Hamed Jafarishad Successfully Defends His PhD Dissertation

Hamed Jafarishad Successfully Defends His PhD Dissertation

By Victoria Birk Hill June 27, 2025

On June 16, 2025, WPI researcher Hamed Jafarishad successfully defended his PhD dissertation, titled “Optical Fiber Strain Sensors and Sensing Systems for Measuring Large Deformations in Soft Materials, Demonstrated on Food Samples During Drying.” His research focused on advancing below-the-surface, distributed, and large strain measurements in soft materials, with food drying as a primary application. His research provides continuous, real-time knowledge of location-dependent deformation inside the products during drying, enabling both fundamental understanding and process analytics and control of drying. These objectives were achieved through the development of novel optical fiber strain sensors, a compact interferometric readout system, and a customizable sensing platform. The work also incorporated dual-strain detection via photonic inverse design, enabling multidirectional strain measurements essential to both materials science and food engineering.

Hamed’s research was partially supported by the U.S. Department of Energy and the Center for Advanced Research in Drying (CARD), NSF, and the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center (MassCEC).

Dr. Jafarishad is currently working in the healthcare industry as a Lead Mechanical Engineer at GE HealthCare, specializing in Body Coil design for MRI systems.

His advisor was Professor Yuxiang Liu.