News & Events

Cambridge Science Festival is a week-long celebration of ingenuity, creativity and innovation. Highlighting pioneers in science, technology, engineering, art, and math, the Festival is a multifaceted, multicultural event, making science accessible, interactive and fun.

DMC is the nation’s annual forum for enhancing and leveraging the efforts of engineers, managers, technology leaders, scientists, and policy makers across the defense manufacturing industrial base. Leaders and manufacturing subject matter experts from government, industry, and academia exchange information and perspectives on defense manufacturing policies, strategic direction, best practices, funding opportunities, and the latest manufacturing innovations that will benefit our nation’s warfighters.

The annual Conference on Composites, Materials, and Structures is the preeminent export controlled and ITAR restricted forum in the United States to review and discuss advances in materials for extreme environments. The Conference started in the 1970s as a small informal gathering for government and industry to share information on programs and state-of-the-art technology. Attendance has grown to nearly 500 people while preserving this same objective to share needs and trends in high-temperature and extreme environment materials, and the latest information on advanced materials and manufacturing processes.

The five-day conference program includes two to three parallel sessions per day on topics including thermal protection materials, ceramic matrix composites, carbon-carbon materials, ballistic technologies, hypersonics, and gas turbine engines. Attendees are engineers, scientists, managers, and operational personnel from the turbine engine, aviation, missiles and space, and protective equipment communities. These communities include the Navy, Air Force, Army, MDA, NASA, DARPA, FAA, DOE, engine manufacturers, missile and aircraft manufacturers, commercial space companies, and material and component suppliers.

Calling on her skills as a designer with a keen understanding of manufacturing, Elizabeth Whelan believes her textile, Artemis, can advance seating design.  Artemis combines the function of a foam cushion with the beauty of an upholstery fabric into an inventive three-dimensional woven textile is breathable, comfortable and can be manufactured on a standard power loom.  Whelan was granted a utility patent in both the US and EU for Artemis.  She received a grant from the Maine Technology Institute to make a manufacturing trial at AFFOA. 

In this presentation, Whelan will take you through the design and development process of Artemis.  After the presentation, she will take questions from the audience and engage in discussion of design and innovation in textiles.

Elizabeth Whelan is a designer and inventor.  She is the recipient of numerous awards.  Last year she was the winner of the Rome Prize in Design at the American Academy of Rome and the Helen Adelia Metcalf Visionary Award from the Rhode Island School of Design Alumni Association.  S