Zahra Faraji Rad PhD

Zahra Faraji Rad obtained her PhD from the Universities of New South Wales (Australia) and Birmingham (UK) in 2016 as the first joint PhD candidate from the two universities under the international Universitas 21 partnership.

Zahra’s keen interest in biomedical devices, especially microneedles for point-of-care diagnostics and drug delivery, is what led her to enrol for her PhD degree. She has subsequently worked in advanced manufacturing, microfabrication, semiconductor device fabrication, microfluidics, confocal microscopy, electron microscopy, animal handling and testing, 3D printing, COMSOL, ANSYS, and computer aided design tools such as AutoCAD, CATIA, and SolidWorks and in mechanical simulation and testing. She played the leading role in the design and fabrication at UNSW of microneedles for blood analysis and drug delivery. She pioneered the use of a novel 3D laser lithography system (Nanoscribe Photonic Professional GT) to print complex microneedle and fluidic structures. Together with her PhD supervisors she patented her novel designs and manufacturing techniques for microneedles   (PCT/AU2015/050518). She continued work on this project as a postdoctoral research fellow at UNSW.

Zahra has since worked as a Professional Officer at the Australian National Fabrication Facility (ANFF), in the University of Queensland, which is part of the National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy. The scientific and technical capability and facilities provided by ANFF enable users from industry and university to work at the facility under expert guidance, or to contract ANFF to make custom devices. In this role, Zahra has been engaged in a wide range of different projects providing operational, scientific and technical service support in the fields of photolithography, soft lithography, clean room operation, microfluidics device design, fabrication and testing, and modelling.

Zahra’s expertise in pioneering novel microneedle design and fabrication is at the heart of OSC’s PatchLab™ project and she is a vital core member of the team.