Mahnaz Shafiei

Mahnaz was a Vice-Chancellor’s Women in STEM Fellow at Swinburne from 2017 until 2022. Mahnaz is currently leading Nanomaterials and Sensing Technology Research at Swinburne. 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, ARC Discovery Project (DP150101939) and Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA) grants. Mahnaz has been awarded, individually and with colleagues, more than $11 million in research grants/fellowships from research councils, industry and government in Australia (2008-2024). She is a Senior Member of Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). 

In 2023, Mahnaz was awarded an International Hydrogen Research Fellowship as part of the International Hydrogen Research Collaboration Program being led by the CSIRO and funded by the Australian government. Recently, she visited leading researchers and labs in the field of sensing and safety practices in the European and Canadian community. This understanding will be of substantial benefit to Australia, her peers and to our next generation of scientists and engineers.

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

• Microfluidics and Nanotechnology Laboratory - Mina Lab, The University of Victoria, Canada, 2024. 
• Intelligent Sensing Lab, Simon Fraser University, Canada, 2015 and 2024.
• Sensor Laboratory, University of Brescia, Italy, 2012 and 2023.
• Functional Materials Department, University of Bayreuth, Germany, 2023.
• Institut de Combustion Aérothermique Réactivité et Environnement (ICARE), CNRS, Orleans, France, 2023.
• "Gleb Wataghin" Institute of Physics (IFGW), UNICAMP, Brazil, 2019.
• Nanomechanical Sensors Lab, National Institute for Materials Science (NIMS), Japan, 2017 and 2018.