Sen Zhang

I’m Sen Zhang (张森) — a researcher and engineer working at the intersection of smart textiles, soft robotics, and advanced manufacturing. I am currently a Postdoctoral Scholar in Electrical & Computer Engineering at the University of Washington, working with Prof. Yiyue Luo. I completed my Ph.D. at the Wilson College of Textiles, North Carolina State University, working with Prof. Xiaomeng Fang.

My work focuses on creating the smart garment capable of measuring biosignals, while also enabling feedback and closed-loop interaction. I design wearable systems that are soft, comfortable, manufacturable at scale, and suitable for long-term use for healthcare.

I am particularly interested in bridging advanced textile and polymer manufacturing with human–computer interaction, neurorehabilitation, assistive technologies, and soft robotics.

🔬 Research Directions

Multimodal smart textiles (EMG, EIT, motion sensing)
Integrating impedance tomography, muscle sensing, and kinematic tracking into knitted fabrics for real-time physiological monitoring.
Magnetoactive and haptic textiles
Designing knitted electromagnets and magnetoactive fibers that provide programmable tactile feedback.
Wearable systems for rehabilitation
Creating soft, portable systems enabling at-home physical therapy and remote motor assessment.
Soft robotic / textile electromechanical actuation
Exploring knitted coils, soft magnetic actuators, and textile-driven robotic mechanisms.

🚀 Current Projects

MultiSensKnit

A multimodal smart textile sleeve integrating EMG, EIT, motion sensing, and pressure feedback for in-home upper-limb rehabilitation.

MagTex

A machine-knitted magnetoactive textile enabling bidirectional interaction: sensing deformation while producing tunable haptic feedback.

🧩 Entrepreneurship

I am part of the UW ECE Entrepreneurial Fellows Program, where I translate textile-based sensing systems into emerging health-tech products. My commercialization work includes:

NSF I-Corps
Customer discovery with clinicians, therapists, and industry experts
A provisional patent on multimodal textile sensing systems

My long-term goal is to bring clinically meaningful, comfortable, and scalable textile sensing systems into everyday rehabilitation and wellness applications.

🌐 Links

Feel free to reach out if you’d like to collaborate on smart textiles, sensing systems, or rehabilitation technologies.

news

Jan 15, 2016	A simple inline announcement with Markdown emoji!
Oct 22, 2015	A simple inline announcement.

latest posts

Mar 26, 2025	a post with plotly.js
Dec 04, 2024	a post with image galleries
May 14, 2024	Google Gemini updates: Flash 1.5, Gemma 2 and Project Astra

selected publications

PhysRev

Can Quantum-Mechanical Description of Physical Reality Be Considered Complete?

A. Einstein^*†, B. Podolsky^*, and N. Rosen^*

Phys. Rev., New Jersey. More Information can be found here , May 1935

Abs DOI HTML PDF Video

In a complete theory there is an element corresponding to each element of reality. A sufficient condition for the reality of a physical quantity is the possibility of predicting it with certainty, without disturbing the system. In quantum mechanics in the case of two physical quantities described by non-commuting operators, the knowledge of one precludes the knowledge of the other. Then either (1) the description of reality given by the wave function in quantum mechanics is not complete or (2) these two quantities cannot have simultaneous reality. Consideration of the problem of making predictions concerning a system on the basis of measurements made on another system that had previously interacted with it leads to the result that if (1) is false then (2) is also false. One is thus led to conclude that the description of reality as given by a wave function is not complete.