Lefan is a Leverhulme Research Early Career Fellow at the Institute for Manufacturing (ifM). Her research centres on advancing healthcare services through the integration of cutting-edge technologies, including mobile and wearable sensing technologies, advanced manufacturing methods, and artificial intelligence. As part of her Leverhulme fellowship, she is dedicated to the development of a personalized and skin-conformal multimodal sensing insole utilizing additive manufacturing. This innovative research aims to enhance our understanding of foot biomechanics.

Prior to embarking on her Leverhulme Fellowship, Lefan served as a Research Associate in the ifM, where she introduced an innovative framework that exploits lightweight artificial neural networks to deliver real-time predictions of multi-plane ankle kinematics, utilizing a minimal number of IMUs and eliminating the need for calibration. Lefan earned her PhD in the School of Engineering from Cardiff University in 2018, where her research centred on the development of wearable sensors for hand motion monitoring. Subsequently, she assumed the role of a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Mechanical Engineering at the University of Leeds. During this period, her focus primarily involved the design of sensing system for the prevention of diabetic foot ulcers. She successfully pioneered the development of the first in-shoe sensing system capable of measuring both pressure and shear stress across the entire plantar surface.

Lefan’s diverse research background reflects her commitment to advancing the intersections of engineering, healthcare, and technology.