Profile
Dr. Sadat Sayem (full name Abu Sadat Muhammad Sayem) is a Senior Lecturer in Sustainable Fashion and Textiles at Loughborough University. He is an experienced academic with over 20 years of research and leadership experience in multinational higher education contexts.
He is a Fellow and Trustee of the Textile Institute (CText FTI) and a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (FHEA), and the Royal Society of Arts (FRSA). He holds a PhD in Fashion Technology (Digital Fashion) from the University of Manchester (2012), an MSc in Textile and Clothing Engineering from Dresden University of Technology (2004), and a BSc in Textile Technology from the University of Dhaka (1999).
Before joining Loughborough, he held several key positions, including Associate Professor and Head of the Centre for Scientific Research & Innovation at Southeast University, Bangladesh; Head of Textile at World University of Bangladesh; Assistant Professor at Ahsanullah University of Science & Technology; and Research Fellow at Manchester Metropolitan University (MMU). At MMU, he also served as the Departmental Research Ethics Lead (2017–25), PGR Liaison for the Arts & Humanities Faculty Research Ethics Committee (2024–25), and a member of the Faculty Health & Safety Committee (2018–23). In addition, he has over three years of industry experience, working in product development, merchandising, and sourcing roles for European fashion retailers in Bangladesh.
He led the AHRC-funded project Digital Fashion Network (2023–2025). He is a member of the UKRI Peer Review College and served on the Assessment Panel for the UKRI Circular Fashion and Textile NetworkPlus programme (2023). He chairs several conferences, including the Digital Fashion Innovation Conference (UK, since 2020) and the Textile Research Conference (Bangladesh, since 2014). He serves as Editor-in-Chief of the Textile Institute Professional Publication Series (Taylor & Francis).
He has been a PhD examiner for Cranfield University since 2020.
Research
Dr. Sayem’s research works align nicely with the global priorities in sustainable and digital fashion. His scholarly publications include peer-reviewed articles in leading international journals.
He has made significant editorial contributions to the field. He guest-edited a special issue on the “Digital fashion Innovation” of the International Journal of Fashion Design, Technology and Education (vol 15, no. 2) and edited the book “Digital Fashion Innovations: Advances in Design, Simulation, and Industry (Taylor & Francis, 2023)”, which brings together interdisciplinary perspectives on emerging technologies and their integration into the fashion value chain. More recently, he served as the lead editor of the book “UN SDG 12 and Global Fashion Textile Industry (Springer, 2025)”, which examines the intersection between the global fashion and textiles sector and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 12.
Beyond publications, Dr. Sayem led the AHRC-funded Digital Fashion Network (2023–25), a project that has built an international community of more than 190 members working at the intersection of fashion, sustainability, and technology. As part of a Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF) project that he led in 2021, he developed a framework that promotes a shift from post-production waste management towards proactive design and material decision-making, aligning with UN SDG 12. His work on this Framework was featured by the World Textile Information Network (WTiN) in an article titled “Providing sustainable guidelines for the textile industry” (25 August 2021).
In another notable media engagement, he was interviewed by The New York Times in August 2022 for the feature “World-Class Lessons on Zero-Waste.” The article highlighted his work on zero-waste pattern cutting (ZWPC) and sustainable mass-production practices, bringing his research to a global audience and enhancing its visibility among industry stakeholders and the wider public.
Teaching
Dr. Sadat Sayem’s broad teaching areas include fashion technology, research methods, and research ethics.
He began his academic career in 2006 as a Lecturer at Ahsanullah University of Science and Technology, where he taught undergraduate modules such as apparel manufacturing, textile basics, fashion merchandising, and protective clothing.
In 2012, Dr. Sayem was appointed Head of the Textile Department at the World University of Bangladesh (WUB). In this leadership role, he managed the undergraduate programme and taught modules including apparel manufacturing, textile testing, and fashion merchandising, alongside overseeing curriculum development and departmental operations. During this period, he was invited to deliver a specialised module on Protective Clothing for the MSc programme at the Bangladesh University of Textiles (BUTEX), a national centre of excellence in textile education.
Following his transition to the UK, Dr. Sayem has continued to deliver innovative and future-oriented education. At Manchester Fashion Institute (MFI), he led the Master’s-level Fashion Product Innovation module from 2021/22 to 2023/24, incorporating topics such as sustainable textile production, 3D garment development, the UN Sustainable Development Goals, and emerging technologies including laser finishing and non-sew construction. He taught virtual fashion technology using OptiTex and Gerber AccuMark 3D in the Build unit of the MA Fashion Innovation programme (2016–2018) and using CLO3D in the Fashion Product module of the BA Fashion Design and Technology programme (2021–2024).
