Federal Grant Award Summary

The University of Houston received a $499,823 Project Grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) Division of Materials Research under the Mathematical and Physical Sciences program (CFDA 47.049), effective February 1, 2026 through January 31, 2030. This collaborative Designing Materials to Revolutionize and Engineer Our Future (DMREF) award supports research to develop quantitative metrics of entanglement in complex materials such as polymer networks, textiles, and steel-cable structures through integrated experimental, computational, and theoretical approaches. The project will establish a closed-loop framework using physical network science to correlate structural features with mechanical performance, utilizing 3D-printed textile architectures and woven metamaterials as testbeds across multiple length scales.

The primary deliverables include quantitative mechanical measures of entanglement validated both experimentally and numerically, simplified digital network representations of complex material geometries, and open-source tools and data to enable scalable design and optimization of fabrics and textiles at industrial scales. The research will advance fundamental understanding of how fiber properties and entanglement geometries drive material behavior, with broader impacts including educational integration of network science across institutions and a public art exhibit designed to raise awareness of network-science-driven materials engineering.