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National fabric innovation center opens in Cambridge

Advanced Functional Fabrics of America (AFFOA) a public-private partnership that began at MIT, has officially opened its headquarters in Cambridge. CEO Yoel Fink at the headquarters’ opening ceremony stated that a new high-tech fabric center has actually developed that technology and fabrics those convey the identity as individuals and our values as a society.

The Cambridge headquarters has space for startups, workforce development and product prototyping.The $10 million center is located near MIT, which last year founded AFFOA after the federal government tapped Massachusetts to lead a national textile manufacturing innovation institute. Other centers are also planned.

The centre looks like a gigantic laboratory inside. The walls are white with floor-to-ceiling glass partitions. Twenty-foot-tall machines spit out long tiny fibers. Those fibers go on a spool. Think of it as high-tech yarn spinning.

The space will have three main functions a startup incubator and provide tools and guidance to emerging companies, other to focus on education and opportunities for students to get involved in this emerging field. AFFOA is collaborating not only with startups, but also with universities both in the commonwealth and across the country, from UMass Lowell to Drexel University to the University of Texas at Austin and more. The institution is also working with large-scale companies, like Boston’s own New Balance.

To Fink, who is also a professor of materials science and engineering at MIT, fabric is “the new software.” The big idea here is to develop fabrics that provide services.

The invention AFFOA unveiled is a backpack made out of fabric that allows people to upload photos, videos or other information into it using an app called AFFOA Looks. Someone else with the same app can then hold their phone up, scan the backpack and pull up what the backpack owner has uploaded. It works sort of like a QR code.

It's like having a social media platform embedded into fabric. There could also potentially be some advertising and marketing applications.

 
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