New Textiles Research Centers & Initiatives
What Is It?
Carolina’s high-tech centers and initiatives offer access to talent, knowledge, and facilities with opportunities for collaboration among academia, government, and industry. These centers and initiatives include the manufacture of nonwoven textiles with current applications in automotive, medical and biotextiles, biomedical engineering and apparel. The research involves nanotechnology for gear and clothing for soldiers and firefighters, biosensors for monitoring patients and conductive fibers in clothing to power devices like cell phones via solar cells.
Universities Involved
North Carolina State University
- Research into integrating nanostructures and nano assemblies into fibers, laminates and polymers.
- Nonwovens Cooperative Research Center and Partners Lab.
- Medical and biotextiles research and manufacturing.
- Institute of Textile Technology.
- Collaboration among Colleges of Textiles, Engineering, Physical and Mathematical Sciences and Agriculture and Life Sciences.
University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill / North Carolina State University
- Offering joint graduate degrees in BioMedical Engineering to attract growth in medical textiles.
- Medical imaging, bioinformatics, computational biology.
- Bioelectronics, biophotonics, biosensors.
- Biomaterials, tissue engineering.
- Biomechatronics, rehabilitation engineering.
- Implants, medical devices.
- Intracellular engineering, nano instrumentation.
- Microfluidics, biofluid dynamics.
Clemson University
- Funding for textile research from the National Textile Center.
- Leadership in moving textiles from commodity products to specialized products, such as with military clothing.
- Apparel Research Center.
Community/Technical Colleges Involved
Key Community/Technical Colleges like Rowan Cabarrus, Gaston, Forsyth, Guilford and Central Piedmont have technician certification programs developing for “New Textiles.”
