NU SEDS Research seminar “Fiber-optic smart textiles for biophysical real-time measurement of breathing pattern, blood pressure, body temperature (FOSTHER)”
The Nazarbayev University School of Engineering and Digital Sciences and National Laboratory Astana invites you to the research seminar “Fiber-optic smart textiles for biophysical real-time measurement of breathing pattern, blood pressure, body temperature (FOSTHER)”
Presenter: Carlo Molardi, Assistant Professor, Electrical and Computer Engineering Department, SEDS NU
Abstract: Smart textiles are clothing, or fabrics, which enable digital operations such as sensing and monitoring, energy harvesting, and computing. In this context, sensing is the main area of research, particularly for monitoring of biophysical and biological parameters. Wearable light textiles are gaining a large interest in application for measurement and monitoring of biophysical parameters. Fiber optic sensors, in particular Bragg Grating (FBG) sensors, can be a competitive method measuring biophysical parameters, such as multipoint body temperature, respiratory behavior for chest and abdomen regions, heart rate. If fact, fiber-optic sensors (FOS) present advantages in terms of minimally invasiveness, bio-compatibility, accuracy of sensing, and high sensitivity. Even if we can conclude that the operation of traditional fiber-optic sensing (FOS) technologies is demonstrated, their effective
embodiment in smart textile is far to be reach and fully demonstrated, mainly where a complex network of fiber sensors is required. Moreover, additional drawbacks prevent their applications into smart textiles. At first, albeit fibers exhibit a minimum invasiveness, their interrogation system does not: usually interrogators are assembled in an encumbering and heavy format, making it impossible to carry on an arm. Some compact formats are available, but they use a single-wavelength principle with a laser and a photodiode: this however does not allow the interrogation of multiple sensors, using the wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) that is really established in current FBG sensing networks.
We aimed at the development of a novel smart textile based on optical fibers. In our vision, the smart textile needed to satisfy some sensing tasks, which have an immediate application for clinical and bio-medical use.
Short bio: Dr. Carlo Molardi holds the position of Assistant Professor in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at Nazarbayev University (Kazakhstan). Previously, he has covered a Post-Doctoral position in the Information Engineering Department at University of Parma. In 2016, he received PhD in Information Technologies from the same university, under the supervision of Professor Stefano Selleri. During the last two years of his PhD period, he was awarded with the prestigious ARAP scholarship offered by the Singaporean government, to work as a Research Assistant with Dr. Yu Xia, at Singapore Institute of Manufacturing Technology (SIMTech). In March 2011, he received a master’s degree in Telecommunication Engineering from the University of Parma, working on numerical methods for optics and electromagnetism. His research interests include photonic crystal fibers
design, fiber lasers for high power operations, random lasers, fiber optics, fiber sensors, computational electromagnetism. During his career he has been awarded with several project grants. His scientific production counts 1 book, 35 publications in top journals of his area, and more than 50 conference proceedings.
