About
Kai Yang is a Professor of E-textiles in Healthcare at the Winchester School of Art (WSA), University of Southampton. She is the Head of Research in the Department of Fashion and Textiles. Her research interests focus on e-textile materials and manufacturing, wearable medical devices, user-centered design, and sustainable textiles/e-textiles. She has been PI/Co-I on a total of £12 million E-textile research projects funded by UKRI (MRC, EPSRC, AHRC, Innovate UK) and NIHR. She has published over 90 papers. She is the Lead of the WSA E-textile Innovation Lab, Co-chair of the E-textiles Network, the Founder of Etexsense Ltd, and a Co-Founder of the Smart Fabric Inks Ltd. Her work has been featured on Sky News, BBC South, and BBC Radio Solent.
Research
Research groups
Research interests
- Electronic textile materials and manufacturing
- Wearable medical devices
- Digital healthcare
- User-centered design
- Sustainable textiles/e-textiles
Current research
Prof Yang’s research interests are in electronic 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 is a Co-I and a Work Package Lead on a £8M EPSRC Programme Grant on “Sustainable heterogenoUs e-textileS for impercepTible humAn INterfaces (SUSTAIN, EP/U537081/1)”. 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). She was awarded an MRC equipment grant to purchase a Shima Seiki WholeGarment Knitting Machine under the project title of “Whole garment knitting equipment for e-textile wearable healthcare applications” (MR/X013022/1, £151k).
Research projects
Active projects
Completed projects
Publications
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 (ECS), 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 the Winchester School of Art (WSA), University of Southampton, in 2020 as an Associate Professor and promoted to a Professor in 2023.