Established with a $10 million grant from the state, Fabric Discovery Center officially opened its doors in July 2018. Housed alongside the university’s Innovation Hub business incubator at 110 Canal St. in downtown Lowell, the center offers 28,000 square feet of space for research, design, prototyping, pilot manufacturing and testing of advanced materials. The space-age fabrics incorporate sensors and communications features that can be woven into designs to do everything from detecting dehydration in soldiers to monitoring buildings for leaking pipes.