Inspired by her household, Lavender Tessmer explored numerous inventive pursuits from a younger age, significantly textiles, together with knitting and crocheting. When she got here to MIT, she figured that working with textiles would stay only a passion; she by no means anticipated them to turn out to be integral to her profession path.
Nevertheless, when she interviewed for a analysis assistant place in Self Assembly Lab, it simply so occurred that the lab had lately acquired funding from the Superior Practical Materials of America, one of many manufacturing institutes launched during the Obama administration, for a textile-based mission.
Tessmer, now a fifth-year doctoral scholar in design and computation throughout the College of Structure and Planning, took on the mission, working with Skylar Tibbits, affiliate professor of design analysis, and Caitlin Muller, affiliate professor in constructing know-how. “At MIT, my curiosity in textiles actually exploded and have become the middle of all the things,” Tessmer says.
Whereas textiles might seem commonplace, the Covid-19 pandemic underscored the necessity for textile merchandise in safeguarding our basic well being and security, significantly by way of the filtration vital for masks. Recognizing the significance of producing capabilities for textiles, Tessmer’s analysis has targeted on programming textiles with particular purposeful properties whereas additionally contemplating the feasibility of large-scale manufacturing of such merchandise.
A nonlinear path to MIT
Tessmer studied music as an undergraduate scholar at Duquesne College, pursuing a ardour that bloomed as a excessive schooler. One task opened her eyes to a special profession path: She was informed to match a bit of music to another creative medium. Via this task, she found the world of structure by underscoring the systematic nature of each disciplines, emphasizing the necessity for repetition and construction to unleash creativity. “I instantly realized that’s what I wish to do,” she says.
Tessmer switched gears and determined to dedicate the 12 months after school to structure, as an alternative of auditioning for music ensembles. She says, “I at all times favored making issues, after which, with structure, I noticed that you may make issues as a part of your occupation.” She relied on the fundamental drafting expertise that her father had taught her, and channeled these into constructing her structure portfolio.
In the end, she determined to pursue a grasp’s diploma in structure at Washington College in St. Louis. She graduated along with her grasp’s on the finish of the 2007 financial recession, a time when jobs in structure have been scarce. She eagerly accepted a part-time position instructing at WashU. Over the subsequent 5 years, this position developed right into a full-time lecturer position, the place she taught college students whereas additionally independently establishing her personal design apply and main numerous set up design tasks. Fittingly, the entire installations have been impressed by textiles. “They have been these high-performance carbon-fiber braided constructions that we hand-made into large-scale braided nets with particular geometries,” Tessmer explains.
“Squeezing all the things” out of graduate college
Educating at WashU was an excellent expertise, however the practice-oriented nature of the structure division motivated Tessmer to hunt complementary views on design. “I needed a completely new venue that was supportive of analysis and pushing the boundaries of design. I needed to see what different approaches have been on the market,” she says. As her pursuits continued to develop in that route, she realized that MIT has some famend researchers within the area. She determined to use for a grasp’s diploma in structure research, and finally a doctorate in design and computation, throughout the College of Structure and Planning.
MIT’s program stood out to Tessmer due to the interdisciplinary method of the structure division. She says, “In case you are an architect or designer, it isn’t unusual to finish up in a category stuffed with people who find themselves not architects, and that’s completely regular and even anticipated.” The built-in nature of her program is a shift from her earlier tutorial experiences, the place every self-discipline had been distinct and separate. She additionally values the shortage of hierarchy between completely different disciplines throughout the structure division right here. “There’s respect throughout disciplines for the contribution from every participant,” she says.
As an older scholar, Tessmer has a barely completely different method to graduate college, in comparison with her friends. She says, “MIT is superb as a result of there’s a lot selection and so many issues that you may get entangled in. However my fashion is to be hyperfocused on my pursuits. For me, there have been enormous advantages to specializing in this particular factor and squeezing all the things I can out of it, even within the face of all of those different alternatives.”
Tessmer has devoted herself to a number of tasks all through grad college, however all share a standard thread: an emphasis on fiber growth and textile programming. As a grasp’s scholar within the Self Meeting Lab, she utilized the inherent properties of supplies and optimized their configurations for particular capabilities by integrating computation into the fabric itself. “At MIT, I realized a much wider definition of computation,” she says. “For instance, within the Self Meeting Lab, we imagine that materials is a storage format of knowledge and that you may program materials to behave in sure methods.”
The primary mission Tessmer labored on was designing a fiber that might reply to temperature fluctuations. One other mission targeted on embedding many various properties inside a single material, doubtlessly for astronauts. “The human physique is so diverse within the variety of properties that it’s essential to match,” she says. At the side of collaborators throughout a number of MIT departments, she designed a spacesuit sleeve with embedded padding, stretchable areas, a compression gradient, and numerous sensors. Her third mission has targeted on embedding shapechange habits into material constructions to reinforce human consolation or match, as a substitute for handbook tailoring. Lastly, in a return to her architectural roots, she can also be engaged on designing a strengthened concrete beam utilizing textiles, a extra sustainable answer to constructing with concrete, which has a major carbon footprint.
One other essential facet of Tessmer’s analysis is her concentrate on the feasibility of large-scale manufacturing for a product. She commonly depends on industrial-scale equipment and consults with manufacturing companions. She says, “The way in which analysis is being carried out within the lab is an in depth parallel to how it will be made in actual life. The potential for a direct bridge between one and the opposite is a excessive precedence for me and a constraint that I’ve tried to layer on to all of my tasks.”
Dabbling in entrepreneurship
Tessmer says with fun, “My complete passion [textiles] has now been absorbed into my analysis. So I’m out there for a brand new passion.” For now, that passion has taken the type of entrepreneurship. She has been exploring the commercialization potential of her applied sciences, having filed a number of patents and accomplished the Blueprint program with The Engine Accelerator. She hopes that in the future her technique for embedding properties in textiles, whereas additionally decreasing manufacturing course of steps, will likely be used for industrial materials.
For instance, she factors to shoe manufacturing. “Your sneakers are usually an meeting of a lot of completely different supplies and many completely different layers. As an alternative, my proposal to The Engine targeted on embedding all of those properties in an automatic approach, eliminating the necessity for an intensive meeting course of.” Tessmer envisions entrepreneurship as one among her potential future paths.
In the intervening time, nevertheless, she plans to stay in academia. “From the surface, being a professor looks as if an unattainable place. Nevertheless, I hold being stunned at my potential to get to the subsequent stage of the educational hierarchy.” She goals to combine all her previous experiences right into a future analysis profession, designing textiles inside an architectural context, whereas additionally weaving within the constraints of producing scalability.
