Dr Mohammad Mirkhalaf Valashani

Biography

Mohammad Mirkhalaf is a Lecturer and ARC DECRA fellow at the Queensland University of Technology (QUT). He has obtained his PhD from McGill University, Master's from Nanyang Technological University (NTU), and Bachelor's from Isfahan University of Technology (IUT). After finishing PhD in 2015, he joined the National Research Council of Canada as a postdoctoral fellow working closely with his previous lab at McGill till August 2018 when he joined the University of Sydney. He joined QUT in Jan 2022. His research is on tailoring materials' internal architecture to achieve properties and functionalities beyond those of constituents.

As of March 2024, his h-index is 19 with > 1700 citations (Google Scholar). He has published 36 original research and 5 review/perspective articles in high-profile journals, two book chapters, a full US patent, and two patents at the corporation treaty stage. Of the journal articles, he is the first or last author on 22; these include publications in leading multidisciplinary journals such as Nature Communications, PNAS,  Matter (2x), Materials Horizons (2x), Acta Biomaterialia (2x), and Appl Mater Today (2x) and in leading journals of mechanics such as Extreme Mechanics Letters (2x) & Int J Solids Struct. He has been the first-named investigator on four successful external grant applications (worth > A$1M) and attracted several prestigious postdoctoral/graduate awards (total > A$500K). His experience working at universities, government labs, and industries in Australia, Canada, Singapore, and Iran has enabled him to build solid research partnerships. He has developed and taught two new courses at the University of Sydney, and taught graduate and undergraduate courses at QUT, McGill University, and Nanyang Technological University.