High School Athlete Designs Award-Winning Concussion Sensor

Having suffered a broken collarbone twice in the past year while playing both football and lacrosse, teenager Braeden Benedict knows a thing or two about sports injuries. And he’s now on a path to develop a device that eventually may help detect one of the scariest football injuries of all: concussion.

A small mechanical sensor Benedict designed could become a low-cost, mass-produced device that fits on the front of helmets and releases a liquid that is visible from the sidelines, warning coaches and trainers that a player should be checked for a possible head injury. The idea won the 15-year-old the top prize in the Discovery Education 3M Young Scientist Challenge last year, for which he was named “American’s Top Young Scientist,” earned a visit to the White House and won $25,000, most of which he’s putting away for college.

While many contestants may have abandoned their ideas by now, Benedict, now a sophomore at Palos Verdes Peninsula High School in Arizona, is pushing forward. He has submitted an application for a provisional patent and continues to look for ways to improve his device. For more information, click here to read the full article.