The Lab is led by Dr Rebecca Stewart hosted within the Dyson School of Design Engineering. The lab consists of 3-4 PhD students from Imperial, hosts around one visiting PhD student each year, and welcomes a further 2-3 students from the taught MEng and MSc programmes within Design Engineering.

The Lab was previously located at the School of Electronic Engineering and Computer Science at Queen Mary University of London until 2019.

We are an inclusive space and welcome all identities and backgrounds.

Joining the Lab

We currently have no PhD positions directly funded by the Lab available, but are always happy to discuss potential funding applications with prospective students. In general, funding opportunities are advertised from late summer/early autumn with submission deadlines in early January and funding decisions made across February to April.

For funding applications for internal competitions at Imperial, it is important to use the combined Personal Statement and Research Proposal document (usually limited to 2 pages in total, but carefully read the requirements for the funding call) to set up what you hope to achieve within your PhD research, how you intend to do it, and why you are the best person to undertake that research.

Academic Staff

  • Dr Rebecca Stewart

    Personal details

    Dr Rebecca Stewart Senior Lecturer and Head of Lab

Current Postgraduate Lab Members

  • Maya Thabal Herron

    Personal details

    Maya Thabal Herron PhD Student

    Research interests

    Self-Powered Textile-based Biomonitoring Systems

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  • Mingke Wang

    Personal details

    Mingke Wang PhD Student

    Research interests

    Soft Robotics Applied to Textile and Wearables

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  • Remi Zhao

    Personal details

    Remi Zhao PhD Student

    Research interests

    Tracking Embodied Human-Computer Interactions with E-Textiles Integrated into Loose-Fitting Garments

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  • Zhiyuan Lou

    Personal details

    Zhiyuan Lou PhD Student

    Research interests

    A Skin Integrated Textile Platform for Continuous Gesture Recognition

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Current Undergraduate Lab Members

Imogen Young

MEng Masters Project 25-26

Zile Feng

MEng Masters Project 25-26

Zoe Hall

MEng Masters Project 25-26

Lab Alumni

Previous PhD Students

Imperial Graduates:

  • Joy Zhou 2020-2024

Visiting PhD Students:

  • Xue Min 2023-24

QMUL Graduates:

  • An Liang 2017-2022
  • Mei Zhang 2017-2021
  • Nida Aziz 2017-2021
  • Rishi Shukla 2016-2021
  • Angela McArthur 2015-2023
  • Sophie Skach 2015-2020
  • Vanessa Pope 2015-2020

Previous Undergraduate Students

MEng Final Projects:

  • 2024-2025 - Sonya Afanasyeva, Isaac Siy, Lena Westerburg-Burr, Qiongyu (Amelia) Zhang
  • 2023-2024 - Rohil Dave
  • 2022-2023 - YangFangZheng (Kyle) Li

Undergraduate Research Opportunity Placements:

  • Xiaoun Li (2025), Imogen Young (2024), Mary Prabah Anderson (2023), Chinene Chukwuma (2022)

DE3 Industrial Placements

  • Imogen Young (2025), Rohil Dave (2024)