DefeXtiles

Jack Forman

Human-material interaction was a calling I have long been nurturing. It brought me to my bachelor’s Carnegie Mellon University, where I double-majored in Materials Science and Engineering (MSE) and Biomedical Engineering (BME), to learn more from nature’s demonstrations of what matter could be: programmable, adaptive, and responsive. After cultivating a solid technical foundation, I ventured from studying to making. In third and fourth year, I first-authored a CHI paper on a reversible morphing artificial muscle fiber [1]. I also led the design of a morphing clothing collection with that fiber, and showed it at a fashion show of over 1,000 attendees, and published a co-first authored CHI late-breaking work on hydrogel-textile actuators[2]. After graduating with top honors at Carnegie Mellon, I am now a second-year M.S. student at the MIT Media Lab, in the Tangible Media Group with Professor Hiroshi Ishii. I presented my UIST 2020 full paper on 3D printing fabric via under extrusion and received an honorable mention for Best Demo. My side project, an opacity changing smart material eye project, was awarded an honorable mention in Fast Company’s 2020 Innovation by Design Awards in the Students Category. I am also the co-president of LGBT Grad@MIT, and a diversity representative on the Graduate School Committee. In my Ph.D., I am interested in studying programmable matter. Emerging digital fabrication methods allow for the precise control of a material’s properties from the micro to the macroscopic scale. With these approaches, digital information can be embedded into materials as defects, thereby controlling a material’s properties. A question I am planning to address in my research is: how can new programmable material fabrication platforms be developed to empower the creation of human-centered responsive devices?