Federal Grant Award Summary

Harvard College received a $500,000 Project Grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) Division of Materials Research under the Mathematical and Physical Sciences program (CFDA 47.049), awarded February 1, 2026, with completion scheduled for January 31, 2030. This Designing Materials to Revolutionize and Engineer Our Future (DMREF) collaborative research award supports the development of quantitative metrics and predictive models for entangled materials—including polymer networks, textiles, and steel-cable structures—by combining experimental characterization, advanced microscopy, and network science approaches across multiple length scales.

The project will deliver an integrated framework combining theory, computation, and experimentation to establish the relationship between entanglement geometry and mechanical properties in complex fiber systems. Key deliverables include quantitative entanglement metrics derived from experimental and numerical analysis, simplified digital network representations suitable for computational design, and open-source tools and datasets to enable scalable design and optimization of fabrics and textiles at industrial scales. The research team will employ three unified thrusts utilizing testbeds of 3D-printed textile architectures and woven metamaterials to generate both experimental and numerical mechanical performance data. Broader impacts include integration of network science education across participating institutions and a public art exhibit promoting awareness of network-science-driven materials engineering.