He played football at MIT. Now he’s designing a lighter, safer helmet

Hard and heavy is not actually better to avoid traumatic brain injury playing football. The Apache helmet shows why.

Kodiak Brush doesn’t mince words when it comes to the state of football helmet design. “Most helmets today are designed to win lab tests, not protect players on the field,” he tells me over email. Brush, an MIT-trained mechanical engineer and former middle linebacker, is a production engineering manager who leads helmet design at Carlsbad, California-based Light Helmets. His latest creation is the Apache helmet, which, at just 3.5 pounds, is the lightest on the market—and yet it has achieved the highest safety score ever recorded by Virginia Tech’s independent helmet testing lab.