by
ITU Graduate School | Nov 19, 2025
ITU PhD student Kadir Özlem has developed a smart t-shirt that monitors athletes’ posture and vital signs in real time using sensors embedded in knitted fabric. Developed as part of the STEWART project, this innovative product stands out for both its academic contributions and commercial potential.
Kadir Özlem, a PhD student in Computer Engineering at Istanbul Technical University (ITU), has developed a wearable technology that enables real-time monitoring of athletes’ posture and physiological signals. Created within the scope of the STEWART project, the smart t-shirt integrates textile-based sensors into knitted fabric to track data such as posture, heart rate, and respiration. These data are processed through a cloud computing infrastructure, allowing for continuous monitoring of the user.

"At the Soft Sensors Lab, I focused on electronic textiles and soft robotics. Thanks to my graduate studies at ITU, I had the opportunity to combine what I learned in machine learning, cloud computing, and human-computer interaction with real-world applications," says Kadir.

In addition to its practical applications, the project has yielded strong academic outcomes: contributing to five thesis studies, numerous journal articles, and international conference presentations. With promising patent prospects, the sensor-embedded t-shirt is moving closer to becoming a market-ready product.

Led by Assoc. Prof. Dr. Gökhan İnce, the project brings together computer, textile, and biomedical engineering to offer a user-friendly, comfortable, and innovative wearable technology. At ITU, we continue to shape human-centered solutions for the future through technologies driven by our students’ vision and creativity.

