Dr. Alexander Gumennik is the Director of Fibers & Additive Manufacturing Enabled Systems Laboratory at the Department of Intelligent Systems Engineering (ISE FAMES Lab) at the School of Informatics, Computing, and Engineering Indiana University.
The vision of the ISE FAMES Lab is to provide an efficient interface, linking the cyberspace with the physical world. This is done by an engineering of fibers and fabrics, embedding ensembles of nano-transducers and sensors, that would listen, watch, smell, and palp their surroundings and communicate their sensations to a computer.
Fiber devices integrate metals, semiconductors, and insulators arranged in a complex geometry, defining the device functionality. Rapidly developing additive manufacturing is capable of revolutionizing the way fiber preforms are made, providing a monolithic, precise and versatile fabrication approach. Taking a "Recursive Manufacturing" path, the fiber device, thermally drawn from a 3D printed preform, would itself later be used as a feedstock for 3D printing of fiber constructs with active sensing, transducing, and energy harvesting / storing functionalities. Such constructs can be applied for pervasive detection, environmental sensing, bio-synthetic interfacing, self-monitoring medical implanting etc.. Spanning long distances and covering large areas in the form of net fiber devices would provide a cyber-physical interface for the Internet of Things.
Prior to joining ISE, Dr. Gumennik worked as a Lead Photonics Process Engineer at Formlabs Inc, a Boston-based startup company developing a desktop stereolithographic 3D printer, following his postdoctoral research at MIT in the area of multi-material fiber devices.
Dr. Gumennik interests include photonic circuits, fiber-based and integrated nano-photonics and nano-devices, fabrics with active functionalities, distributed and remote environmental sensing, and nano-to-macro integration using additive manufacturing.