially liked that she could nudge and be nudged by her friends.”

The hackathon emphasized student wellbeing alongside innovation. Participants enjoyed daily mental health breaks, including art therapy and a drumming circle. Dempsey said the mindfulness drumming session offered as a break during the week stood out as a surprise highlight.

“I had so much fun,” Dempsey. “It puts me in a flow state. I could have done it for hours.”

Ph.D. student Praveshika Bhandari, whose team created Hapy Capy, a Duolingo-style tool to help teens with social anxiety prepare for conversations and job interviews, said the experience broadened her perspective.

“I’ve learned how to use new AI tools quickly and work with students at different stages of life,” Bhandari said. “That’s a real learning experience.”

Anay Pandit, a rising 10th grader at the Arkansas School for Mathematics, Sciences, and the Arts, said the hackathon fueled his interest in technology and engineering.

“Being part of a team that included Ph.D. students and recent grads was amazing,” Pandit said. “We’re all learning from each other.”

Hackathon challenges were based on real mental health needs identified by local organizations. Teen2Teen Connect, for example, was developed in partnership with the Arkansas Crisis Center to create a safe way for teens to offer support to other teens long before they are in crisis mode. The system was developed using AI prompts to include a way for teens to re-route calls to professional counselors if they feel the caller is in a crisis state.  

Additionally, Rapid Route, a scheduling and triage solution championed by the Central Arkansas Veterans Healthcare System, was aimed at getting patients matched with care faster based on urgency.

In total, students learned to apply AI ethics, prompt engineering, and software prototyping in service of community health.

Arkansas Children’s Hospital President and CEO Marcy Doderer said the students’ work aligned with growing concerns among healthcare providers.

“We see kids coming in for physical health issues, but underneath, so many are struggling with emotional or behavioral concerns,” she said. “Traditional health systems don’t always have elegant solutions, but students like these give me hope.”

UA Little Rock Vice Provost for Research Brian Berry, who served as one of the judges, praised the students’ innovation, noting that final team scores were separated by less than two percentage points.

“These projects blew us away,” Berry said. “What you all produced in just a few days was phenomenal.”

Johnson said the university is exploring ways to support continued development of the projects and plans are already underway for next year’s event, potentially with new themes and industry partners.

“We have business leaders hoping we will do an AI and entrepreneurship hackathon in their fields, or we may have challenges from five different sectors,” Johnson said. “Even if every team is not focused on mental health next year, we’ll continue to focus on participant wellbeing. Having real world problems made a world of difference. These time-compressed competitions open the door to exciting possibilities.”