Best Paper Awarded to Esfandyar-Pour Research Group

Electrical engineering and computer science graduate students Anita Ghandehari (center) and Shingirirai Chakoma (right) accept the Best Paper Award on behalf of their team at the SPIE Photonics West 2025 conference.

March 10, 2025 – UC Irvine engineering’s Rahim Esfandyar-Pour research group received the Optoelectronics (OPTO) Best Paper Award at the SPIE Photonics West 2025 conference in San Francisco in January. SPIE is the international society for optics and photonics.

The conference paper presents a flexible, self-powered wireless multi-nanomaterials 3D-printed triboelectric nanogenerator-based force sensor. The battery-free, wireless sensor system addresses the longstanding issues inherent to conventional, battery-powered sensors such as low energy output, environmental instability, mechanical wear and high fabrication costs. The Esfandyar-Pour team’s design harvests its own energy without requiring complex external circuitry, offering both sustainability and cost-efficiency and making it an excellent option for remote or long-term applications.

Esfandyar-Pour, assistant professor of electrical engineering and computer science, says the study sets a new benchmark. “It paves the way for future innovations in autonomous, eco-friendly and high-performance sensing technologies and underscores the transformative potential of self-powered and wireless solutions across diverse, real-world scenarios, such as remote military and space operations.”

The honored team includes doctoral students Shingirirai Chakoma, Xiaochang Pei, Anita Ghandehari and Jorge Tavares-Negrete; postdoctoral scholar Jerome Rajendran; as well as Esfandyar-Pour. The work was supported by the DARPA Young Faculty Program award and DARPA program manager Sunil Bhave.

– Lori Brandt

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