Areas of Interest

We believe that the best fashion comes from collaboration. That's why we developed the Fashion and Textiles Futures Center, a place where designers can collaborate with engineers, and merchandisers with mathematicians, to build a future as technology-driven as it is fashion-forward.

The result? Alex+, a neck motion tracking device that syncs with magnetic clothing clips to identify when your posture could use an adjustment, and alert you through vibration feedback. When students cross disciplines and fashion meets function, our materials can mean much more. Now, we can all strike a (healthier) pose.

Algorithms shape our lives, from how we listen to music to how we work. Now, Professor Jeffrey Kransler wants to test their analytical capabilities on an even bigger scale. Kransler developed a curriculum centered around the overlap between structural and architectural design and challenged his students to develop the rules, codes and relationships that inform both. Today, our architecture students are learning to use problem-solving technologies like parametric modeling to build structures for a sustainable, sound future.

Our medical, occupational therapy and industrial design students understand the anxiety patients experience during even the shortest hospital visits; the bleeps, blips and buzzing machines that server as a distracting soundtrack to treatment. So when we asked them to collaborate with a team of design students to improve patient care through next-generation technology, they listened. The solution was a pair of noise-canceling headphones engineered to filter hospital sounds and give patients the peace of mind to get better.

The modern commuting bag needed an update, so our students got to work studying the habits of commuters in major metropolitan areas like New York and San Francisco. They discovered that travelers want more from their messenger: they need it to function as a backpack, charching station and a TSA-approved travel bag.

By incorporating a battery, convertible straps that tighten with a single touch and compartments that hold everything from a laptop to lunch, our students built a bag that means business -  and gives you more time to enjoy life.

For a cancer patient spending weeks, months or even years in treatment, comfort is crucial. That's why our medical and design students collaborated to find a solution for the long, tiring and uncomfortable hours spent sitting through care. As part of our Medicine + Industrial Design course, they developed an app that works with the treatment chair to give patients more control at a time when things can feel out of their hands.

ENT resident Dominick J. Gadaleta imagined using 3D printing technology to increase efficiency during mandibular reconstruction surgery. Through an interdiscipinary approach, he worked with a team of industrial designers to turn that dream into a reality. Now surgeons are able to reference models of patients' mandibles to custom-fit replacements pre-incision and cut hours of surgery time, and reimagine the potential of print.