Our founder, Karen, is a high schooler who's passionate about investigating and creating crossroads between medicine and technology. Karen has long understood the importance of helmets in preventing traumatic brain injury. What troubled Karen was that she’d often see bikers not wearing helmets. So, Karen endeavored to engineer a solution: a helmet reminder system.
When it came time to choose a school science project, Karen came up with the idea to build a device that detected when one biked without a helmet, to then issue a reminder. So, she set out to build it, teaching herself along the way. Karen then took the project to the next level and applied to the national Broadcom MASTERS STEM Competition (a Society for Science program). She was selected as one of the top 300 competitors and later received a Certificate of Recognition from the mayor of her city for Outstanding Achievement in Science.
Since that simple project, we’ve come a long way. Karen has since created several vastly different and improved prototypes and filed a US patent application. BrainGuard LLC is currently working to develop compact, reliable, and well-integrated helmet detector and reminder systems. We also expanded into educational campaigns to increase helmet usage on bikes. And, we've focused a lot of our effort on increasing helmet usage in Vietnam.
Our founder, Karen, was awarded for BrainGuard's innovative efforts in Vietnam by the Vietnam National Innovation Center. Karen had the honor to meet the Prime Minister of Vietnam, who presented the award to her.
Karen, our founder.
Karen with the Prime Minister of Vietnam