Dr Shabnam Sadeghi Esfahlani PhD, SFHEA, CEng, MIET

Dr Sadeghi Esfahlani is an Associate Professor in Mechatronics and AI at the School of Engineering and the Built Environment, and deputy leader for BORI research group. She is a Chartered Engineer (CEng), Senior Fellow of Higher Education Academy (SFHEA), and Member of the Institution of Engineering and Technology (MIET). Her research interests include Mechatronics, Robotics and Artificial Intelligence, Engineering Design, Virtual Reality (VR) and Serious Video Games.

shabnam.sadeghi-esfahlani@aru.ac.uk

View Shabnam’s profiles on Scopus, ORCID, Google Scholar and ResearchGate

Background

She has a successful track record of extensive research income generation in multidisciplinary areas; her research contributes to the development of serious games with specific artificial intelligence applications, mechatronics and robotics, algorithm design to be used by robots for societal needs (healthcare, and daily assistance) and mechanical engineering design optimisation. National and international organisations, including Innovate UK and Knowledge Transfer Partnership UK, have funded her research.

Shabnam has presented her research at various international conferences and published more than forty high-quality journal and conference articles.

She is a reviewer board member in Sensors journal, Review Editor on the Editorial Board of Pattern Recognition Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence). She is the guest editor of the Special Issue “Recent Trends in AI Robots” of Machines Journal.

Spoken Languages

• Persian
• Turkish

Research interests

Using robotics in the medical field that promotes high-quality patient care, efficient processes in clinical settings, and a safe environment for patients and healthcare workers to expand functional efficiencies.

Development of an open-source ground robot with real-time decision-making ability via onboard signal processing and an image-capturing system using a deep convolutional neural network and transfer learning.

Designing a platform for autonomous navigation using SLAM and real-time nano unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) tracking.

Combination of VR and AI to design platforms with educational purposes.

Areas of research supervision

• Diagnosis of respiratory conditions using Machine Learning and AI Techniques
• Osteopathic Neuromuscular Rehabilitation: A novel approach to treat spasticity following systemic illness, brain tumour and traumatic brain injury in general population A study of security risks and solutions of network slicing (NS) in 5G systems
• Numerical and experimental analysis of the effect of the swirl flow implementation in impinging jets with lobed nozzles
• Investigating the implementation of a re-designed Enterprise Resource Planning system in Nigeria manufacturing sector
• Development of an Interactive Virtual Reality for Medical Skills Training supervised by Artificial Neural Network
• Intelligent Computing: Autonomous Flight and Real-time Tracking of Nano Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV)

Teaching

• BEng (Hons) Mechanical Engineering
• MSc Automation and Robotics

Qualifications

• Chartered Engineer (CEng) with the Engineering Council, 661156, UK
• Senior Fellow of Higher Education Academy; SFHEA, PR138024, UK
• Post-Graduate Certificate in Higher Education; PGCert, ARU, UK
• PhD in Mechanical Engineering and Finite Element Analysis ARU, UK, Title ‘An Investigation Into Model Reliability of Cellular Structure a Robust Design Using Finite Element Method’
• BSc (Hons), Statistics and Mathematical Science (First Class), Shahid Beheshty University, Tehran, Iran

Memberships, editorial boards

• Review Editor on the Editorial Board of Pattern Recognition (specialty section of Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence)
• Peer reviewer for Sensors journal, International Journal of IEEE ACCESS, Journal of International Medical Research, Soft Computing A Fusion of Foundations, Methodologies and Applications
• Young students’ mentor in Nuffield Research Placement program - Nuffield Foundation
• STEM Ambassador to promote STEM subjects to young learners in South-East of England
• Winner of the student-voted award ‘Made a Difference Award’ for staff-student partnership in 2018 - the university-wide award
• IET and IMechE Academic Partner Liaison Representative (Institution of Engineering and Technology, Institution of Mechanical Engineers)
• Member of Athena SWAN committee and the champion of Flexible Working
• Member of the reviewer board in Sensors and Applied Science journals
• Member of the Biomechanics, Optics and Medical Engineering (BOME) research group -an innovative multidisciplinary research group within the Medical Technology Research Centre (MTRC)
• Member of Chartered Management Institute; CMI, P04649794
• Member of the Institution of Engineering and Technology, Member no. 1100366503
• Member of Aurora Advance HE's leadership development initiative for women

