Mr. Straus has a background in industrial design which includes creation of soft-shell helmet design, preceded by over forty years of consulting in a wide range of design categories that spanned Light Rail Vehicle for GE to Dental Units for Midmark. Mr. Straus is the founder of A E Straus Design to serve clients such as these. Over the past two and a half decades his focus has been on equipment design to reduce brain injury. In this regard he founded Protective Sports Equipment, Inc. which produced and marketed the ProCap helmet accessory. The Gladiator helmet was conceived and developed for the company. The accessory was the introduction of the soft-shell technology and the Gladiator was the integration of the technology into a full helmet. Both projects were facilitated by Ben Franklin Technology Partners of PA, supplemental to private funding. Research during this period focused on mitigation of linear directed impacts. After the merging of this company with Defend Your Head, Inc. Mr. Straus initiated concentrated study on the rotational effect on brain injury. As a result he conceived the anti-rotational head protection system, referred to herein as ARK Technology, and applied for an utility patent. He founded AES R&D, LLC to develop this and other head protection systems and make resultant technology broadly available. Future developments will be facilitated by experience gained as a consultant to Applied Research Associates designing the Blast Helmet and Bomb Suit Future Concept for the DOD.
Positions and Employment
1959-1960 Staff Industrial Designer, Designers for Industry, Cleveland, OH
1960-1963 Captain, USAF
1963-1967 Director of Industrial Design, Dynetics Inc.
1967-1968 Project Leader, Harold Lewis Malt Associates, Washington, DC
1968-2012 Principal, A E Straus Design, Erie, PA and Baltimore, MD
1987-2012 Founder of Protective Sports Equipment responsible for all concept, design and developments
2013- Independent research on the biomechanics of rotational energy and conceptual design of
mitigation systems. Founded AES R&D in 2016, President and Director of Technology
Author of over two dozen utility patents
Award Winning design ID Magazine Annual Review
Grant Award Winner: Physically Challenged Residential Units in PA
Creator of Syllabus on Multi-Discipline Team Communication (Corp. Engineering/Marketing & ID Consultants)
Taught course at: Daimler/Chrysler, TTC, Medrad and Penn State Plastics Deployment Center
Lectured at: Penn University/Wharton School: Establishing a Business Based on a New Technology Acterna Corporation: The Future of Industrial Design in the new Millennium
Early study began with experiments designed by Dr. Voight Hodgeson, founder of NOCSAE, comparing the two helmet systems in 1987. While the reduction of gs was found to be significant, the domination of outer surface behavior made response in the inner padding practically irrelevant. Working with Richard Nelson, PhD, Professor Emeritus and Director of the Penn State Biomechanics Lab, additional experiments were performed to determine if soft-shell helmets introduced additional torque about the neck axis as claimed by some helmet manufacturers in 1990. Those results debunked the unsupported claims of added torque. In 1991 these findings were validated in further study at the University of Waterloo, using a full body test dummy in oblique impacts on various surfaces common to the football environment. Material response to temperature extremes was further studied at Penn State Biomechanics Lab. Urethane flexible foam was found to be much
more stable that the polycarbonate shell commonly used.
a. Straus, A. E. (1997) summarized his research on the efficacy of soft-shell verses hard-shell helmet technology to date in an address about the relevance of helmet design to Traumatic Brain Injury prevention to the Brain Institute National Convention, All Helmets are not Created Equal.
By 1995-1996 independent surveys were conducted by George Washington University Sports Medicine, Field Assessment of the ProCap in Reducing High School Football Injuries, Joseph Torg, Md. conducted a 3-year orthopedic survey of ProCap users and Drs. Maroon and Bailes conducted a neurological survey over another 3-year period. The GWU assessment over a full playing season in a randomized comparison of the two technologies yielded no concussions in the ProCap population compared to 6 in the conventional hard-shell population. The gap in pre-concussive symptoms was demonstratively wider. The two other surveys found that the concussion repeat rate of approximately 64% after one concussion was reduced to 3% among ProCap users. As a result Dr. Torg recommended, “The ProCap should be considered for use in individuals with 1 or 2 prior concussion injuries”. Mr. Straus focused on studying axial loading responses in 1996 and collaborated again with Dr. Nelson, requesting a protocol to measure the relative responses of the soft verses hard shell surfaces. After conducting the specified experiments, Dr. Nelson concluded, “The critical forces experienced during head impacts of this nature are significantly less with a ProCap than with a hard shell alone”. In 2001 Mr. Straus expanded research on this technology in cooperation with BioKinetics Ltd. working under NFL grant funded study of concussions. Under their protocol, developed from this grant, the ProCap reduced the probability of concussion from 87% to 47%, as determined on their scale. By 2002 Mr. Straus concluded that this science did not support widespread acceptance of this technology unless it was integrated into a full helmet with third party verification. He developed a prototype and submitted it to Wayne State Biomechanics Lab, a NFL sponsored research facility, for experiments using Hybrid III upper body torso and the new linear impactor in that same year. Axial loading was the focus of this study, using Riddell VSR 4 and new Revolution helmet as controls. The submitted prototype showed significant reductions in Rotational Acceleration, Peak Critical Force, Peak Torque and Axial g’s. Trial and error based research on materials continued to 2008, at which time Mr. Straus collaborated again with WSU to measure materials responses through experiments designed for optimization. In 2009 thermal experiments were conducted at WSU, using a Revolution as a control. At 0 degrees F the probability of concussion increased by 12% with the Revolution and rises to 48% at 120 degrees. Further study that year examined helmet on helmet impact responses at WSU, using the same control. The probability of concussion with hard-shell on hard-shell was 92% and soft-shell on soft-shell was reduced to 65% under the same impact conditions.
a. Straus, A. E. (2010) summarized this continuing research on the soft-shell accessory plus that gained
in integrating this technology into a full helmet in an address to the NFL Concussion Symposium, The Role of Soft-Shell Technology in Prevention of Brain Concussion.
Scientific Contributor to Articles in:
Time, Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg Press, Business Week, Popular Science, USA Today & Machine Design
Ongoing Research Support
Johns Hopkins University, supported through venture capital funding, Duration: 06/01/2016-05/31/2017
Hopkins Extreme Materials Institute
Simulations on an intervening virtual head protection system between impacts and the Hopkins Head/Brain
Model, predicting resultant brain mechanics behavior.
The goal is to optimize the design and materials composite for maximum mitigation of rotational and linear forces that are causal to Traumatic Brain Injury.
Role: Principal Investigator
Completed Research Support
Department of Defense, Duration: 01/08/2006-11/30/2006
Applied Research Associates
In a collaborative effort advanced materials were researched to offer maximum protection against bomb blast with minimum weight and integrate them into a practical design. The goal was to create a design concept of the next generation Blast Helmet/Bomb Disposal Suit System. The combined weight of the system could not exceed 35#.
Role: Lead Design Consultant