About Us
ProtectShin is a company founded by two high school students who are striving to create a sports equipment guard that offers double the shock absorbance capabilities of guards currently in the market. Currently, both Rachel and Shatakshi are competing in business pitch competitions to acquire the start-up funds needed to begin distribution. You can learn more about the competitions they have participated in and won on ProtectShin's blog page!
Meet The Team
One of our co-founders, Rachel, was a national competitor in Taekwondo and her story inspired us to create ProtectShin. One week before her AAU National Competition, she was injured in the shin and she found out she had a stress fracture after an X-ray. Like many other athletes, she went on to compete anyway, however, in her semi-final match, she was kicked in the shin once again causing unbearable pain.
There are so many athletes like Rachel who face injuries in contact sports every year. The current sports equipment guards do not provide enough protection as they are made from layers of Ethelyene-vinyl Acetate, soft acrylic resin, polyvinyl chloride, polyvinyl acetate-polyethylene (pEVA), and elastomers. These materials rely on their material strength which is not enough to absorb an impact like the one Rachel faced before her national competition.
Together, Rachel and her friend Shatakshi were inspired to create a sports equipment guard that uses technology combined with superior materials to manufacture a product that can absorb 96.6% of the shock energy.
Rachel Coutinho, Co-Founder, CEO
Rachel is a senior at the Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy who enjoys competing in Taekwondo. She developed the technology utilized in ProtectShin using the skills she has attained from her internship at the Northwestern University Prosthetics-Orthotics Center.
Shatakshi Chatterjee, Co-Founder, COO
Shatakshi is a senior at the Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy. The engineering and design experience she has developed through her avid participation in robotics has aided her in ProtectShin's prototyping process. She currently researches at the University of Illinois at Chicago's Department for Pharmacology and Regenerative Medicine.