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Dr. Mark Taylor

  • Position: Research Fellow
  • Areas of expertise: Clothing comfort; protective clothing; fashion technology; sustainability; climbing helmets; testing
  • Email: M.Taylor@leeds.ac.uk
  • Phone: +44(0)113 343 3727
  • Location: 1.08 Clothworkers Building South

Profile

Before starting a late career in academia I worked in the field of IT. In 1996 I started a new career path when I came to Leeds to read Sports Science (Outdoor Activities).

After graduating with honours in 1999 I continued in this vein with a PhD which focused on the impact absorbing mechanisms of climbing helmets. Upon completion of my PhD I was employed as a Research Fellow on an EPSRC funded project to investigate, among other things, novel ways to improve the measurement of air permeability and moisture vapour transmission. Since the end of this project I have worked in many areas related to comfort in extreme environments and protection from falls from a height.

My research interests cover the comfort and protection of clothing systems for extreme and hostile environments and the role of textiles in protection in falls from height or from falling objects. This encompasses areas as diverse as the design of waterproof zip fasteners, improving the impact absorption of properties of sports protectors, measuring comfort in outdoor footwear and preventing scalding through firefighter clothing systems. I have also been active in the field of biomimetic textiles, and supervised a PhD on superadhesion using the gecko foot as inspiration. I developed miniature data logging sensors that are unobtrusive enough to allow the measurement of the microclimate in a shoe. Work is ongoing to further develop these to remove wires from the system. I also developed a novel new system for quick measurements of moisture vapour transmission under realistic conditions which was extensively tested by a PhD student.
 

Research interests

My research interests are varied but based around my interest in protective clothing and comfort. Recently I have been working on issues around the chemicals used to add water repellence to waterprof clothing.

Since 2016 I have actively researched the problem of fibre release from textiles during laundry. Along with Dr. Mark Sumner I am a member of the Microfibre Consortium (https://www.microfibreconsortium.com/), an industry funded organisation whose aim is to "facilitate the development of practical solutions for the textile industry to minimise microfibre release to the environment from textile manufacturing and product life cycle".

 

<h4>Research projects</h4> <p>Any research projects I'm currently working on will be listed below. Our list of all <a href="https://ahc.leeds.ac.uk/dir/research-projects">research projects</a> allows you to view and search the full list of projects in the faculty.</p>

Student education

I contribute to core teaching to the BA in Fashion Technology. In addition I teach optional modules in the areas of performance clothing and technology use in design.

I support teaching at masters level and also supervise projects at both undergraduate and postgraduate level.

Current postgraduate researchers

<h4>Postgraduate research opportunities</h4> <p>We welcome enquiries from motivated and qualified applicants from all around the world who are interested in PhD study. Our <a href="https://phd.leeds.ac.uk">research opportunities</a> allow you to search for projects and scholarships.</p>