Amit Rawal
Visiting Professor
Faculty of Textiles, Engineering and Business (including The Swedish School of Textiles)
— Department of Textile Technology
Amit Rawal is a guest professor at the Swedish School of Textiles, University of Borås, serving as the twenty-ninth recipient of the prestigious King Carl XVI Gustaf Professorship in Environmental Science for 2024/2025. He is currently on sabbatical from the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi, where he is a Professor in the Department of Textile and Fibre Engineering.
Currently, his research focuses on the structural mechanics and experimental investigation of textiles, particularly in the context of microplastic fiber release. This includes evaluating various textile materials for their potential to generate microplastics under mechanical stresses such as tension, compression, tearing, and abrasion. These stresses are commonly encountered during processes like washing, drying, recycling, and the wear and tear of textile materials in the environment.
Professor Rawal’s broader research domain encompasses developing three-dimensional (3D) analytical models to predict the geometrical, mechanical, and wetting properties of diverse textile and allied structures. His interests extend beyond textiles to include buckypapers, electrospun mats, superhydrophobic fibrous mats with low surface energy, geotextiles, composites, battery separators, and auxetic, piezoresistive, and piezoelectric materials.
He earned his PhD from the University of Bolton, UK, and a Master of Philosophy from The University of Manchester, UK. His contributions to research have been recognized with several prestigious awards and fellowships, including the Alexander von Humboldt Research Fellowship for advanced research in nonwovens in Germany and the Fulbright-Nehru Academic and Professional Excellence Fellowship for initiating collaboration with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), USA. He has also received the Young Researcher Fellowship from MIT for outstanding work in computational mechanics, the Fellowship of the Textile Institute, the CSIR Special Research Award, and the Outstanding Young Faculty Fellowship from IIT Delhi.
Professor Rawal has authored over 150 publications, including more than 100 peer-reviewed journal articles, and has presented over 50 papers at national and international conferences. He serves on the editorial boards of several leading journals, including Textile Research Journal, Journal of Industrial Textiles, Journal of Engineered Fibers and Fabrics, and Research Journal of Textile and Apparel.
