Description of the video:

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I was born in a pretty normal soviet
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family in southeast Ukraine, Donetsk when
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i was
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six if you would ask me what I want to
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do i would tell that
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I want to be a rock star
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I wanted to sing, and I still haven't
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Given up this dream
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The pathway towards being a rockstar is
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a little bit cumbersome by the age of 17
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I decided that it would be a good idea
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to continue my education in Israel
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From there, it's history, it took me eight
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years to get my PhD after getting a PhD
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I've got a scholarship and found a
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position at MIT
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where I was studying
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one of the topics that I right now apply
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in my lab here
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It was material science of
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multi-material fiber devices
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We built our lab from scratch. There was
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literally no building that you
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see
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there right now
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so
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We started designing the lab in 2016
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when i when i just came to IU
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It took us about
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a year to finalize the design and to
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Choose all the equipment for the lab
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So it took more than three years to
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construct the space
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create the infrastructure
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gases
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compressed air, air handling, humidity
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handling ending point commissioning when
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I got the key to the lab
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is end of October 2019
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just a couple months before covet hit
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fames lab is an acronym, it stands for
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fibers and additive manufacturing
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enabled systems laboratory to simplify
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that
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I'm making fibers
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with complex internal structures
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which have
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active functions, so for instance it is
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common to wear clothing everyone wears
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that or the type of clothing for
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instance, a t-shirt, the t-shirt that I
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wear
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protects me from scratches and warms me
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Up makes my appearance socially
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appropriate, so imagine how attractive it
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would be to have a t-shirt
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that is, for instance capable of
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sensing your
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emotional state and
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giving you a massage if you're stressed
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in order to achieve that in a t-shirt
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the t-shirt textile that is comprised of
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fibers need to be imparted with active
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sensing and transduction capabilities
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The fibers inside the textile have to
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sense that you're stressed
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and should be able
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upon sensing that to
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contract and expand periodically in
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order to massage
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our lab is a small, you can say it's a
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small factory it has
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every component of the process of design
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material processing fiber manufacturing
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and fiber characterization
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in one research space, two staffers two
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postdocs
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five PhDs
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one master
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and three
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undergrads so
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currently 13, not including myself
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the central and the biggest ticket item
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is definitely the fiber draw tower
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so the fiber draw tower is first of all
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it's expensive, just that setup costs
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about a million dollars, draw tower is
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very non-standard in its dimensions, it's
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uh 27 feet high
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and
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you have to specifically build a room
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for that setup, around that set the fiber
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draw tower is a setup that is making
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fiber optics
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okay
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the normal fiber optics that you see in
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long-haul communication for
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telecommunication and internet
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the cables
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under the
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atlantic ocean that
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connect continents
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for the exchange of data
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[Music]
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and the process starts from taking a
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glass rod
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on the top of the tower, you have a
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handle that you attach that glass rod to
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and that handle automatically slowly
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moves the glass rod into the
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tube furnace
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below that handle
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and inside the tube furnace, which heats
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up to
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2000
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degrees celsius
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where glass
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becomes soft
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and starts glowing white
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that glass rod
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softens to the state of viscous liquid
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and then
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you can draw it as a taffy candy from
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the bottom of the furnace and usually
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from a
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centimeter thick
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meter-long rod you can get
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multiple kilometers of
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hair thin
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fiber
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fiber devices is
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is technological area in its infancy
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even the most advanced
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fiber device that we have now
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available commercially, which is the
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fiber optic is
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just a
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piece of glass that transmits
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a blink of light, we
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target our efforts towards two sets of
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applications one in biomedical devices
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and another one in communication-related
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devices
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in biomedical devices, we are developing
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fibers that are capable of sensing
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physiological parameters of human in
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order to provide them better
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treatments
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fibers that can sense
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micro level
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metabolism in
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3d printed tissues in order to engineer
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tissues for wound regeneration
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on the communication front, we are
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developing
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fibers that would help integrating novel
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computing technologies into the internet
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common computer is
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based on transistors
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there are other emerging technologies
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that based on quantum effects quantum
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computers
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that lab is quite unique
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so
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in united states in academic environment
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I would say it's one of the kind
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so that's not something you would find
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in Purdue, for instance
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not something you would find in Chicago
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university not someone, it's not
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something that you would find in
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Urbana-Champaign not even at MIT
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actually
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my hope is that my work will one day
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merge with my desire to become a rock
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star so I want to
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make fibers and textiles that would
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sense
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compose and emit music
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