Our clothes help define us, yet the fabrics we wear haven’t evolved much over much of human history. Recent breakthroughs in fiber material and fabric processing allow us to design and produce fibers and fabrics that see, hear, sense, communicate, store and convert energy, regulate temperature, monitor health, and change color. The basis for these new fabric capabilities are fibers that contain semiconductor devices  have made it into the fibers themselves, setting the stage for a “Moore’s law” in fibers. The new fiber materials enable visually inconspicuous yet highly functional capabilities in fabrics. In this talk Dr. Fink  will discuss the use of diode fibers for creating fabric communications systems allowing the exchange of information between people and platforms using line of sight fabric based optical communications.

Dr. Yoel Fink

Professor Fink joined MIT’s faculty in 2000 and has focused his research on creating highly functional fibers. He is the recipient of multiple awards, among them the National Academies Initiatives in Research (2004), the MacVicar Fellowship (2007) for outstanding teaching and the Collier Medal (2016). Professor Fink is a co-founder of OmniGuide Inc. (2000) and served as its chief executive officer from 2007–2010. He is the coauthor of over 100 scientific journal articles and holds over fifty issued U.S. patents on multimaterial fibers and devices.

Fink serves as the CEO of Advanced Functional Fabrics of America (AFFOA), a $300M non-profit Institute headquartered near the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), backed by the Department of Defense, State of Massachusetts and 120 companies and universities. AFFOA’s mission enables a manufacturing-based revolution—the transformation of traditional fibers, yarns, and textiles into highly sophisticated integrated and networked devices and systems. These advancements will help transform the textile industry from a low-tech, low-wage, offshore industry to a high-tech, value-added, innovation-driven domestic manufacturing ecosystem.