Dr Shaila Afroj

Dr. Shaila Afroj is an Associate Professor of Sustainable Materials at the School of Engineering. Dr Afroj has been awarded prestigious EPSRC New Investigator Award for a ground-breaking project focused on developing sustainable wearable e-textiles for continuous and remote monitoring of Atrial Fibrillaition (AF) patients. This ~£0.5 M of funding will enable her to lead this 3 years project in collaboration with NHS, Bristol Heart Instituite, Kymira and Lividian.

Her passion about creating an inclusive, transparent and consistent environment has been recognised and she has been selected as EPSRC-WES ambassador for women in engineering and EDI champion (UWE). Dr Afroj has been serving as guest editor for Royal Society of Chemistry journal Materials Advances, member of EPSRC Peer Review College, Academic Advisor for Commonwealth Scholarship Commission. 

The main scope of her research is investigating into graphene and other 2D materials-based technologies aimed at developing sustainable wearable e-textiles for healthcare applications. Previously (2020-24), she was a Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for Print Research, UWE Bristol (UK), where she led the the new research theme 'New Materials: Towards Sustainable Technologies'. Prior to that, she worked as a Research Associate at National Graphene Institute (NGI), the University of Manchester after completing her PhD from the same university supervised by Nobel laureate Professor Sir Kostya S Novoselov. During that time, she co-developed several novel and highly scalable graphene-based wearable technologies. Her intense research activities have resulted 35+ peer reviewed publications in high impact journals, presentation in international conferences. She has a sustained track record of attracting internal and external funding (~£847k as PI) including prestigious EPSRC New Investigator Award (PI, ~£0.5M), partnership PhD studentships, Commonwealth Scholarship Commission (CSC)-funded PhD studentship and Innovate UK grant. She has 16+ years of industry (including multi-national companies like C&A and Intertek) and academic experiences related to advanced materials, digital fabrication and sustainable wearable e-textiles.