Associate Professor Mahnaz Shafiei

Biography

Mahnaz is currently a Vice Chancellor’s Research Fellow - Women in STEM (2017-2022). She has extensive experience in nanomaterials, gas sensing techniques and device fabrication. Her research focus is on sensors and nanomaterials and their practical use for health and environmental monitoring. She is investigating new technologies to develop reliable, portable gas and liquid sensors with ultra-low power requirements to be embedded in sensor nodes for Internet-of-Things applications or in mobile systems.

Mahnaz collaborates effectively with Australian and overseas experts in the field. In 2015, she was awarded an Australian Endeavour Research Fellowship and successfully completed research on “development of novel nanofibres for gas sensing” at Simon Fraser University, Canada. She has established Sensor Laboratories at QUT, her previous employer, and SUT thanks to the funding support from Faculty of Science, Engineering and Technology (FSET), ARC Discovery Project (DP150101939) and Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA) grants. Mahnaz has been awarded, individually and with colleagues, more than $10 million in research grants/fellowships from research councils, industry and government in Australia (2008-2022). Mahnaz has published more than 86 refereed articles. She is a Senior Member of Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). 

More recently, Mahnaz’s group has added a research project that aims to develop low-power, portable sensing systems to monitor hydrogen gas as part of an ARENA project to produce hydrogen from renewable energy.  The project will establish a pilot plant to test a range of new technologies in hydrogen production. As well as Swinburne, the project involves QUT, Griffith University and the University of Tokyo, along with industry partners Sumitomo Electric industries (Japan) and Energy Developments Limited (Australia).

Mahnaz is also a CI on a Future Energy Exports (FEnEx) CRC project with objectives to 1) Design and implement cyber-physical systems for renewable hydrogen plants of the future and 2) Design and implement a lab-scale Hydrogen plant for Swinburne to evaluate the findings of this project as well as to facilitate future research, education, and training infrastructure.

Visiting Scientist

• "Gleb Wataghin" Institute of Physics (IFGW), UNICAMP, Brazil, 2019.
• Nanomechanical Sensors Lab - International Center for Materials Nanoarchitectonics (MANA), National Institute for Materials Science (NIMS), Japan, 2017-18.
• Intelligent Sensing Lab, Simon Fraser University, Canada, 2015.
• Sensor Laboratory, University of Brescia, Italy, 2012.