Research grants, consultancy, knowledge exchange

• Co-I in the European Commission, (2019 – 2022 Horizon 2020), Ref. 641,925, AErial RObotic systems for contact inspection, mounting of monitoring sensors, SAFEty evaluation, delivery of repair material and repair of the transport infrastructure (AEROSAFE), Invited to the 2nd round, Total Grant €6.7m 
• Co-I in Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF), and CNPq (Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Cientifico e Tecnologico), Research Productivity Grant, Ref. 300899/2016-5, (2018-2020), I designed a gamified training workshop for BRANDIA project; water quality resilience in Sao Carlos, Brazil, Total Grant £80,000
• Co-I in Innovate UK, (05/2019-12/2020), TSB, Ref. TS/S021558/1, Low-cost modular solar power system using Total Internal Photonic Absorption (TIPA), Total Grant £682,412
• Supervisor & Co-I in Knowledge Transfer Partnership Project, (08/2018, 08/2020), Ref. 1024301, MGE (Colchester) Ltd., £169,375
• Supervisor & Co-I in Knowledge Transfer Partnership Project, (08/2017, 08/2019), Ref.1024962, Bertrandt, VR Integration, £174,376
• PI in the European Regional Development Fund (11/2018-12/2018) - Innovation Bridge Fund project, Consultancy to development of an App that uses AI to devise the most efficient workout plans for its users, based around session duration, and equipment used £1,000
• PI in the Quality Research Fund project (07.2018-10.2018) in the Faculty of Science and Engineering (ARU)-, Virtual reality-based serious game to improve eye contact and visual fixation, £3,890
• Co-I in the Chartered Institution of Highways and Transportation (CIHT) Foundation Fund project (05.2018-12.2018), Development of hazard perception in young cyclists using an immersive virtual reality game, £3,790
• PI in the European Regional Development Fund project; Innovation Bridge Consultancy (05.2018-06.2018), Development of a gamified teaching aid for Piano students, £1,000
• PI in the Quality Research Fund project, Faculty of Science and Engineering (ARU)-, (06.2017-09.2017), Unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) controlled with hand gestures, £2,000
• co-I in the NERC Science of the Environment project, Ref. NE/T005262/1, Integrated, Inclusive Building Resilience Capacity platform: towards life cycle assessment of urban resilience in response to multi-hazards (I2BResilieC), proposed start date 01/04/2020 (36months), Total Grant £3,444,729.60
• PI in the Sir Halley Stewart Trust project- Interactive Virtual Reality for Medical Skills Training Supervised by Artificial Neural Network, Total Grant £59,000
• Co-I in Innovate UK, (11/2018), Ref. 18517, The Creatar Project- Audience of the future: demonstrators, Total Grant £3,979,234
• PI in the Welcome Trust (07/2018), Collaborative Award in Humanities and Social Science project, Ref. UNS64808, The use of immersive virtual reality for social interaction training in autism spectrum disorders, £371,005
• PI in the RIDO UG Summer Placement project, (06.2016-08.2016), Rehabilitation video game, £2,000

Selected recent publications

Esfahlani, S.S., Sanaei, A., Ghorabian, M. and Shirvani, H., 2022. The Deep Convolutional Neural Network Role in the Autonomous Navigation of Mobile Robots (SROBO). Remote Sensing, [online] 14(14), p.3324. https://doi.org/10.3390/rs14143324.

Esfahlani, S.S., Shirvani, H., Butt, J., Mirzaee, I., and Esfahlani, K.S., 2022. Machine Learning Role in Clinical Decision-Making: Neuro-Rehabilitation Video Game, Expert Systems with Applications, Elsevier. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eswa.2022.117165.

van Paridon, K., Timmis, M.A. and Sadeghi Esfahlani, S., 2021. Development and evaluation of a virtual environment to assess cycling hazard perception skills. Sensors, 21(16), p.5499.

