Most people are mostly clothed most of the time. Jack Forman, a PhD in Media Arts & Sciences, reimagines textiles as dynamic interfaces by developing liquid crystal elastomer fibers that when heated undergo large and fully reversible contractions. The resulting fabrics can transform, inform, and adapt without sacrificing the soft touch, washability, and manufacturability that underlie their ubiquity.
Jack Forman is a materials scientist, designer, and researcher exploring how materials and textures can act, express, and perform—not simply as passive substrates, but as active participants in interaction, environment, and construction. Jack’s research spans programmable fibers, responsive textiles, functional structures, and large-scale ephemeral architectures.
He studied Materials Science and Biomedical Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University and graduated in 2019 as a Carnegie Society Scholar. Jack is currently a Ph.D. candidate at the MIT Media Lab’s Tangible Media Group and The Center for Bits and Atoms. His projects include FibeRobo (UIST 2023), a system for large-scale fabrication of liquid crystal elastomer fibers that can be knitted and woven into electromechanical fabrics. In a recent collaboration with scenic designer Mimi Lien, librettist Sarah Ruhl, and countertenor Anthony Roth Costanzo, Jack invented new machines to create opera sets from soap, fog, foam, and air—material performances that will tour Lincoln Center, Boston Lyric Opera, and Opera Philadelphia.
Jack serves as Diversity Chair for UIST 2024 and 2025 and TEI 2026, and as President of MIT’s largest LGBTQ+ organization, and received the MIT LGBT Pride Award in 2021. Also in 2021, the MIT Office of Graduate Education awarded him the William Asbjornsen Albert Memorial Fellow. Jack’s work has been recognized by Fast Company, Core 77, Red Dot, and the International Design Awards.
Bridging design, computation, fabrication, and philosophy, Jack’s work asks: How might materials themselves think, feel, and perform? His research invites new modes of interaction that are not controlled, but co-authored—where matter becomes a collaborator in sensing, expression, and knowledge.
May 15, 2025