Distributed optical fibre sensing. Optical signal processing. Optical communications. Applications of stimulated Brillouin scattering. Acousto-optic interactions Optical amplification. Nonlinear fibre optics.

Supervision of Students

o Supervisor at Universidad Técnica Federico Santa María:
• 1 Doctoral Students
- 2019-present: Dayana Hernández Rodriguez - Thesis tittle to be defined
• Master Students
- 2019-present: Felipe Muñoz Carmona - Acoustic signal processeing applied to distributed acoustic sensors (original title in Spanish: Técnicas de procesamiento acústico aplicadas a sensor
acústico distribuido de fibra óptica)
- 2019-present: Pablo Hernández Donoso - Thesis tittle to be defined
• Undergraduate Dissertations
- 2018-2019: Mauricio Jofré Prieto - Diseño y Construcción de un Sensor phi-OTDR Para Detectar Perturbaciones en Polines de Correas Transportadoras
- 2019-2020: Paulo Rivera Rivera - Diseño de experiencias de laboratorio para el estudio de fibra óptica y componentes de enlaces ópticos
- 2020-present: Luis Bahamondes Pastén - Implementación y estudio de factibilidad de un detector óptico Kramers Kronig para sensores distribuidos Rayleigh en fibra óptica

o Technical and Scientific Co-supervision at EPFL Swiss Federal Institute of Technology:
• 6 Doctoral Students in Photonics (Flavien Gyger, Desmond Chow, Xin Lu, Mehdi Alem, Andrey Denisov, and Nikolay Primerov)
• 10 visiting PhD Students and Researchers
• 2 Master Students (Flavien Gyger and Sotirios Papadopoulos)
• 2 Final Bachelor Projects (Özgün Serttek and Flavien Gyger)

o External Reviewer or Examiner of PhD Theses:
• 1 PhD Thesis at Universidad Pública de Navarra, Pamplona, Spain
• 3 PhD Theses at Universidad de Alcalá, Alcalá de Henares (Madrid), Spain
• 2 PhD Theses at Tel-Aviv University, Tel-Aviv, Israel
• 1 PhD Thesis at Bar-Ilan, Ramat Gan, Israel

o Project Manager of the R&D project “Investigation of distributed sensing techniques based on fibre optic technology and their applicability to ITER for leak localisation,” (186k euro). ITER Organisation, France.

o Main Scientific Responsible for:
• Two R&D projects funded by the Swiss Commission for Technology and Innovation (CTI), focused on technology transfer to the Swiss Industry (years 2012 to 2017).
• One project funded by the European Space Agency (ESA), to study distributed optical fibre sensing solutions for Space applications (2015).

o Author of 8 patents, some of which are being used by Omnisens SA, Morges, Swtizerland (one of the world-leader's company in long-range distributed fibre sensing).

o Member of the Technical Programme Committee of international conferences:
• International Conference on Optical Fibre Sensors (OFS), since 2015.
• International Conference on Photonics (ICP), since 2015.
• Asia-Pacific Optical Sensors (APOS) Conference, in 2016.
• Latin American Workshop on Optical Fiber Sensors (LAWOFS), since 2019.
• 25th Congress of the International Commission for Optics (ICO), since 2020
• 16th International Conference on Optics Within Life Sciences (OWLS), since 2020

o Outreach and Scientific Community Involvement
• Preparation of project proposals granted with more than 2.2M USD (total project funding over 4.8M USD).
• Technical Co-Chair of the 26th International Conference on Optical Fibre Sensors (OFS-26), Lausanne, Switzerland, September 2018 (conference supported by OSA).
• Associate Editor of OSA/IEEE Journal of Lightwave Technology – special issue of the OFS-26 conference.
• Associate Editor of the Optical Fiber Technology Journal (Editorial Elsevier).
• International collaborations established with several universities and research centres worldwide. The most relevant are in Switzerland, Italy, Spain, France, China, Israel, Germany, Romania, and United States.
• Member of the Optical Society of America (OSA) since 2012. OSA member number 973935.
• Author and co-author of several invited contributions in the field of distributed optical fibre sensing.
• Invited to present seminars and guest lectures at several universities and events worldwide.
• Member of the Review Board of major international journals in optical fibre sensing and photonics: Nature Publishing Group, OSA, IEEE, Elsevier, among others editorial groups. Approx. 17-20 reviews per year.

o Public Impact
• Press release on 31.07.2018: “Optical fibers that can sense the materials around them.” Article describing one of the first demonstrations of distributed optical fibre sensing employing forward Brillouin scattering for measuring substances outside an optical fibre. Making use of a radially-activated sound wave in an optical fibre, different kinds of gasses or liquids have been detected. The article has been published (with slightly different titles) in the most relevant scientifically-oriented websites for general public, such as PhysOrg, Photonics Media, Laser Focus World, Optics & Photonics News, and many others.

• Press release on 4.05.2017: “New fiber-based sensor could quickly detect structural problems in bridges and dams.” Article describing the first demonstration of a distributed fibre-optic sensor able to measure 1 million independent points over a single 10-kilometre optical fibre with a spatial resolution of 1 cm. The press coverage on the method, useful for structural health monitoring and biomedical sensing, was released by the Optical Society of America (OSA), and then worldwide spread through the most relevant scientifically-oriented websites for general public, such as PhysOrg, Laser Focus World, Eurekalert, and many others.

• Press release on 1.03.2016: “Photoshop filters for safer bridges.” Article describing the demonstration of image denoising methods to enhance the performance of distributed fibre sensors, and the first realisation of a distributed optical fibre sensor capable of resolving more than two-million points in a single fibre. Published on the most important scientifically-oriented websites for general public, such as PhysOrg, Eurekalert, Physnews, Laser Focus World, Sciencenewsline, and many others.

• Press release on 5.12.2013: “Ten Times More Throughput on Optic Fibers.” Article describing a method to generate almost-ideal optical sinc-shaped Nyquist pulses, with the potential of increasing the throughput of optical fibres by a factor 10. Press release with big impact, being spread worldwide and translated into several languages in newspapers, TV & radio news, and replicated on many scientifically oriented websites.