Dr. Ye (Sarah) Sun, Assistant Professor in Mechanical Engineering at Michigan Technological University, demonstrated her recent NSF CAREER Award project “System-on-Cloth: A Cloud Manufacturing Framework for Embroidered Wearable Electronics” at the 25th annual Council for National Science Funding (CNSF) Capitol Hill Exposition on Tuesday, April 30, 2019. This widely attended event showcases a broad range of research made possible by the National Science Foundation.
Wearable electronics are widely used in health monitoring and wearable computing and there is a compelling need for comfort, biocompatibility, and easy operation. Recent progress in smart fabrics, textiles, and garments and the associated manufacturing technologies provides opportunities for next-generation wearable electronic devices that are fabricated on cloth.
Automatic embroidery manufacturing is now an accessible tool for individuals and entrepreneurs. Embroidery offers great potential for electronic design due to its flexibility in transferring a desired pattern to fabric substrates. This exhibit illustrated embroidered wearable electronics on flexible fabric substrate for ECG monitoring for long-term well-being management.
In addition to the Exposition, Professor Sun had the opportunity to meet with staffers from both House and Senate delegations from Michigan with fellow researchers from the University of Michigan and Michigan State University as well as a meeting with staff from the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology.