Penn State Student-Run Startup in the Running for Best of CES 2018

A start-up cofounded by a Penn State student is up for the Best of CES 2018 People’s Choice Award for the best gadget at the world-renowned electronics trade show in Las Vegas, Nevada. 

Tech website Engadget is offering the opportunity to vote here through 6 p.m. EST on Thursday. Reflexion is also a finalist for Best Startup at CES 2018, to be selected by Engadget’s editors.

Penn State junior Matt Roda founded Reflexion Interactive Technologies with two high school friends as a way to improve neurocognitive training and concussion screening/rehabilitation.

Reflexion is at the international Consumer Electronics Show to promote the Edge, a portable cognitive screening device that uses 2,500 LED lights that illuminate in randomized patterns to assess five areas of cognition. The accompanying software compares user scores in those areas to baseline results to pinpoint deficiencies. 

Dr. Semyon Slobonov, who studies pathologic brain science and traumatic brain injuries in Penn State’s Center for Sports Research and Service, is leading the second phase of a clinical validity study of the Edge.

Roda founded Reflexion after he suffered a severe concussion in a Lancaster Catholic High School hockey game where he crashed headfirst into the boards after an illegal backside check. Roda’s concussion went undetected and he was allowed to re-enter the game and drive home. He wanted to find a way to make the screening process more accurate by relying on more data as opposed to subjective tests given by trainers and coaches on the sidelines.

During the early stages of development, Roda participated in Happy Valley LaunchBox, the business accelerator program that’s part of the Invent Penn State initiative. Reflexion has eight employees in Lancaster and scattered at college campuses around the northeast and employs two other Penn State students in addition to Roda.

In 2017, Reflexion received an investment from Ben Franklin Technology Partners of Central and Northern PA and won $15,000 in a televised student pitch competition.