Ph.D. position in Smart Sensors for Shape-Adaptable Shoe Insoles for Diabetic Patients

For diabetic patients, special care needs to be given to the extremities in the body such as the foot.  Therefore, shoe insoles are carefully designed to minimize the pressures on the foot during daily activities.  However, there is still a need for a reactive patient-targeted approach.  In this Ph.D. project, the candidate will investigate new technologies for sensing coatings with the application in shoe insoles to design flexible electronics to sense and detect excess local pressures.  The design and development of sensing coatings and electronics is very challenging as pressures need to be measured with high sensitivity at a high load.  

Graphene-based sensors have shown a lot of promise in achieving this.  The candidate will therefore investigate how graphene-based sensors can be applied in coatings in shoe insoles to meet the sensing requirements.  Furthermore, the candidate will need to design energy-efficient and accurate electronics and software to detect these pressures.   Furthermore, the candidate will also design a custommade and energy-efficient electronics to capture signals from this sensor. 

The candidate will work in the context of the ORTEADA project and will join a multidisciplinary team of professors with various backgrounds and 2 other Ph.D. students.  The candidate will collaborate with Ph.D. candidates on the topic of Material Sciences and Rehabilitation of the diabetic foot.

Successful completion of the research project will result in a number of scientific international journal papers and a PhD at the Faculty of Engineering Technology (KU Leuven). Results from the research will be published in international scientific journals, and will be presented at conferences and to interested companies and potential users.  The new technologies has large potential for valorization, such as licensing, patenting and even a spin-off company,