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Highlights

Kudos to Gabriella Armijo and Emlee Taylor-Bowlin

Gabriella and Emlee, participants in the 22-23 Supercomputing Challenge, state these thoughts and ask the following questions: “We have all lost someone prematurely due to a tragic suicide. It often leaves us with a feeling of dread and many what-ifs. What if I saw the signs, what if I had stopped them, what if I had texted them that night? This isn’t a burden you should have to bear. Imagine a simple program that could read some text snippets and alert you if you or a friend needed to reach out to a professional.” These are snippets from their final report.  With our teacher sponsor, Rhonda Crespo, STEM Department Chair, and our mentor, Mark Galassi, a research scientist, we used machine learning to create an AI named SAM that can go through social media posts and text messages looking for trigger words that may indicate that a person may be showing signs of high stress that may lead to suicide. We hope SAM will lead to early detection and prevention of suicide. Our hope is that SAM can be applied to help notice warning signs early on in things as simple as a text message and to assist friends and professionals to intervene before suicide occurs. The Supercomputing Challenge is New Mexico’s oldest Science Technology Engineering and Mathematics program and has been guiding students to tackle complex problems using computers. Watch this YouTube video explaining their project and read their final report.