Harvard Students Win James Dyson Award Global Medical Prize for Concussion-Screening Headset
Dyson announced on November 4 that Rumble Rims, a headset invented by Harvard University students Cleo Pontone, Radhika Saran and Sophia DeVito, has won the Global Medical category of the 2026 James Dyson Award. The low-cost device uses infrared eye-tracking to bring objective concussion screening to sports sidelines, and the team will receive $40,000 to accelerate development of the technology.
Concussion symptoms differ from person to person and may take up to 72 hours to appear, leaving sideline decisions heavily dependent on subjective judgment. During a two- to three-minute test, Rumble Rims uses infrared cameras to measure how an athlete's eyes follow, fixate and move, translating the measurements into real-time guidance on a mobile display to help inform whether the athlete should be removed from play and referred for professional medical assessment. The team stresses that the system is a screening tool, not a diagnostic device, and that return-to-play decisions remain under the direction of a qualified healthcare professional.
The system also includes a recovery dashboard that enables repeat testing over time, creating an objective record that athletes, families and clinicians can use to monitor progress. The team moved through prototypes involving helmets, mouthguards and chin rests before settling on a headset using side-mounted infrared cameras and 45-degree dichroic mirrors, and plans to use the award to build a higher-fidelity prototype and pilot the technology with schools and youth sports programs.
James Dyson said the consequences of head injuries are too often felt later in life, yet spotting concussion is complex and requires specialist equipment and hospital expertise, so screening is not always done when it should be; he said the three inventors had found a new way to bring objective screening to the sidelines, where critical decisions are made. The team said the award gives them an opportunity to progress toward pilots that could put Rumble Rims on every sideline. Shuya Gong, faculty of the Master's in Design Engineering program at Harvard, said the students found elegant ways to test ambitious ideas through rapid prototyping while holding to the conviction that the solution should be affordable and easy to use.
The James Dyson Award is an international design competition for the next generation of design engineers. This year it received 2,294 entries from emerging engineers across 28 countries and regions, the highest number in its history, and since 2005 it has supported more than 400 student inventions worldwide.
(Source: Dyson)
Source: Dyson
Published by GSM · USA (original Chinese edition)
Photo: 图：Rumble Rims 脑震荡筛查头戴设备。戴森（Dyson）官方发布图片，经 PR Newswire 发布。 / Photo: The Rumble Rims concussion-screening headset. Official Dyson image released via PR Newswire.
