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Chinese-born Kitty Yeung is a "creative technologist", who blends electronics with fashion. She has invented wearable technology that allows consumers to charge their phones, or track their health by embedding electronics into their clothing. CGTN's Natalie Carney caught up with Kitty Yeung in Berlin.
Kitty Yeung has always loved art and physics.
KITTY YEUNG CREATIVE TECHNOLOGIST "At the very beginning, it was very traditional, just clothing design for fun, but because I had also been playing with robotics, so I thought why don't I combine the two. So I started putting electronic controllers into clothes."
After Kitty completed high school in China, she studied physics at Cambridge University in the UK and at Harvard in the U.S..
KITTY YEUNG CREATIVE TECHNOLOGIST "And then I realized that is what I really like to do, to really integrate technology and creativity."
She went to work for Intel and is now the manager at Microsoft's Garage, a platform for amateur designers.
CGTN met Kitty at a tech conference in Berlin, where she showed off some of her innovative designs.
This piece has a heart monitor embedded in it.
KITTY YEUNG CREATIVE TECHNOLOGIST "It has three electrodes that you can attach to your body and it can detect your heart rate. So when the heart rate monitor detects your heart rate, you can actually see your EKG and you can map that to the LED and make it blink according to your heart rate. I put it behind the flowers, so it looked a little like fireflies."
NATALIE CARNEY BERLIN, GERMANY "I would assume this is very very important for those who have heart arrhythmia or some heart issues, they can wear the technology, this being wearable technology, but as you say in a very fashionable way. Wearable technology, a fantastic idea but I would also think that one of the big challenges would be to make wearable technologies comfortable."
KITTY YEUNG CREATIVE TECHNOLOGIST "That is one of the main challenges. We need flexible batteries that can be embedded into clothes."
She calls herself a creative technologist and says there's still a long way to go before the world sees what she does as mainstream.
KITTY YEUNG CREATIVE TECHNOLOGIST "It's the 21st century, we are building smart cities we are making autonomous cars, electric cars, but then clothing, this thing everyone needs every day, is left behind."
Kitty incorporates 3D printing and solar panels as part of her accessories.
KITTY YEUNG CREATIVE TECHNOLOGIST "This is the optical dust sensor. It has several sensors including temperature monitor on it. So you can program it to detect optical dust, so air quality. That sound, that pitch, frequency is actually responding to the optical dust quality."
While Kitty honed her unique craft in the West, China is where she found inspiration and she hopes to encourage other young women to pursue revolutionary wearable fashion. Natalie Carney, CGTN, Berlin, Germany.