At Notre Dame, two
unrelated research
projects could have
significant effects on
the way head injuries
are diagnosed and
treated
BRAINSTORMING
heed
who'd
hod
BY ANDREW OWENS
M
ichael Soenen has experienced football
from a number of perspectives: player,
coach and father. Now, he is research-
ing ways to improve the detection of
the debilitating head injuries caused by the in-
herently physical game he is so passionate about.
The 1989 graduate of Notre Dame and co-
founder of Contect, a software company design-
ing a mobile application for concussion screen-
ing, leads a seven-person team searching for
a solution that can accurately and objectively
identify a concussion.
Soenen identified three problems with the
current method of cognitive-based diagnosis:
speed, difficulty of testing on the sidelines and
manipulation.
"A lot of athletes don't want to lose their start-
These images show how speech is impacted by the brain's abil-
ity to control the vocal tract, mouth and tongue. By measuring
the acoustic features, Contect can determine the probability of
a concussion.
PHOTO COURTESY OF CONTECT
