Professor Steve Beeby, one of the world’s foremost experts on electronic textiles and energy harvesting, has been awarded a prestigious Chair in Emerging Technologies by the Royal Academy of Engineering.
Professor Beeby, who leads the Smart Electronic Materials and Systems (SEMS) group in the School of Electronics and Computer Science, is one of just eight UK-based researchers to receive this honour this year. Others named are from Imperial College, the Universities of Bristol, Glasgow, Liverpool and Nottingham.
Professor Beeby and his colleagues are developing electronic textiles into a practical platform technology for wearable applications and beyond. His research will exploit printed active materials, flexible circuit technologies and textile engineering to integrate sensing, electronic and energy harvesting/storage functionality within a single textile. This will create reliable e-textile systems that are invisible to the user and require minimal intervention for a range of health and work-related applications.
“I’m delighted to receive the award of this Chair which fully acknowledges and reaffirms Southampton’s place as the UK-leader in the e-textiles domain,” said Professor Beeby whose research has led to two spinout companies and over 300 publications.
Professor Beeby follows in the footsteps of Southampton colleagues, Professor Susan Gourvenec (Intelligent and Resilient Ocean Engineering) and Professor Themis Podromakis (Memristive Technologies for Lifelong Learning Embedded AI Hardware), who were both awarded Chairs in Emerging Technologies in 2019.
Professor Mark E Smith, President and Vice-Chancellor, said: “I warmly congratulate Professor Beeby on winning this prestigious award. It continues Southampton’s success in this scheme. It also shows the strength of our research in these disciplines and how our research is developing the technologies that tomorrow’s society will depend upon.”
