Smart textiles for personalized healthcare and sustainability

Global warming increases the intensity and frequency of heat waves or extreme weather, which impacts the thermal homeostasis of the human body and leads to various heat-related illnesses or even death. One innovative method to reduce the impact on health is developing wearable technology for diagnosis, treatment, and aftercare rehabilitation. Currently, the adoption of wearable sensors and therapeutic materials onto the human body remains challenging because of device bulkiness, power supply restrictions, and ergonomic comfort limitations. In this talk, I will introduce a strategy of incorporating thermal management and sensing capabilities into wearing textiles by nano- to macro-scale material design and multilevel textile engineering from fiber to fabric. First, I will introduce an advanced spinning technology for regenerated silk fibroin spinning. Then, I will introduce spectrum-selective hierarchical fabric for personalized radiative cooling, with emissivity dominant in the atmospheric transmission window to minimize the net heat gain from the surrounding buildings and ground. Lastly, I will share textile strain sensors for self-powered biomechanical and human respiratory signal monitoring. A smart wearable sign language translation system that combines yarn sensing array and machine learning algorithms will be introduced. 

Representative Publications:

Dr. Ronghui Wu is a postdoctoral researcher at the Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering at the University of Chicago. She was a postdoctoral scholar at the Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology (UNIST) from 2020-2022. She received her Ph.D. in Textile Materials and Engineering from Donghua University (2020). During her PhD studies, she was a visiting student in Biophysical Science at the National University of Singapore from 2017-2018. Her research focuses on fibrous materials and wearable devices with ideal electronic and photonic structures, chemical properties, or heat transfer characteristics for novel solutions in health, energy, and sustainability.