Maziar Shafiei is a PhD student at the Waterloo Microfluidics Lab in the Department of Mechanical and Mechatronics Engineering at the University of Waterloo. He is co-supervised by Professor Carolyn Ren and Dr. Zahra Abbasi.
The Microplastics Fingerprinting project team consists of over 25 faculty members, masters and Ph.D. students, and support staff from various disciplinary backgrounds. We recognize this diversity as a strength that enables an interdisciplinary and holistic evaluation of the challenges and solutions associated with microplastics. Each issue of our newsletter will feature one of the project's excellent researchers.
Maziar, who is a member of work package 1, is working to improve methods for detecting and analyzing microplastics. He is doing this by developing a sensing platform that uses microwave-microfluidic sensors to detect the smallest of microplastics in samples, even at very low concentrations.
Maziar received his BSc degree in electrical engineering from Shahid Beheshti University in Tehran, Iran. He finished a MSc degree in telecommunication engineering from Amirkabir University of Technology (Tehran Polytechnic), also in Iran. His honors thesis was entitled, "Design, Simulation and Analysis of Left-Handed Metamaterial Transmission Lines" and focused on finding a closed-form formula for permittivity of circular Split-Ring Resonators (SRRs). He continued his research on designing millimeter-wave imaging systems with multi-static antenna arrays in his master's thesis, entitled "Analysis, Simulation, and Improvement of Point Spread Function in Millimeter-Wave Imaging System."
Maziar’s interests and expertise motivate him to develop active and passive microwave circuits, and sensors with microfluidic devices for real-time microplastic monitoring. He recently presented his work at the 2022 IEEE-MTTs International Microwave Symposium (IMS), one of the most prestigious conferences in microwave engineering. Maziar hopes to extend his sensing platform's efficiency to increase the sensor's sensitivity and monitor microplastics in blood as well as water, given that researchers are starting to find the presence of microplastics in human blood.