Rebecca Lin

Rebecca Lin is a graduate student in electrical engineering and computer science whose research treats garments as reconfigurable systems rather than fixed objects. Modern apparel production and consumption generate vast quantities of textile waste; she rethinks clothing design computationally. Her Refashion project introduces a vocabulary of reusable modular components with reversible interfaces and uses MATLAB to prototype module designs and formulate integer programming problems for assembly generation. She extends this agenda through PieceWise, which retrofits existing garments into reusable components and computationally catalogs and recomposes them under physical and aesthetic constraints. By treating wardrobes as inventories of parts, PieceWise formalizes upcycling and enables questions about component compatibility and design tradeoffs. As a MathWorks Fellow, Rebecca will advance computational design languages by exploring new garment modules, interfaces, and transformation pathways. Her research could reshape fashion sustainability by establishing mathematical design frameworks applicable beyond apparel to other creative domains.