Tufts University Announces Fashion Sense: An Event Highlighting New Opportunities with Living Materials and Sensors
Friday, March, 28th, 2025
Tufts University Announces Fashion Sense: An Event Highlighting New Opportunities with Living Materials and Sensors
The event will explore how living materials are impacting the future of fashion, technology, and health.
Medford & Somerville, MA – April 7, 2025 – Tufts University, a leader in research and innovation, introduces Fashion Sense: New Opportunities with Living Materials and Sensors. The event will explore the dynamic intersection of technology, health, and fashion and how these fields intertwine to shape new opportunities driven by living materials. Led by Tufts University Silklab and sponsored by The Innovation Institute at the MassTech Collaborative, the April 7 event will take place at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University.
We are increasingly turning to living materials and innovative processes that challenge traditional notions of not only beauty and consumption but also health and wellness. From fabrics that monitor biometrics to disease-sensing materials, the event will highlight how materials are impacting sustainability, health, and economic development and will feature speakers from Tufts University and the fashion industry including:
- Benedetto Marelli, Associate Professor of Civil Environmental Engineering, MIT and Former Postdoctoral Scholar, Silklab, Tufts University
- Event curator, Fiorenzo Omenetto, Frank C. Doble Professorship in Engineering, Biomedical Engineering, School of Engineering, Tufts University Director, Silklab
- Ken Pucker, Professor of Practice, The Fletcher School at Tufts University, Former COO of Timberland
- Tara Maurice, Circularity Design Strategist, Coach
Attendees will experience interactive displays focused on innovative applications for:
- Women’s health including underwear liners that can detect vaginal infections, breast covers with de-novo designed proteins for hormone monitoring, and bras with printed sensors.
- Exercise and health monitoring such as pH-responsive silk inks, which can be experienced via an interactive t-shirt, a lactate patch, and colorimetric multi-sensing for premature babies.
- Environmental monitoring like drones equipped with silk sponges to detect airborne viruses and screen-printed floral prints for multiplex sensing like temperature, pH, etc.
- Eyewear including silk eyewear made from silk fibroin that is processed to create biofunctional plastics.
“Living materials are at the interface between technology and life sciences, and the versatility of silk suggests that it could play a large role in products that affect our everyday lives,” said Professor Omenetto. “At the Silklab, we are working to imagine a new class of applications for living materials, and look forward to convening at the Fashion Sense event to showcase how living materials can impact the future of fashion, technology, and men and women’s health.”
The full event details can be found here. The Fashion Sense event is invitation-only. Members of the media interested in attending should contact Payton St. Lawrence at tufts@bigfishpr.com.
Press Contact
Payton St. Lawrence
BIG FISH PR for Tufts University
617-713-3800