PhD Supervision
Sadat has successfully supervised PhD researchers who have gone on to build impactful careers across both industry and academia.
He welcomes enquiries from prospective PhD applicants seeking to undertake funded or self‑funded research in the areas outlined below.
Digital Fashion and Textile Innovations
Sadat’s research in digital fashion technology investigates 3D garment simulation, virtual prototyping, and computational pattern engineering. His work includes objective drape analysis of virtual shirts, focusing on avatar morphing, virtual stitching, and simulation accuracy (Sayem, 2017a; 2017b). He has significantly contributed to mesh‑generation and pattern‑flattening algorithms (Sayem et al., 2016) and pioneered 3D grading and pattern‑unwrapping methods for shirts and trousers (Sayem et al., 2014a; 2014b; 2012). His foundational review of 3D CAD systems (Sayem et al., 2010) helped shape modern digital workflows in apparel design. Examples of potential PhD research areas from this theme include:
a) Virtual garment, digital textile, drape and fit simulation
- Objective measurement and validation of virtual drape and fit
- Material properties vs simulation parameters
b) Avatar morphing and fit analysis
- Avatar morphing for static and dynamic fit evaluation of garments including sportswear and workwear.
- 3D/4D body scanning and dynamic avatar generation.
c) Digital product development and sustainability
- Digital‑first workflows to transform design and manufacturing
- Zero-physical prototype and bulk production of apparel
d) AI‑driven design and fit prediction
- AI-generated garment patterns from sketches or 3D forms
- Developing next‑generation fashion‑AI tools
Sustainable Textile and Fashion Production
Sadat’s research also focuses on sustainability across textile and apparel value chains. His team has assessed climate‑related occupational risks in apparel SMEs (Senadeera et al., 2026), mapped environmental performance in knitted textile facilities (Shamsuzzaman et al., 2023), examined textile and fashion waste within circular‑economy systems (Shamsuzzaman et al., 2025), and explored resource‑efficient single‑step garment production using 3D weaving (Shi et al., 2024). His work further spans natural fibres, bio-composites (Khan et al., 2023; Shahinur et al., 2022; Sayeed et al., 2023), and eco‑friendly dyes (Uddin et al., 2022; Farzana et al., 2025). Examples of potential PhD topics from this theme include:
a) Climate resilience and sustainability in fashion/textile supply chains
- Climate‑induced productivity loss and heat‑stress modelling in apparel factories
- Engineering solutions and organisational interventions to reduce climate impacts on occupational health and safety.
b) Circular economy strategies for textile and fashion
- Design for circularity and UNEP circularity model for fashion and textiles
- Upcycle/remanufacture and recycle for circularity
- Policy and business‑model innovation for textile circularity
c) Environmental sustainability of knitting, dyeing & textile processing
- Carbon, water, and chemical‑intensity modelling in knitted‑fabric production
- Comparative LCA of processes and products and energy‑optimisation pathways
d) Fibre science and eco‑friendly bio-composites
- Development of high‑performance sustainable composites from natural fibres
- Improving mechanical performance through fibre treatment and hybridisation, etc.
Smart Textiles & Wearable Technology
Sadat’s research in smart textiles and wearable technology spans textile‑integrated sensing, conductive materials, and wearable energy harvesting. He co‑developed an ECG‑monitoring garment using textile‑based dry electrodes (Fink et al., 2021) and a smart‑clothing architecture for health monitoring (Ahsan et al., 2022). He authored a major review of Smart Electro‑Clothing Systems (Muhammad Sayem et al., 2020), conductive textiles (Rayhan et al., 2022), and novel triboelectric nanogenerators for self‑powered wearables (Sayam et al., 2024). Examples of potential PhD topics from this theme include:
a) Garments with next‑generation micro-electronics for physiological monitoring
- Long‑term comfort at the skin–textile interface, motion‑artefact reduction strategies
- Detachable or washable textile‑based interfaces, etc.
b) Self‑powered smart garments using textile‑based TENGs
- Energy harvesting from daily human movement to power low‑energy textile sensors
- Hybrid TENG-supercapacitors and their seamless integration into garments.
c) Integrated smart clothing systems for continuous health monitoring
- Real‑time data fusion from multi‑sensor garments and validation with target user groups
- Wearability, comfort, and human‑factors for smart clothing design.
d) Eco‑design of smart textiles using sustainable conductive materials
- Low‑impact manufacturing routes for e‑textiles
- Sustainable design frameworks for future e‑textile systems
The above indicative list is intended to inspire potential PhD applicants and help ignite their thinking about future research directions only.
You are encouraged to conduct preliminary literature research and prepare a draft PhD research proposal on your preferred topic before contacting Dr. Sadat Sayem at s.sayem@lboro.ac.uk