Oleksandr Sharlai

Oleksandr Sharlai is a 22-year-old Ukrainian immigrant who arrived in the US three years ago. After misdiagnosing himself with Borderline Personality Disorder based on TikTok content — losing a year to unnecessary suffering, while depression and anxiety went unaddressed — he launched an independent 400+ participant study at San Diego Mesa College examining how social media algorithms shape Gen Z's mental health self-diagnosis. He has since collaborated directly with TikTok and Pinterest executives on fact-checking systems, co-authored Mental Health America's national policy framework "From Data to Action", and now works with the Youth Creator Council at Science to People to pilot AKARI, an AI system helping medical creators produce evidence-based content on social media.  He also mentors community college students with no prior research experience, building the infrastructure he once had to create for himself.