Drexel University is leading a key group of educational, private and public institutions as part of a new $317 million national research initiative that aims to further the American textile manufacturing industry by developing new and more sophisticated products to market.
Drexel will head up the mid-Atlantic group of the Advanced Functional Fabrics of America (AFFOA), a manufacturing resource center for both industry and government to develop and produce enhancements in the future of fabrics.
With Cornell University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Drexel founded AFFOA, a nonprofit that needed to match the U.S. Department of Defense's $75 million commitment, which will be distributed over five years.
The organization raised enough for a 3-to-1 match, bringing the total pledged funding to AFFOA to $317 million, said Dr. Aleister Saunders, senior vice provost for research at Drexel. "We are going to start a new industry," Saunders said.
"This is so innovative, we can't imagine what this is going to lead to." The newly created research consortium – headquartered in Cambridge – is made up of 31 academic institutions, 16 companies, and 26 incubators and venture capital groups, and is part of the White House's National Network for Manufacturing Innovation Institutes' initiative to boost the value of American-made products around the world. Nike, Microsoft, Goodyear, Bose and Medtronic are a few of the consortium's members.
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