Prof. Carlos Ruiz Zamarreno, is a Professor in Electrical, Electronic and Communications Engineering Department at Public University of Navarra (UPNA), Pamplona-Iruña, Spain. Prof. Zamarreño received the MS degree in Electrical and Electronic Engineering and his PhD in Communications from the Public University of Navarra (UPNA) in 2005 and 2009 respectively. He obtained in 2012 a Permanent position as Associate Professor at the Electrical, Electronic and Communications Engineering Department at UPNA. In 2008 he was a visiting scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Boston, MA, USA) under the guidance of Prof. Henry I. Smith. He also performed a post-doctoral research stay at Siemens AG (Munich, Germany) in the group of Prof. Maximilian Fleischer. He has also obtained research grants from Bank of Santander and Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (José Castillejo) in 2013 and 2015 respectively to perform a research stay at the Photonics Laboratories at Universidade Technologica do Parana (Parana, Brazil) in the group of Prof. Cicero Martelli. In 2013 he received the IEEE GOLD Award for his contributions to the development of novel optical sensing waveguides based on micro and nano-structured films. He is the author of more than 200 scientific journal and conference publications and has participated in 20 different research projects with public and private entities. He is also an active reviewer of many scientific sensors related journals, Associate Editor of the open access journal “Hindawi Journal of Sensors” and “IET micro&nano letters”, Topical Editor in Optical Fiber of IEEE Sensors Journal and co-founder of Pyroistech spin-off Company.
Abstract of the Talk:Optical fiber sensing technology is used in many different engineering applications from physical to chemical or biological sensors. This technology has evolved towards many different sensing mechanisms or interrogation configurations that can exploit the optical fiber as transducer or combine this structure with nanostructured functional materials, which paves the way to novel optical fiber sensing applications. In this talk I will firstly introduce the audience some basic concepts of optical fiber sensing technology attending to for example the transducing mechanism, the interrogation method or the application use. Then, I will show some applications of this technology I have been involved in. In particular, I will describe the utilization of optical fiber sensors for structural health monitoring or intrusion detection, the application of this technology to observe biomedical parameters or the combination of optical fibers with micro and nanostructured thin-films that permit to use this technology for the detection of chemical and biological compounds. Finally, I will give a brief outlook on the utilization of optical fiber sensing technology and its prospective applications.