Associate Professor
Mahnaz Shafiei

Biography

Dr Mahnaz Shafiei is currently a Vice Chancellor’s Senior Research Fellow - Women in STEM - at Swinburne University of Technology (SUT), Melbourne and a visiting fellow at IFE/QUT. 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 sensors with ultra-low power requirements to be embedded in sensor nodes for Internet-of-Things applications or in mobile systems. Dr Shafiei 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. Dr Shafiei is a Co-investigator with her collaborative networks at RMIT and ANU investigating “non-invasive medical diagnostics by breath analysis” (ARC DP150101939). She has established a Sensor and Nanomaterial Fabrication Laboratory at QUT, with over $130,000 of internal QUT equipment funding. More recently, along with her collaborators at QUT and Guangdong Institute of Geochemistry/Chinese Academy of Science (GIG/CAS), they have been awarded a grant from Guangdong Science and Technology to evaluate and develop modified natural minerals for monitoring and/or removal of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) in typical industrial or urban environments. Mahnaz has published 53 scientific papers and currently holds an h-index of 14 (i10-index of 22) and with a total of 915 citations (Google Scholar). Mahnaz is currently establishing a sensor lab at SUT, thanks to the funding support from Faculty of Science, Engineering and Technology (FSET). In 2017, Mahnaz and her colleagues at SUT were awarded a grant from the department of Industry, Innovation and Science, in which she is developing a novel hydrocarbon liquid sensing system to be integrated into the IoT platform for continuous real-time environmental monitoring.

Awards and Grants

• The CASS Foundation Travel Award, 2017;
• Department of Industry, Innovation and Science, Victoria “Development and trial of a IoT-based system for environmental and corporate compliance monitoring of retail fuel outlets”, D. Georgakopoulos, P. P. Jayaraman, A. Cricenti, M. Shafiei and A. Yavari, 2017;
• Swinburne Visiting Fellowship Scheme Award, Swinburne University of Technology, 2017;
• Staff Development Initiative Project, School of Software and Electrical Engineering, Swinburne University of Technology, 2017;
• Guangdong Dept. of Science and Technology: “Preparation and application of porous mineral-based VOCs adsorption-catalytic materials”, He H., Xi Y., Mackinnon I., Zhu J., Ristovski Z., Liang X., Ma L., Shafiei M., 2017-2019;
• Swinburne VC’s Senior Research Fellowship - Women in STEM Fellow, 2017-2020;
• Australian Endeavour Research Fellowship, 2015;

 Career History

• Since 2017: VC’s Senior Research Fellow, Senior Lecturer, SUT, Australia;
• Since 2017: Visiting Fellow; IFE/QUT, Australia;
• 2015 (6 months): Australian Endeavour Fellow, Simon Fraser University, Canada;
• 2013 – 2017: Research Fellow; IFE, CPME/QUT, Australia;
• 2012 (2 months): Visiting Scientist, University of Brescia, Italy;
• 2011 – 2013: Postdoctoral Research Fellow; CPME/QUT, Australia;
• 2006 – 2010: Researcher (PhD candidature); RMIT, Australia;
• 1998 – 2004: Project Researcher; Iran Telecom Research Centre, Tehran.