Esfahlani, S.S., 2021. Ballistic Performance of Polycarbonate and Polymethyl methacrylate Under Normal and Inclined Dynamic Impacts, Heliyon, 7(4), e06856, Elsevier. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.heliyon.2021.e06856.

Butt, J., Mohaghegh, V., Esfahlani, S.S, and Shirvani, H., 2020. 3 Subtractive and Additive Manufacturing Applied to Drilling Systems. Advances in Terrestrial Drilling. CRC Press.

Butt, J., Esfahlani, S.S, Oxford, P., Ghorabian, M., and Shirvani, H., 2020. Hybrid Manufacturing and Mechanical Characterisation of Cu/PLA Composites, Arabian Journal for Science & Engineering.

Brown, P., Tan, A.C., El-Esawi, M.A., Liehr, T., Blanck, O., Gladue, D.P., Almeida, G.M., Cernava, T., Sorzano, C.O., Yeung, A.W. and Engel, M.S., 2019. Large expert-curated database for benchmarking document similarity detection in biomedical literature search. Database, 2019.

Esfahlani, S.S., Butt, J., Shirvani, H. and Mirzaee, I., 2019. The Fusion of Artificial Intelligence in Neuro-Rehabilitation Video Games. Journal of IEEE ACCESS, 7, pp. 102617-102627. DOI 10.1109/ACCESS.2019.2926118.

Esfahlani, S.S., 2019. Mixed Reality and Remote Sensing Application of Unmanned Aerial Vehicle in Fire and Smoke Detection, Journal of Industrial Information Integration, 15, pp. 42-49; https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jii.2019.04.006.

Butt, J., Hewavidana, Y., Mohaghegh, V., Esfahlani, S.S, and Shirvani, H., 2019. Hybrid Manufacturing and Experimental Testing of Glass Fiber Enhanced Thermoplastic Composites, Journal of Manufacturing and Materials Processing, (ISSN 2504-4494), 3, 96; DOI 10.3390/jmmp3040096.

Mul, C., Cardini, F., Stagg, S., D., Esfahlani, S. S. and Kiourtsoglou, D., Cardellicchio, P., Aspell, J., 2019. Altered Bodily Self-consciousness and Peripersonal Space in Autism, National Autistic Society, DOI 10.1177/1362361319838950, p.1-13.

Kordzadeh, A., and Esfahlani, S.S., 2019. Artificial Intelligence in the Prediction of Functional Maturation of Radiocephalic Arteriovenous Fistula. Journal of Vascular Access, Ann Vasc Dis. 2019 Mar 25; 12(1): 44–49. DOI 10.3400/avd.oa.18-00129.

Esfahlani, S.S., Muresan, B., Sanaei, A. and Wilson, G., 2018. Validity of the Kinect and Myo Armband in a Serious Game for Assessing Upper Limb Movement. Entertainment Computing, DOI 10.1016/j.entcom.2018.05.003.

Esfahlani, S.S., Thompson, T., Parsa, A.D., Brown, I. and Cirstea, S., 2018. ReHabgame: A Non-Immersive Virtual Reality Rehabilitation System with Applications in Neuroscience. Heliyon, 4(2), p.e00526, DOI 10.1016/j.heliyon.2018.e00526.

Esfahlani, S.S., Shirvani, H., Shirvani, A., Nwaubani, S., Mebrahtu, H. & Chirwa, C., 2013. Hexagonal Honeycomb Cell Optimisation by Way of Meta-model Techniques. International Journal of Crashworthiness, 18(3), pp.264-275, DOI 10.1080/13588265.2013.776337.

Esfahlani, S.S., Shirvani, H., Shirvani, A., Mebrahtu, H. and Nwaubani, S., 2013. Design, Development and Numerical Analysis of Honeycomb Core with Variable Crushing Strength. American Journal of Engineering and Applied Sciences, 6(1), pp.8-19, DOI 10.3844/ajeassp.2013.8.19.

