Jamison Float is pictured demonstrating the Q Collar, a device that will help mitigate impacts to the brain during high-impact sports. Float, a Marysville High School graduate, said this is the most important inventions he’s ever worked on.
(Photo submitted)
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Jamison Float engineering a collar that helps reduce brain impact
The newest addition to safety for high-impact sports, like football, is being developed by former Marysville High School graduate.
Jamison Float, senior biomedical engineer at Priority Designs in Columbus, helped develop, design and engineer the Q Collar, a device that helps sends blood from the jugular vein to the brain to protect it from sloshing against the skull and causing a concussion.
Float said this is the most important product he’s ever worked on, despite having helped create medical devices, surgical tools and even a robotic fishing lure in the past.
“Through testing, there’s data that shows wearing the collar can reduce changes to the brain and that’s exciting,” he said. “It’s the start of an opportunity of a way of keeping a lot of kids playing sports… If we’re able to help protect the kids and protect their brains, then that’s very exciting.”
Float said the collar is in its early testing stages, but the data he’s received has shown to be “very promising.” He said more research and testing needs to be done and making the device available to young athletes is at the “beginning of a very long path.”
He said his interest in sports, biomedical studies and engineering came together “at exactly the right time” when a client expressed interest in Priority Designs creating the Q Collar.
His involvement in developing and designing innovations like the Q Collar began in Marysville, though his career path took a bit of a turn.
Float was very active in sports, participating in Marysville High School’s (MHS) football, basketball, track and cross country teams in the early 90s. He suffered a leg injury while playing basketball for the Monarchs and, from that moment on, Float wanted to be an orthopedic surgeon.
“Seeing what (my doctor) had done with my ankle and my friends’… ACL and other surgeries was very exciting to me,” he said. “That’s what I wanted to do.”
However, when he went to Case Western Reserve University to pursue that passion, he couldn’t stop passing out from seeing blood. He then transitioned to a career in engineering.
He’s been designing medical technology for 15 years and said he enjoys it. He said he especially likes traveling back to Marysville for work, as his company does business with the Scotts Miracle-Gro Company, and to see his family members who still live in the area.
“It’s interesting to see it change and grow and I was very excited to be a part of it,” Float said.
He said Marysville is a “small, quaint community” that’s far away enough from Columbus to be unique. He said he still considers it home.