Located in western Massachusetts, UMass Amherst is the flagship campus of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts' five-campus University of Massachusetts system. UMass Amherst is a nationally recognized teaching and research institution with a current enrollment of about 28,500 students.

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Solar thermal textiles for on-body radiative energy collection inspired by polar animals

Humidity‐Resistant, Broad‐Range Pressure Sensors for Garment‐Integrated Health, Motion, and Grip Strength Monitoring in Natural Environments

Trisha L. Andrew directs the Wearable Electronics Lab, a multi-disciplinary research team that produces garment-integrated technologies using reactive vapor deposition.

Andrew's lab recently developed a flexible, chalk-based coating which can be added to fabrics that has been found ittoreduced the temperature underneath clothes by up to 15 degrees compared to untreated fabrics.

In 2023, she led a team that solved the 80-year old quest to make a synthetic textile modeled on polar bear fur. 

She is a David and Lucile Packard Foundation Fellow, a National Academy of Sciences Kavli Fellow, a L’Oréal USA For Women in Science Fellow, and was named as one Forbes’ magazine “30 Under 30” Innovators in Energy.

Smart Garments

Wearable Technologies

Garment-Integrated Technologies

Solar Textiles

Textile Electronics

UMass Amherst Department of Chemistry Profile

Wearable Electronics Lab at UMass Amherst

Profile at Institute for Applied Life Sciences

Google Scholar Citations

fabric in lab

Coating clothes with this simple material could cool your body by up to 8 degrees

cold weather

Why Does the Same Temperature Feel Hotter or Colder in Different Places?

laundry stain removing

The best stain removers to add to your laundry routine, according to experts

polar bear

Analyze This: A new fabric mimics polar bears’ pelts for warmth

Scientists unravel the secrets of polar bear fur

New Polar Bear-Inspired Fabric Is 30% Lighter Than Cotton and Far Warmer

trisha andrew

Mass Appeal UMass developing smart tech wearables for better health monitoring

Professor of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering

How do polar bears, an other Arctic animals, survive the frigid temperatures? The answer is in their skin and a new technology could lead to better cold-weather clothing an gear.
#science #scienceandtechnology #scientist #arctic #polarbear #polarbears #polar #news #new

UMass Amherst Answers the Question: How Does Polar Bear Fur Work?

Retail Connected is not your average virtual event. Brought to you by Retail Week, Retail Week Live, Be Inspired and World Retail Congress – all part of Ascential, this five day virtual event, taking place on 26-30 April, will connect brands and retailers from all key markets of the world. It will focus on the key areas that make a winning retailer in the new consumer landscape

Retail Connected | Five questions with Trisha Andrew, the scientist creating smart apparel

Dr. Trisha Andrew is Assistant Professor of Chemistry at University of Massachusetts Amherst. Earlier this year (March 2016), while she was still Assistant Professor in Wisconsin, we sat down to talk about why she purchases her equipment and supplies from Angstrom Engineering.

For more information on Trisha and her group's research, please visit: http://welab.umass.edu/

For more on Angstrom Engineering, please visit www.angstromengineering.com

Trisha Andrew

Research Spotlight | Trisha Andrew | Why Angstrom?

As the effects of climate change become more severe and widespread, maintaining personal thermal homeostasis becomes both necessary for survival and increasingly energy intensive. 

In principle, advanced textiles and garments have the ability to leverage light absorption, transmission and/or reflection, in addition to straightforward convection, to heat or cool bodies in extreme temperature conditions. For cooling, in particular, surfaces adept at selectively reflecting or refracting high-energy incident light (200 nm - 2.5 microns) from the sun while transmitting or emitting infrared light (8-13 microns) from radiant body heat boast the ability to maintain cooler body temperatures, even when exposed to direct sunlight and the open sky.

I will detail the materials science and engineering advances made in my research lab to develop a durable textile coating that transforms common clothing into implements for passive personal cooling. A polyester poplin fabric finished with a microstructured, lamellar coating comprised of calcium carbonate and barium sulfate shows a cooling ability of up to 8°C compared to an unfinished sample, achieving a maximum cooling of 3.4°C below ambient temperature in optically-complex built environments. Wash and durability testing of the lamellar coating revealed no mechanical degradation and no evident attenuation in the material's performance, affirming its resilience and long-term effectiveness as a functional textile coating for personal cooling.

Professor Trisha L. Andrew (she/her/hers) is a Professor of Chemistry, Chemical Engineering and Materials Science & Engineering at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. She directs the Wearable Electronics Lab, a multi-disciplinary research team that uses chemical vapor deposition to create a variety of functional coatings on unconventional substrates, such as textiles, yarns and plants, and demonstrates the uses of these coated samples in energy harvesting/storage and integrated sensing systems. 

Trisha began her independent career at the University of Wisconsin-Madison after receiving her Ph.D. from MIT in 2012, and moved her research program to UMass Amherst in 2016. She has unconventional training in the disparate fields of synthetic organic chemistry and microelectronic device fabrication that inform her unique problem-solving skills and varied research interests. Trisha is a David and Lucille Packard Foundation Fellow, a National Academy of Sciences Kavli Fellow, an Air Force Office of Scientific Research Young Investigator, a L’Oréal USA For Women in Science Fellow, a 3M Nontenured Faculty Award winner, and was named as one Forbes’ magazine “30 Under 30” Innovators in Energy.

To learn more, go to:
https://welab.umass.edu 

To learn more about the Rotary eClub of Silicon Valley, go to:
http://rotary.cool

Trisha Andrew - Textile Coatings for Personal Cooling

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