Drexel tapped for team developing fabric of the future

Drexel University is a part of a plan to come up with the fabric of the future and it could be interactive.

The effort is to take high-tech cloth and move it from concept to market.

MIT will be the host for the Manufacturing and Innovation hub, but Philadelphia will be one of the major spokes in the wheel.  

Genevieve Dion, Director of the Haute Tech Lab at Drexel University, says the project is designed to bring high-tech fibers to market that do more than cover skin.

“We want to make smart textiles, textiles that can sense, communicate, hear, transform and harvest energy,” she said.  “So we basically want to make the next generation of textiles that could become the internet of soft things.”

Dion says designing the new fabrics is one thing, bringing goods to market is another.

“Funding disappears or maybe it’s a lot harder to integrate it into the supply change and research can flounder during that time,” she said.

The new effort is designed to fix that problem.