A solar-assisted knee brace for people who cannot stop

Regular icing was one of the most effective recovery methods for the knee injury Karshna Periwal suffered as a football player. Doing it consistently was another matter. She says "living in a busy boarding school environment meant I often didn't have the time or access to recover consistently." She kept going anyway. "Like many students, athletes, and working professionals, I had to keep moving even when my body needed recovery."

"That frustration led to BRACE," she says.

“The goal is simple: make recovery happen while life continues.”

Karshna Periwal

BRACE is a solar-assisted knee brace that provides heating and cooling therapy through a dial-controlled system. It combines three functions that are traditionally separate: structural knee support, heating therapy and cooling therapy. At its core is a thermoelectric module based on the Peltier Effect, which lets the device produce both heating and cooling from the same system. Instead of requiring dedicated recovery sessions, she says, it allows users to receive support, heating or cooling therapy while studying, working, commuting or going about their day.

The concept won an interschool entrepreneurship competition. "BRACE has already been externally validated," she says, and the win, in her account, demonstrated that judges, mentors and industry professionals saw value in both the problem and the proposed solution.

Right now she is refining the design, improving functionality and validating the concept through user feedback and market research. She is in high school at Vidya Devi Jindal School. The aim, she says, is a practical solution for "people who don't have time to stop and recover."