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20220708 new staff

Staff Promotions

SFT is delighted to announce that Dr Rong Liu has been promoted to Associate Professor, and Dr Magnum Lam and Dr Shuang Zhou have been promoted to Assistant Professor effective on 1 July 2022. Dr Rong Liu’s research interests include functional compression textiles, clothing ergonomic comfort and biomechanics, performance evaluation, and product innovation for healthcare, rehabilitation, and active sports. She holds a PhD degree in Textiles and Clothing Science and Technology, and MSc degrees in Biomedical Engineering and Clothing Engineering. Dr Liu was Assistant Professor at ITC; Visiting Assistant Professor at the College of Textiles of North Carolina State University; Research Fellow with the Department of Rehabilitation Sciences of PolyU; and R&D Manager, Technical Designer, and Director of Innovation Research in fashion/textile industrial companies. Dr Liu has secured 35+ project grants, published 100+ research articles and granted patents, and received 20+ design and academic research awards, including the 2021 ‘Faculty Awards for Outstanding Achievement-Technology Transfer’ in the fashion/textile industries. Dr Magnum Lam earned his PhD in Fashion Business at PolyU. He also holds an MA in Anthropology from the Chinese University of Hong Kong. Before joining ITC, Dr Lam was Visiting Scholar at the University of British Columbia – Okanagan (UBCO) and Visiting Fellow at the Hong Kong Design Institute. His research interests lie in corporate philanthropy, social innovation, fashion consumer behaviours, and symbolic meanings of consumption. Dr Shuang Zhou received her PhD at the University of Manchester in 2019 and then proceeded to join ITC in 2022. Her research interests lie primarily in the fields of digital and social media marketing, integrated marketing communications, and cross-cultural marketing. She is particularly interested in influencer marketing and the use of artificial intelligence and augmented and virtual realities in marketing. Dr Zhou has presented her work at several international academic conferences and worked as a teaching assistant for undergraduate and postgraduate courses in fashion marketing and retail at the University of Manchester.Congratulations to the three professors. We wish them continued success at SFT.

2022年7月8日

Announcements

20220618 HKJC scholarship3

JIM Yu-ching Natalie wins HKJC Scholarship

Congratulations to JIM Yu Ching Natalie, who has received a prestigious scholarship from the Hong Kong Jockey Club (HKJC). This scholarship covers her tuition fee, academic expenses and living costs for the entire normal duration of her study towards her degree programme, and a Jockey Club Scholars Alumni Association membership. A Fashion Design Talent: ‘Art is a significant part of my life.’ Natalie loves the arts and music because they excite her. In summer 2018, Natalie fell in love with apparel design when she had the opportunity to enroll in summer school lessons such as interior, graphic, and fashion design courses at the Savannah College of Art & Design (SCAD) in the United States. Then, Natalie explored the art and design industry, and decided that this would be her future career. Since other universities in Hong Kong do not provide a Bachelor’s degree programme for fashion design, Natalie chose ITC to further her education. During her undergraduate years, Natalie has learned many skills, such as sewing and pattern making in Year 1, which brings her step by step closer to her fashion design dream. Using basic knowledge, Natalie has started her own brands to express her viewpoint and share her message through her fashion designs. She loves to explore new things and meet others who share her values. Natalie has launched two brands, Yu.studio and Didueverdotcom (DID’DUE). The former offers handmade beaded accessories. Natalie believes that accessories with unique designs and colours can be companions in one’s life journey, and encourages people to pursue their dream. The latter is high-quality clothing from South Korea with the aim to provide more different possibilities in styling and build up the confidence of her customers as well as meet the needs of every type of customer. Products that are made with love and creativity reflect Natalie’s image. A Big Thank You to Supporters: ‘Thanks for always being here.’ To achieve her goals, Natalie feels that support and understanding from her supporters are very important. Natalie is appreciative of the support of her parents, even though they do not believe that there is a bright future in the art industry. Besides, PolyU also provides different opportunities and experiences to students. One of the most striking experiences is her internship at the ITC Store. Also, the ITC professors never reject the ideas of students, and allow them to create unique projects. Natalie encourages students who interested in the fashion design industry to enroll in ITC.

