For the last year, former MIT middle linebacker and mechanical engineer Kodiak Brush '17 has been leading the development of football helmets for the California-based sports equipment manufacturer LIGHT Helmets. In December, Brush notched a major achievement in that work: LIGHT Helmets' new Apache helmet line was ranked the highest-performing helmet ever in safety tests by Virginia Tech's renowned helmet-testing lab. 'We're trying to lower the overall amount of energy going into each impact by lowering the weight of the helmet,' Brush says. 'It's a balancing act trying to have a complete, polished product with all the bells and whistles while at the same time keeping the mass of the helmet as low as possible.' 'It's really cool to work in the football helmet space after playing the sport for so long,' Brush says. 'We did this with a fraction of the research and development budget of our competitors. It's a great feeling to have worked on something that could help so many people.'...
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