The National Football League (NFL), Under Armour (NYSE:UA), GE (NYSE: GE), and the U.S. Department of Commerce’s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) today announced the five winners of Head Health Challenge III, an open innovation competition to support the discovery, design and development of advanced materials that better absorb or dissipate impact. The new materials have the potential to improve the performance of protective gear, playing surfaces, and equipment for athletes, members of the military and others.

Each of the winners will receive $250,000 to advance their work in developing state-of-the-art materials. A panel of leading experts in the field of materials science selected these five winners from 125 entries because they met the challenge’s technical criteria to maximize energy absorption and minimize momentum transfer. One overall Head Health Challenge III winner will be selected from the five awardees to receive a $500,000 grand prize.

“The innovations in material science that we’ve seen in this challenge will have significant applications in a range of equipment that will better protect our athletes, soldiers, children and others,” said Jeff Miller, NFL Senior Vice President of Health and Safety Policy.

Alan Gilbert, Director healthymagination, GE said, "I’m encouraged to see the progress from our collaboration with NIST. The goal of convening the brightest engineers, scientists and inventors was to advance and produce better materials for preventing injury, better tools for physicians, and better treatments for patients. Based on what we’ve seen from these five winners, we are moving in a positive direction.”

Kevin Haley President, Product & Innovation, Under Armour said, “By utilizing our open innovation platform, we’ve discovered some of the most forward-thinking material innovators that will positively affect the future of impact protection. Our hope is that the groundbreaking work being done by our five winners will help drive material innovation in the name of safety across a variety of applications and we are extremely impressed with the progress made to-date.”

“The winning materials show a great deal of ingenuity in their approaches to energy absorption and have the potential to improve the next generation of protective systems,” said Under Secretary of Commerce for Standards and Technology and NIST Director Willie E. May. “Our NIST experts are looking forward to working with the winning research teams as they further develop their innovative materials.”

Head Health Challenge III, part of the larger Head Health Initiative, a four-year, $60 million collaboration between GE and the NFL, is one of three open innovation challenges to invest up to $20 million in research and technology development to better understand, identify and protect against brain injury. Challenge I focused on discovering imaging and methods for diagnosis and prognosis of mild traumatic brain injuries, and in July 2015, six grand prize winners were awarded $500,000 to further their revolutionary research. Challenge II focused on new technologies to monitor, identify and protect against mild traumatic brain injury, and in December 2015, three grand prize winners were announced. The winners could receive up to $1 million over the next year to continue to advance their innovations.

The Head Health Challenge III collaboration helps implement a pledge by NIST and the Department of Commerce to invest resources to accelerate the development of materials that can protect against concussions, made at the White House’s Healthy Kids and Safe Sports Concussion Summit in May 2014.

For a complete list of the Head Health Challenge III award winners and judges and to view the latest video, please go here.  For more information about the Head Health Challenge, visit headhealthchallenge.com