2022年6月24日

Teaching & Learning

0516 jace1

PolyU x POPCORN Webinar | Fashion & Music as Self-discovery: The Story of Jace Chan

Nearly 150 staff and students attended the "PolyU x POPCORN Webinar", which was held on 8 April on the PolyU ITCStore. The webinar featured an emerging singer, songwriter, and actress, Ms Jace Chan, who shared her personal stories about how music and fashion have influenced the advancement of her career. A dream catcher Jace has started a new trend in the music industry as she has an intense individual style. Not only is she an emerging singer but also a fashion icon in Hong Kong. She has never given up pursuing her dream to be a singer. She is now one of the new generation idols and has a positive impact on the Hong Kong music industry. A unique fashion icon of the new generation Jace has collaborated with different fashion brands that demonstrate her distinctive style and image. In her latest music video, ‘Long D’, she wore vintage garments that contributed to the aesthetics of the music video. The video shows her chic image. She styles herself through intuition and talent. ‘Ego’ and ‘Unique’ describe her fashion sense and she always insists on showing the special components to everyone. Fondness for colours People may think that Jace is a 'colourful' person, who wears colourful outfits for different events and occasions. Did you know that her favourite colour is green? Green is a comfortable and perceptive colour that represents fearlessness and innovation. Never give up Jace encourages students to stay true to their own designs and styles, and have an open-mind towards fashion styling. Students should never let go of any opportunity to pursue their dreams. In fact, she is a successful role model herself as she too pursued her dreams one step at a time. Today, she is a diva and her talent is recognised by the general public. Her songs are becoming more popular. Her fans appreciate her efforts and devotion to music. Jace Chan – an unwavering artist. We’ll always support you.

2022年5月16日

Teaching & Learning

Staff promotion

ITC is delighted to announce Dr Qiyao Huang has been promoted to Assistant Professor effective 1 April 2022. Dr Qiyao Huang earned both her BA and PhD degrees in Textile Technology from The Hong Kong Polytechnic University. Her interest centres on developing flexible and wearable electronics based on textile materials by combining conventional textile techniques with advanced materials and nanotechnology. Her research topics include: Metallic textiles Textile-based electrochemical energy storage Sensing devices Congratulations Dr Huang! We wish her continued success at ITC.  

