Harvard Students Win National Award for Headset That Screens Concussions in 3 Minutes

Concussions are one of the scariest parts of youth sports, and the hardest moment is the one right after a hit, when everyone looks at each other and guesses. Three Harvard students decided guessing wasn’t good enough. Radhika Saran, Cleo Pontone, and Sophia DeVito created Rumble Rims, an eye-tracking headset that screens for a concussion in about two to three minutes using invisible infrared light. The device just won the 2026 James Dyson Award for the United States and $6,500 to support its development.

Here’s how it works: the headset captures how a player’s eyes follow, fixate, and move during an oculomotor task. That data feeds a coach-facing mobile display with real-time guidance on whether to pull a player from the game, plus a recovery dashboard that allows repeat testing to track progress before return-to-play. No clinical lab, no pricey equipment. Just fast, objective information at the exact moment of risk, which is exactly what the creators said they set out to build.

The stakes are real. About 2.5 million US high school students reported at least one sports-related concussion in the prior 12 months, and return-to-play decisions often fall on coaches and parents with no medical training. Rumble Rims aims to take the emotion out of that call. Would you want this technology on your local team’s sideline?