Harishkumar Narayana

Lead Textile Engineering, Texavie Technologies Inc.

Dr. Narayana is currently serving as the Lead Textile Engineer at Texavie Technologies Inc. based in Vancouver, Canada and in the Board of Directors at the Institute of Textile Science – Canada. Previously, he held the position of Research Associate/Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Flexible Electronics & Energy Lab (FEEL), Centre for Flexible Electronics & Textiles (CFET), University of British Columbia from 2018 to 2023, secured through a competitive and prestigious Mitacs Elevate postdoctoral research fellowship. He earned his PhD from The Hong Kong Polytechnic University in 2018, specializing in smart memory polymeric materials and their application in advanced compression therapy healthcare. From the academic perspective, he has published a considerable number of US Patents, high impact peer-reviewed journal articles, book chapters and presented research outputs at reputed international conference proceedings along with applaudable competitive awards. 

His expertise includes R&D in fabricating, characterizing, and integrating soft-goods elastomer/textile based flexible sensors into devices, with a focus on prototyping AI-powered wearable electronic products like Smart Gloves and Smart Knee Sleeves ( products brought from R&D to commercialization stage ) for applications in digital healthcare, advanced camera-less human body motion capturing, VR, Sports/Fitness, and training. Notably, at Texavie, he has made significant contributions to major projects from the Canadian National Defence and Canadian Space Agency, particularly in developing wearable energy harvesting textile solutions. In addition, he has done a collaborative research between Texavie and the G.F. Strong Rehabilitation Centre, Vancouver Coastal Health for using motion capturing Smart Gloves for hand stroke patients monitoring and appeared in CTV news.