2022年5月13日

Announcements

0506 Prof Tao research1

Scalable production of ultrafine polyaniline fibres for wearable electronics

High performance conducting polymer fibres are in high demand in applications that range from advanced fibrous devices to frontier fabric electronics. Recently, a joint research team led by Prof. Tao Xiaoming and Dr Chai Yang reported a scalable good solvent exchange strategy to produce ultrafine polyaniline (PAni) fibres. This work is published in Nature Communications. The first and second authors are Dr Fang Bo and Mr Jianmin An (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-022-29773-9). The extended conjugated and easily doped π-system along the backbone enables conducting polymers to possess intriguing transport, optical, and electrochemical properties, which have been rarely found in conventional polymers and metal conductors. Processing conducting polymers into macroscopically fibrous materials makes it possible to translate their nano-object features to human-friendly products in a continuous manner. Primarily due to the large diameters, the performance and expectations of most achieved continuous conducting polymer fibres (CPFs) have been limited by their insufficient electroactive surface and weak tensile strength. In conventional wet spinning processes, conducting polymer dopes give rise to transient solidification in poor solvents, induced by the strong interactions of conducting polymer chains. The rapidly hardened gels suppress the post-stretching and slenderising procedures, and cause the wet-spun CPFs to show a large diameter, generally beyond 10 µm. The large diameters largely discount the mechanical properties and electrochemical activities of CPFs. As shown in Figure 1, Prof. Tao’s group report a good solvent exchange strategy in a modified wet spinning technique to prepare ultrafine PAni fibres (UFPFs) at a large scale. Beyond the conventional wet spinning protocol, they replaced poor solvents with good solvents as the coagulation bath to decrease the viscosity of the gel protofibres, which were subject to an ultrahigh drawing ratio and reduced to an ultrafine morphology. In the modified one-step wet spinning process, Prof. Tao and her research group used good solvents as the coagulation bath to realise the mass production of the UFPFs (Figure 2a). After doping PAni powder (emeraldine base) with camphor sulfonic acid (CSA), they dispersed fully doped PAni into m-cresol as the raw spinning dopes. Significantly, the direct use of doped PAni solutions as the dopes saves the trouble of utilising conventional post-doping procedures, and further permits a uniform charge distribution throughout the fibre length. A good solvent, dimethyl formamide (DMF), of PAni was used as the coagulation bath. A slow solvent exchange between m-cresol and DMF facilitated the formation of PAni gel protofibres with quite a low viscosity that is below 3000 cP. Subsequently, a sharp decrease in the diameter from ~0.1 mm to ~4.7 µm was observed when stretching the gel fibres in the bath (Figures 2b-2e), which is a record small value in the achieved wet-spun CPFs. The ultrafine fibre shows a smooth surface, highly crystallized microstructure, and uniform electrical properties. Moreover, such an impressive drawing ratio enables a very high production efficiency of UFPFs beyond 40 metres per minute. For example, they prepared a 5.4-kilometre-long UFPF in two hours (Figure 2f). The sharp necking behaviours of the gel protofibres are highly related to the use of good solvents as the coagulation bath. Prof. Tao and her research team recorded the changes in the surface morphology of the PAni fibres collected from different solvating species. As shown in Figure 3a, the obtained fibres in poor solvating species, i.e., water, ethanol, ethyl acetate (EA), and acetone, generally show a coarse surface and large diameter of around 20 µm. By comparison, a necking phenomenon in both cases of good solvents can be clearly observed; i.e., N-methyl-2-pyrrolidone (NMP) and DMF. Such necking effects promote the ultrafine morphology of the resultant fibres, which contributes to the higher degree of orientation and crystallisation of the PAni fibres, and a better structure and performance stability. The UFPFs show an impressive mechanical performance and energy storage ability. Derived from the strain-stress curves, the UFPFs have a modulus of 29.89±5.6 GPa, and a strength of 1080±71 MPa, which is at least one order of magnitude higher than that of CPFs with larger diameters (Figure 3b). Prof. Tao and her team used polyvinyl alcohol (PVA)-H3PO4 gel electrolyte and two UFPF electrodes to construct a micro capacitor to evaluate the electrochemical activity of the UFPFs. The area capacitance is between 1008 and 1666 mF cm-2 at current densities between 0.32 and 3.18 mA cm-2, thus outperforming previously reported thick CPFs and other electrodes, and approaching that of PAni nanowires. Benefitting from the favourable energy and charge storage performance of the UFPFs, Prof. Tao and her team realised a high-performance all-solid organic electrochemical transistor (OECT, Figure 4a), which is very soft, and shows favourable amplification performance with a high on-off current ratio (>103) at low voltages (Figure 4c).The function of the all-solid OECT is to respond to mechanical deformation as a tactile sensor (Figures 4d-4k).  

