About
Dr Kai Yang is an Associate Professor in Textile Design and Innovation. She is the Head of Research in Fashion and Textiles. Her research interests are electronic textiles, wearable healthcare, and sustainable textiles. She has been awarded an EPSRC Fellowship and two MRC DPFS grants. She is the co-founder of Smart Fabric Inks, founder of Etexsense, and co-chair of the E-textiles Network.
Research
Research interests
- Electronic textile materials and manufacturing
- Wearable medical devices (e.g. stroke rehabilitation, pain management)
- Digital healthcare
- Sustainable textiles
Current research
Dr Yang’s research interests are in electronics textiles (e.g. materials, manufacturing, sustainability), wearable medical product development, and digital healthcare. She is the PI of the MRC DPFS grant to develop “Wearable Textile with Integrated Electrotherapy and Sensing for Joint Pain Management” (MR/W029421/1, £1.4M, 2022 - 2025). This project is built on her EPSRC Fellowship on “Advanced E-textiles for Wearable Therapeutics” (EP/S001654/1, £487k) and EPSRC IAA project on “Industrial design and manufacturing of electrotherapy knee sleeve for joint pain relief” (£45k). She was previously a PI on the MRC DPFS SMARTmove project on “Low-cost personalised instrumented clothing with integrated FES electrodes for upper limb rehabilitation” (MR/N027841/1, £902k).
Research projects
Active projects
Completed projects
Publications
Supervision
Current PhD Students
Teaching
E-textiles
Group Design Projects
Responsible textile for healthcare
Biography
She received her BSc in Material Engineering from Beijing Institute of Fashion Technology, China, in 2004; and PhD in Chemistry from the University of Leeds in 2009. She joined the Electronics and Computer Sciences, University of Southampton, as a Research Fellow in 2009, promoted to a Senior Research Fellow in 2015 and Principal Research Fellowship in 2018. She joined WSA in 2020 as an Associate Professor.