Esfahlani, S.S., Shirvani, H., Nwaubani, S., Shirvani, A. & Mebrahtu, H., 2013. Comparative Study of Honeycomb Optimization using Kriging and Radial Basis Function. Theoretical and Applied Mechanics Letters, 3(3), DOI 10.1063/2.1303102.

Recent presentations and conferences

Esfahlani, S.S., & Shirvani, H., 2019. Video Game and Fuzzy Logic to Improve Amblyopia and Convergence Insufficiency, 45th Annual Conference of the IEEE Industrial Electronics, pp. 179-185, DOI 10.1109/IECON.2019.8927143. IEEE Xplore.

Izsof, V., Minter, S., Kordzadeh, A., and Esfahlani, S.S., 2019. Development of an Interactive Virtual Reality for Medical Skills Training Supervised by Artificial Neural Network, Proceedings of SAI Intelligent Systems Conference, IntelliSys 2019: Intelligent Systems and Applications, pp. 473-482, DOI 10.1007/978-3-030-29513-4_34. IEEE Xplore.

Esfahlani, S.S. and Cirstea, S. and Sanaei, A. and Cirstea, M., 2018. Fire Detection of Unmanned Aerial Vehicle in a Mixed Reality-based System. pp. 2757-2762. IEEE Industrial Electronics Society, IECON2018. DOI 10.1109/IECON.2018.8592764. IEEE Xplore.

Esfahlani, S.S., Cirstea, S., Sanaei, A. and Wilson, G., 2017. An Adaptive Self-Organizing Fuzzy Logic Controller in a Serious Game for Motor Impairment Rehabilitation. International Symposium on Industrial Electronics (ISIE), pp. 1311-1318, DOI 10.1109/ISIE.2017.8001435, IEEE Xplore.

Esfahlani, S.S. & Wilson, G., 2017. Development of Rehabilitation System (RehabGame) through Monte-Carlo tree Search Algorithm using kinect and Myo Sensor Interface. Computing Conference, pp. 1021-1028. DOI 10.1109/SAI.2017.8252217. IEEE Xplore.

Constantinou, G., Wilson, G., Esfahlani, S. S. & Cirstea, M., 2017. An Effective Approach to the Use of 3D Scanning Technology which Shortens the Development Time of 3D Models. Optimization of Electrical and Electronic Equipment (OPTIM) & Intl Aegean Conference on Electrical Machines and Power Electronics (ACEMP), pp. 1083-1088. DOI 10.1109/OPTIM.2017.7975116. IEEE Xplore.

Esfahlani, S. S., Shirvani, H., Shirvani, A., & Nwaubani, S., 2011. Design Attributes for Geometry Optimization Process of Thin-walled Honeycomb Structures, ASME Proceedings, 21st Reliability, Stress Analysis, and Failure Prevention Conference, Washington, DC, USA, pp. 899-908. DOI 10.1115/DETC2011-47080. ASME.

Muresan, B. & Esfahlani, S.S., 2018. Autonomous Flight and Real-time Tracking of Nano Unmanned Aerial Vehicle. Intelligent Computing Conference. SAI2018. Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing, 858. Springer, pp 945-956. DOI 10.1007/978-3-030-01174-1_73.

Esfahlani, S.S. & Thompson, T., 2016. September. Intelligent Physiotherapy through Procedural Content Generation, 12 (1), pp 27-30. Twelfth Artificial Intelligence and Interactive Digital Entertainment Conference. Artificial Intelligence and Interactive Digital Entertainment (AAAI) Conference.

Media experience

• Interview, ReHabgame, 2018, Development of Rehabilitation System (RehabGame) through Monte-Carlo tree Search Algorithm using kinect and Myo Sensor Interface. Computing Conference, pp. 1021-1028. DOI 10.1109/SAI.2017.8252217. IEEE Xplore