2022年5月6日

Research & Innovation

0419Dr Shou Endowed professorship

Dr Dahua Shou appointed as Limin Endowed Young Scholar in Advanced Textiles Technologies

ITC congratulates Dr Dahua Shou on his official appointment as Limin Endowed Young Scholar in Advanced Textiles Technologies. Dr Shou, Assistant Professor of Institute of Textiles and Clothing, and Assistant Director of PolyU DRRC Novel Material Science and Technology Innovation Centre, earned his PhD from PolyU before his appointment as a Postdoctoral Fellow at The University of Sydney and Cornell University. An awardee of many prestigious awards, including TechConnect Global Innovation Awards for two consecutive years and those conferred by the International Exhibition of Inventions of Geneva, Dr Shou has published over 60 SCI papers in impactful journals such as Science Advances, PNAS, Advanced Energy Materials, and Advanced Functional Materials. Currently he serves on the editorial boards of four SCI journals and is a lead guest editor for several SCI journals. Dr Shou bases his research on cutting-edge multi-physics mechanisms in hierarchical fibrous porous media, and his interests cover personal thermal and moisture management, smart wearable technologies, soft robotics, and green energy. With a view to reinvent intelligent textiles and clothing as human’s second skin, he strives to enhance their performance in human-environment and human-computer interfaces, imbuing them with self-adaptive properties amid extreme and dynamically changing environments. Ultimately, his goal is to provide healthy, comfortable, efficient and sustainable apparels for all. Dr Shou is equally committed to serving society. Amid COVID-19 pandemic when the demand for breathable protective gear was keen. Leveraging advanced functional materials and wearable technologies, he led a team to invent an air-conditioned thermo-responsive mask and a skin-like sweatable textile, greatly enhancing the wearing comfort for healthcare workers and people at large. These revolutionary technologies quickly won a number of international innovation awards and attracted collaboration opportunities with renowned companies. "The Institute of Textiles and Clothing at PolyU is ranked among the best textile and clothing schools in the world. The establishment of this Endowed Professorship will help fund research to explore new frontiers in this field and further advance the standing of this excellent school." said the donor, Dr Harry Lee, SBS, JP. Dr Harry Lee, Chairman of TAL Apparel Limited, holds a Bachelor of Electrical Engineering degree from Imperial College London and a Doctor of Electrical Sciences degree from Brown University. Dr Lee joined TAL Group (formerly Textile Alliance Limited) in 1973. TAL employs over 20,000 workers in factories across Southeast Asia and the Chinese Mainland. With nearly 40 years of experience in the textiles and clothing industry, he is actively involved in a number of trade organizations and public services. He is Honorary Chairman of the Hong Kong Garment Manufacturers Association and the Textile Council of Hong Kong Limited, a board member of the Global Apparel, Footwear and Textile Initiative, as well as Chairman of Tradelink Electronic Commerce Limited and the Hong Kong Research Institute of Textiles and Apparel. Dr Lee was appointed a Justice of the Peace in 1997. In 2001, he was awarded a Silver Bauhinia Star by the HKSAR Government. Dr Lee has also made notable contributions to PolyU by serving as Chairman of the Advisory Committee of the Institute of Textiles and Clothing from 1995 to 2005, and Member of its Council from 2005 to 2008.   About the Endowed Young Scholars Scheme With the aim of supporting and nurturing promising early-career academics, PolyU has launched the Endowed Young Scholars Scheme to partner with our donors and benefactors, in driving innovations that bring positive and long-term changes to the world. An Endowed Young Scholar position can be established with a donation of HK$4 million. This joint commitment between the donor and the University will enable our young distinguished scholars to make greater progress in their education and research.

2022年4月19日

Research & Innovation

0412 outstanding alumni award

ITC Outstanding Alumni Award 2022 – Dr Di Fan and Mr Stanley Kwok

The ITC Outstanding Alumni Award aims to give public recognition to outstanding graduates for their professional achievements and significant contributions to the community and their alma mater. Awards are conducted at three levels (Department level, Faculty level and University level) under four categories (Professional Achievement, Entrepreneurial Achievement, Scholarly Achievement and Community Service Achievement). Selection of Outstanding Alumni is based on the nominee’s accomplishments in his/her personal achievements in the field, contributions to the community, and support and contributions to PolyU. We are pleased to announce that our Dr Di Fan (PhD, 2016), Assistant Professor has been selected as the 2022 ITC Outstanding Alumni in recognition of his scholarly achievement; whereas Mr Kwok Chi-hung Stanley (MA, 2013), co-founder of KnitWarm Limited has been selected as the 2022 ITC Outstanding Alumni in recognition of his entrepreneurial achievement. Dr Di Fan obtained his Bachelor, Master and PhD degrees from ITC. Prior to joining ITC, he was a Senior Lecturer at The Australian National University and an Assistant Professor at Macau University of Science and Technology. Dr Fan is a researcher in sustainable operations. His research aims at providing implications to build a greener, safer, and more socially responsible global fashion supply chain. His research has been published in top-tier peer review journals in the field, such as Journal of Operations Management and Manufacturing & Service Operations Management. His academic achievement has been recognized by various international research awards, such as Jack Meredith Best Paper Award from Journal of Operations Management, and Presidential Responsible Research Award from International Association of Chinese Management Research. His research findings have been widely reported by major international media such as The Guardian, South China Morning Post and Sydney Morning Herald. Mr Stanley Kwok applied the patented heat-conductive knitting technology in a variety of wearable items and created a new lifestyle brand named KnitWarm with the vision of helping the wearer to look smart and enfold the fear of being labelled as infirmity. In the last 3 years, KnitWarm Limited has launched and commercialized more than 10 innovative gadgets including Wrap, Smart KneeSleeve, HarnessWarmer, and WarmerBand. The patented invention successfully addresses technological challenges and removes the bulkiness, discomfort, and unaesthetic appearance, unlocking the possibility of new applications to satisfy the unmet needs of customers. These functional wearables are well-recognized in the market and have received numerous international innovation awards, including Red Dot Award, Asia Pacific Information and Communications Technology Alliance Awards 2020-21, Hong Kong ICT Awards - Grand Award, and DHL / SCMP Hong Kong Business Awards 2021 - the Startup Award. Let’s congratulate Dr Fan and Mr Kwok on winning the award!

2022年4月12日

Alumni

0408 ProfTao research1

Prof. Xiaoming Tao made important progress in efficient and scalable moisture-electric generators made from ionic hydrogel

In the context of global resource shortage and high demand for carbon neutrality, it is of great significance to find simple and efficient green energy conversion technology to achieve sustainable development of energy and society. Moisture-electric generator (MEG) is based on the chemical energy from atmospheric moisture to generate electricity directly, without the generation of pollutants and harmful gas emissions, which is an emerging research focus in the energy field. However, most MEGs suffer from intermittent electrical signals and low current. In addition, the realization of large-scale integration and practical applications is still the bottleneck of current research. To address this issue, Prof. Xiaoming Tao’s research team has developed a novel and efficient ionic hydrogel moisture-electric generator (IHMEG), which converts the energy released by captured moisture in the air into electricity, realizing efficient current density and power output. A single IHMEG unit of 0.25 cm2 can continuously generate direct-current electricity with a constant open-circuit voltage of ~0.8 V for over 1000 hours, a high short-current density of 0.24 mA·cm-2 and power density of up to 35 mW·cm-2. Of great importance is that large-scale integration of IHMEG units can be readily accomplished to offer a high voltage of up to 210 V, making the flexible IHMEG assembly capable of directly driving numerous commercial electronics, including electronic ink screen, metal electrodeposition setup and even light-emitting-diode arrays. This IHMEG device with high cost-efficiency, easy-to-scaleup fabrication and high power-output opens a brand-new perspective to develop a green, versatile and efficient power source for Internet-of-Things and wearable electronics. The work is published in Advanced Materials (https://doi.org/10.1002/adma.202200693) recently. The first author is a PhD graduate, Dr. Yang Su.

2022年4月8日

Research & Innovation

0406DrShou_silber award

Dr Dahua Shou garnered Silver Medal at Special Edition 2022 Inventions Geneva Evaluation Days

ITC is delighted to share Dr Dahua Shou, Assistant Professor of ITC has garnered Silver Medal in this year’s online special edition of the International Exhibition of Inventions of Geneva (Geneva Inventions Expo) - Special Edition 2022 Inventions Geneva Evaluation Days – Virtual Event. The Exhibition is regarded as one of the most important annual global events devoted exclusively to inventions. The awarded project of Dr Shou is entitled “Omni-Cool-DryTM: a Desert Beetle Inspired Skin-like Fabric for Dynamic Thermal and Moisture Management”. The team members include Prof. Jintu Fan, Head and Chair Professor of ITC, and a research student Mr Yuheng Gu. Omni-Cool-DryTM is a desert beetle inspired skin-like fabric, which promises all-day cool, dry, breathable, and comfortable feelings under dynamic thermal conditions. This unique fabric quickly dissipates excessive sweat as water droplets to avoid the sensation of wetness and saturation. It also reflects solar radiation and emits body heat to the cold universe for cooling. Compared to conventional fabrics, Omni-Cool-DryTM weighs 75% less, dissipates sweat 3 times faster, and is 50% less clingy during heavy perspiration. The human skin can be cooled by 5°C lower than with a piece of commercial cotton fabric. Omni-Cool-DryTM is treated to be water-repellent and coated with radiation cooling nanoparticles globally, while the local water channels are patterned with wettability gradient as “sweat glands”. The fabrication is scalable and cost-effective, compatible with the production process in the textile industry. This fabric will help outdoor enthusiasts and athletes to perform their best. It will also be desirable to professionals such as medical personnel, construction workers, and firefighters for more endurance.  

2022年4月6日

Research & Innovation

0406 endowed professorship

PolyU to advance textiles technology through endowed professorship

PolyU announced recently the set up the “Lee Family Endowed Professorship in Textiles Technologies” and the Endowed Professor-designate is Prof. Jintu Fan, Head and Chair Professor of Fiber Science and Apparel Engineering of ITC. The endowed professorship has given ITC a strong impetus to make further contributions to the development of the local fashion and textiles industry and education. Prof. Jintu Fan was the former Chair and Vincent V. C. Woo Professor of Department of Fiber Science and Apparel Design, Cornell University, USA and the Founding Director of Cornell Institute of Fashion & Fiber Innovation. He has a prominent international standing in the field of fashion and textiles, served as President of the US based international Fiber Society in 2018, Director of the Shanghai International Fashion Innovation Center from 2016 to 2019 and is currently the Chairman of Hong Kong Institution of Textiles and Apparel (HKITA). Prof. Fan is a world class expert in functional textiles and fashion. He has made outstanding contributions in clothing thermal comfort, theories of heat and mass transfer in fibrous materials, personal thermal management and fashion aesthetics, including the invention of world-first sweating fabric manikin-Walter, establishment of the transient heat and mass transfer model in fibrous media incorporating radiation and phase change, development of biomimetic textiles as well as the discovery of Volume-Height Index (VHI) as a dominant factor for bodily attractiveness.  He has authored/co-authored more than 450 research publications, many of which have appeared in leading journals of relevant fields, including Science Advances, Proceedings of the Royal Society, Advanced Materials, Advanced Functional Materials as well as Textile Research Journal. He has been honoured with numerous prestigious awards, including Warner Memorial Medal for outstanding contribution to textile science from The Textile Institute in 2016; Morgan Sesquicentennial Fellow from Cornell University; Doctor of Science from Leeds University in 2011; Honorary Fellow of The Textile Institute in 2010 (the highest honour within the institute for creativity and advancement of knowledge) and Distinguished Achievement Award from the Fiber Society in 2003. Established in 2012, the Endowed Professorship Scheme aims to honour distinguished scholars for their outstanding academic and research achievements. It provides a unique opportunity for supporters to partner with PolyU to advance research and academic activities of a discipline of their choice for the benefits of the wider community.

2022年4月6日

Research & Innovation

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