It was the film Iron Man that set Dr Ishara Dharmasena on the path to Loughborough University. Watching the movie as a child in Sri Lanka, he was blown away by the “cool stuff” the superhero could do with his outfit and that planted a seed in his mind as he grew up on the island, which has a rich textile industry.
“Textiles have been in my blood from the beginning,” says the Royal Academy of Engineering research fellow and senior lecturer at the university’s Wolfson school of mechanical, electrical and manufacturing engineering. “I began to research how to integrate textiles with nanotechnology to make advanced wearables which can solve rehabilitation problems. Basically, I married these two paths.”
