Kelaney Stalker wants to provide a conclusive, inexpensive, noninvasive test for endometriosis and is studying how to use methylation to diagnose endometriosis through a blood sample.

Nazanin Paymard initiated a modest fundraising effort, aiming to purchase laptops and tablets to send to the children in Afghanistan, allowing for virtual instruction, and continues to teach classes online to young women in the region.

Abbie Sanders emphasizes her studies in nonprofit management and wants to provide special training for therapists, teaching them the necessary skills to help those with intellectual disabilities.

Chad Hyer aims to pursue a Ph.D. in bioengineering and would like to develop new approaches to sustainability by generating a generally accessible, equitable, and affordable recycling solution that can bridge gaps in sustainability.

Chris Barrientos wants to inspire the younger generation to lead by recruiting successful entrepreneurs in local school districts to teach and mentor students in high schools. 

Aidan Quigley sees potential in BYU's Record Linking Lab (RLL) and wants to expand it to create economic opportunity in disadvantaged communities globally by hiring, training, and qualifying people before connecting them to the emerging AI market.

Jacob and Garrett Stanford are pre-accounting majors. In their reel, they share their idea for creating engaging video games and donating the profits to philanthropic efforts.

Emmie Sheets, a pre-communication major, shares her idea of elevating people from poverty by helping them learn how to read.

Eli Wright, an advertising major, shares his innovative approach for water conservation in airports.

Nicole Thorsen is a pre-dietetics major and shares her proposal for overcoming child malnutrition in Laos through effective training methods that empower local women.

Natalia Holt, a pre-business major, shares her vision for combatting homelessness in El Salvador by repurposing large cargo storage containers into shelters.

Sage Payne is a public health major. In her submission, she shares her vision of empowering people to overcome food insecurity by teaching them how to garden.

After losing my optimism, nearly 12 years of memory, and my hope all over again, I sat on my apartment floor and painted what I then entitled #6. After my sixth concussion from yet another freak accident, my brain could not produce the words to express my hopelessness. With a reality almost as painful as the chaos in my head, I used abstract art to express the emotions I couldn't articulate.

“Mami, in all the books I read, why doesn’t anyone look or act like us?” I’m told I started reading before I was three years old. I quickly advanced from picture books with one word a page to early reader chapter books to volumes of fantasy, self-help and scripture. I devoured words, sentences, and paragraphs; inserted myself into fictional worlds so much that I lost track of reality; and checked out dozens upon dozens of books at the library, quickly realizing that I did not feel represented by my favorite childhood characters.

I sat with my back against the Mount Kailash School in Nepal, facing the Himalayas. My volunteer group was fixing up a schoolhouse for over 200 Tibetan refugee students.

During a break, we asked the children, "What do you want to be when you grow up?"

The children immediately responded: "I'm learning English so I can be a teacher."

"I want to be a dancer and a mom."

"I want to be a cook."

"I want to be a doctor!"

I was happily stunned.

My Aunt Connie hands me a steamed Shanghainese crab, roe side up. It drips butter, yolky orange, down my fingers — like custard and sweet milk. Somehow I always end up with the bigger piece, because that’s just how Connie is. I feel my tongue sticking to the roof of my mouth, but I don’t know if it’s crab butter, or something more sentimental, like love. I’m not sure there’s a difference.

New storms are named almost every week, storms that can be troubling to us East coasters, places like the Georgia coast where I am from. In the past couple of years alone, my family and I have had to evacuate twice, leaving our home and everything behind. Rains and wind would come in damaging amounts, and we would come back after a couple of days not knowing if our house would even still be standing.

Imagine this, you find yourself waking up to loud thuds of heavy rain hitting the tin roof of your 8 x 8 ft home. You forgot to take off the wooden board that covers your 3 ft deep clay pot that is your water source for everything including showering, cooking, and washing the dishes.

You have access to a well but collecting rainwater is much cleaner than the water out of a well. You quickly run outside to uncover your clay pot in hopes that the rain will fill it up before it stops pouring, so that by tomorrow you may use this water for your daily needs.

In high school, I developed a vicious cognitive demon: anorexia. This mental usurper and dictator of choice sent me into a spiral of debilitating anxiety, depression, and eroding existence; my heart had physically weakened, shrunk, and shifted out of place, my straw-like hair fell out, sitting was painful because of my protruding tailbone, my blued, coarse nails, sunken eyes, and bulging bones displayed more death than life. I was desperate and almost hopeless…

For me, growing up in a war-torn Colombia meant turning the TV on every night at 7 p.m. to find out how many children were abducted and forcibly enlisted by military groups, or how many people had been killed in rural communities simply for being born in regions where external forces determined their fate. After years of listening to this devastating news play over and over again, the sheer number of victims of these atrocities was impressed on my mind…