Yoel Fink of Advanced Functional Fabrics of America. On the desk in front of him are preforms that will become optical fibres after being processed in a draw tower. Behind the preforms is a prototype military helmet covered in functional fabric that responds to a gun's laser sight to help the shooter detect enemy soldiers. Fink is the head of Advanced Functional Fabrics of America (AFFOA), which he founded in 2016 to build on his optical fibre research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). AFFOA is a research consortium that is researching and developing functional fibres that can be integrated into clothing, with a wide range of applications to wearable computing devices and smart clothing. Photographed on 22 December 2017, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA.