If anything, I should probably describe my area of interests as Clothing Biophysics, Personal Protection and Textile Testing. To get here I’ve had opportunities to study a wide range of relevant research fields. From 1997 to 2013 I’ve been working in various formal and informal roles as Senior Scientist, project manager and coordinator of the R&D efforts in Personal Protective Clothing and Equipment at TNO Defense, Security and Safety (The Netherlands). In this fashion, I had to combine the Human Factors expertise (ergonomics, physiology, psychology) with the available technical expertise on ballistic and chemical/biological (CBRN) protection, textiles, sensor technology, and others technology areas to apply research to solve questions and problems for customers. From August 2005 to August 2006 I have worked as an exchange scientist in the Individual Protection Directorate of Natick Soldier Center, a US Army lab that performs R&D on personal protective clothing and equipment for the soldier.Since 2013 I have worked at the Textile Protection And Comfort Center (TPACC) at NC State University (USA) on the interaction of clothing with Human Factors, Safety and Ergonomics. Research and Development projects focus on human performance, protection and comfort of military, first responders, and other professionals in challenging environments. Recently my work has also focused on the local interaction of fabrics and materials with the skin and the effects of the local microclimate on skin health, developing evaluation methods to study the interface of skin and textiles. The classes I teach are Clothing Physiology (TE/TT561), Textile Testing and Performance Evaluation (TT331) and a new PhD course around Measurement in Textile Sciences (FPS792). My passion is to apply science to make real improvements in safety, health and performance of professionals in challenging environments.In my graduate students I am looking for people who are not afraid of developing new methods; problem solvers who can think and work independently, are pro-active, curious, and receptive to feedback.
Research
Research and Development on textiles for human health and safety; Clothing Biophysics and Textile Testing.
Optimize Human performance in clothing systems in challenging environments, by combining science, engineering and measurement technologies on textiles with measurements of human performance and health: physiology, psychology, and ergonomics.
Evaluate and quantify added value of new technologies and materials for optimizing skin health and human performance.
Evaluate and quantify added value of new technologies and materials for workers who need to perform in hazardous or challenging conditions such as, but not limited to fire fighters, military, law enforcement, athletes and outdoor expeditions. To achieve that multi-disciplinary research needs to be my way of life.
Projects of interest range from basic heat and mass transfer modeling, physiological measurements, skin health and human monitoring, textile comfort and performance tests and quantitative analysis of psychological and behavioral aspects of clothing, athletic wear and protective equipment.
Teaching
TT331 – Performance evaluations of textiles (Textile Testing), Spring TE 551 – Clothing Physiology, Fall TT 401/402 – Senior Design (product development and evaluation support)
Education
Ph.D.Biomedical PhysicsErasmus University Rotterdam, The Netherlands1997
MScExperimental PhysicsUtrecht University, The Netherlands1992
Area(s) of Expertise
Protective Textiles
Simulation and Modeling
Testing and Materials Evaluation
Textile Comfort
Textile Technology
