News: Yoel Fink

Flexible fiber battery

January 4, 2022

The rechargeable battery can be woven and washed, and could provide power for fiber-based electronic devices and sensors.  

FUTURE OF FABRICS

April 14, 2020

The rapidly growing field of advanced fibers and fabrics could transform many aspects of our lives  

Artificial muscles made from contracting fibers

August 16, 2019

MIT researchers, including professors Polina Anikeeva, Yoel Fink, and Cem Tasan, have developed a new fiber-based system that could be used as artificial muscles for robots, prosthetic limbs, or other mechanical and biomedical applications.  

New Microfluidics Devices

October 29, 2018

Microfluidics devices are tiny systems with microscopic channels that can be used for chemical or biomedical testing and research. In a potentially game-changing advance, MIT researchers have now incorporated microfluidics systems into individual fibers, making it possible to process much larger…  

BBC Interviews Yoel Fink

October 24, 2018

Making clothes that can communicate Is the age of tech fibre really upon us? Professor Yoel Fink from MIT says his team is on the verge of developing true tech clothes that will be able to warn us that a car is approaching. They have been able to weave diodes into fabrics, without losing…  

Yoel Fink leads the way in fabric materials

October 12, 2018

Yoel Fink stands under an unassuming LED ceiling lamp wearing what appears to be just an ordinary baseball cap. “Do you hear it?” he asks. Semiconductor technology within the fibers of the hat is converting the audio encoded in light pulses to electrical pulses, he explains, and those pulses are…  

MIT's 2018 Convocation

August 28, 2018

Yoel Fink spoke at the 2018 Convocation to welcome incoming first-year students at MIT. When Prof. Fink first arrived as a grad student from Jerusalem, where schools are typically fenced and gated, he was surprised at how open the campus is. He believes the openness is an important part…  

Soft Hardware Developed by Yoel Fink

July 17, 2018

The latest development in textiles and fibers is a kind of soft hardware that you can wear: cloth that has electronic devices built right into it. Researchers at MIT have now embedded high speed optoelectronic semiconductor devices, including light-emitting diodes (LEDs) and diode…  

AFFOA offers special backpacks to class of 2021

September 1, 2017

The class of 2021 received a special welcoming gift from MIT this year: specially designed backpacks created by Advanced Functional Fabrics of America (AFFOA). A unique code is woven into the fabric material of the backpack given to each first-year student. Unlike a QR code, this fabric-…  

MIT lab shows off smart threads that can send messages, change color

June 20, 2017

“Fabric is the new software,” said Yoel Fink, an MIT professor of materials science and chief executive of Advanced Functional Fabrics of America. AFFOA is a public-private partnership founded last year, headquartered at MIT, and backed by more than $300 million from universities, corporations,…  

AFFOA launches state-of-the-art facility for protoyping advanced fabrics

June 19, 2017

Just over a year after its funding award, a new center for the development and commercialization of advanced fabrics is officially opening its headquarters today in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and will be unveiling the first two advanced fabric products to be commercialized from the center’s work…  

Stretching the boundaries of neural implants

March 31, 2017

New flexible fibers developed by Professor Polina Anikeeva and her research team are able to stimulate and monitor neurons in the spine without being invasive.  "Now, researchers have developed a rubber-like fiber that can flex and stretch while simultaneously delivering both optical…  

Tiny fibers open new windows into the brain

February 24, 2017

"For the first time ever, a single flexible fiber no bigger than a human hair has successfully delivered a combination of optical, electrical, and chemical signals back and forth into the brain, putting into practice an idea first proposed two years ago. With some tweaking to further improve its…  

New method snips complex fibers into uniform particles

June 9, 2016

  "An interdisciplinary team of researchers enabled by the National Science Foundation-funded Materials Research Science and Engineering Centers (MRSEC) program has developed a way to break fibers or sheets of material into many tiny, almost perfectly uniform segments or strips. The…  

New collaboration to accelerate innovations in fibers and fabrics

April 1, 2016

An independent nonprofit founded by MIT has been selected to run a new, $317 million public-private partnership announced today by Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter. The partnership, named the Advanced Functional Fibers of America (AFFOA) Institute, has won a national competition for…  

Collier Medal- Yoel Fink, 2016

March 25, 2016

  The Department of Materials Science and Engineering is thrilled to congratulate Dr. Yoel Fink for earning the Collier Medal! Collier Medal  In honor of Sean Collier's model citizenship that far transcended his work, the Collier Medal will be given to an…  

MIT student participates in own cancer diagnosis and treatment

April 2, 2015

Steven Keating, currently a student in Mechanical Engineering and the Media Lab, participated in a 2007 research study that included MRI scans of his brain; a small abnormality was seen, and he was advised to have it evaluated in a few years. When he developed symptoms in 2014, he requested an…