Textiles: Virtual to Actual

Mariano co-founded Nimbly after successfully starting and managing his own knit clothing brand, called Appalatch. His deep interest in clothing manufacturing and sustainability was cultivated during studies at Harvard and international work for the World Bank.

Brooks Hagan is an Associate Professor at Rhode Island School of Design. He leads the Virtual Textile Research Group, which investigates manufacturing, prototyping and computational design for constructed textiles. He is co-founder of the custom weaving and graphics company Weft, and consults with numerous industry leaders including Apple Inc. and Under Armour.

Christian has a broad collection of experiences which include high-end womenswear design, menswear design, analog and digital patternmaking, garment design and engineering for extended sizes, 3D virtual sampling for apparel and software product management. Today, Christian is an independent 3D Adviser and Industry Liaison at Gerber Technology and an Associate of Global Garment Engineering. Christian has a BFA in Fashion Design and Marketing and an MFA in Fashion Design. He has earned accolades from publications like Elle, Esquire and Women’s Wear Daily.

At Propel LLC, Anjali Khemani is involved in the design and development of interactive textiles and creates complex computer programs that translate into ingenious 3D knitted structures. Anjali believes the future of textiles is digital fabrication, interactive textiles and UX-based garments. A recent graduate from Drexel University in Philadelphia with a Masters of Science, Anjali discovered technical textiles and realized it was a field that merged her design and technical coding skills.

Clare King is President of Propel LLC, a company dedicated to the development of transforming textile technologies for the US Military and Fire Services. Using a wealth of experience in textile materials and processes, the Propel team thinks about and solves complex problems from conceptualization through full-scale manufacturing. Propel projects have included the Wearable Advanced Sensor Platform (WASP) for smart monitoring of Firefighters – the first workplace wearable to come to market – and, currently, for the US Navy, both advanced wireless and stitchless engineering of future sailor clothing systems.

Steve Marschner is Professor of Computer Science at Cornell University, where his research in computer graphics and vision center around how optics and mechanics determine the appearance and behavior of materials. He is co-founder of Weft, which uses computer graphics techniques to enable a new kind of on-demand custom textile manufacturing.

World-renowned expert in translating 2D and 3D garment images into real-world garments that can be reliably sized for retail sales. With degrees in clothing and textiles, theatrical costume design, and history Trautman has combined over 20 years teaching in multiple universities (including UConn and SCAD) and consulting with brands and factories on quality execution of designs as presented in sketch with managing technical design and sample rooms in 3 countries. Recently, and working with several major studios, Trautman has shifted focus to recreate film character costumes from big screen for uses including promotion, museum exhibits, and retail partnerships world-wide.

William Vaughan is an award-winning artist, writer, and director. He has created thousands of original computer-generated characters, including Tofu the Vegan Zombie. William has trained thousands of cg artists throughout the world and authored more than one thousand tutorials and instructional videos. He has been published by major cg magazines, contributed to twenty books, has written and directed several award-winning films, and has created digital art for many top studios, including Nickelodeon and Pixar Animation Studios. He is currently leading a team of artists at New Balance as the Senior 3D Production Manager.

Math Whittaker is a computational designer within innovation at New Balance. In 2018 Math graduated from Harvard University with a Master’s of Design Studies (Technology) . Prior to studying for his Master’s, Math studied at Manchester School of Art in the UK and has worked in engineering, furniture design and jewelry design industries. Currently Math’s work at New Balance focuses on creating computational tools for other designers within the department to use. Whilst taking a course at MIT he worked alongside Carrie Mcknellie on developing algorithmic techniques to apply the structure of knitting to sheet metal fabrication