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
- 2023-present: Felipe Muñoz Carmona - Thesis tittle to be defined
- 2023-present: Dinesh Lakshmanan - Thesis tittle to be defined

• Master Students
- Sebastián San Martín Almonacid - "Performance analysis of Golay-coded distributed acoustic sensors based on phase-sensitive optical time-domain reflectometry" (2025)
- Diego Badillo San Juan - "Acoustic Imaging with Distributed Acoustic Sensing Data Using Delay-and-Sum Beamforming in the Time Domain" (2024)
- Gabriel Rudloff Barison, "Peak detection of spectrally-overlapped fiber Bragg gratings using an unsupervised convolutional neural network autoencoder" (2023)
- Felipe Muñoz Carmona - "Blind near-field array signal processing to enhance fibre-optic distributed acoustic sensing capabilities" (2022)
- Pablo Hernández Donoso - "Neural networks applied to seismic activity detection measured with distributed fiber sensors" (2021)

• Undergraduate Dissertations
- Felipe Mejías Osorio - "Análisis comparativo de métodos de desenvolvimiento de fase para sensores acústicos distribuidos en fibra óptica" (ongoing)
- Mauricio Cáceres Rencoret - "Implementación de filtros bidimensionales para sensores acústicos distribuidos en fibra óptica" (ongoing)
- Felipe Diaz Otárola - "Implementación de sensor Brillouin distribuido en fibra óptica con compressed sensing" (ongoing)
- Valentina Barreda Aranda - "Implementación de un sensor acústico distribuido en fibra óptica basado en detección heterodina y demodulación digital" (2024)
- Vincenzo Saltarini Merino - "Implementación y evaluación de un sensor acústico distribuido de fibra óptica con detección coherente homodina" (2024)
- Marcos Rojas Mardones - "Simulación de un sensor acústico distribuido en fibra óptica basado en reflectometría óptica en el dominio temporal" (2024)
- Sebastián San Martín Almonacid - "Diseño y análisis de métodos de interrogación de un sensor de fibra óptica basado en rejillas de Bragg" (2022)
- Loreto Romero Ponce - "Implementación de un esquema interferométrico de detección de fase óptica para sensores acústicos distribuidos" (2022)
- Gabriela González Moreno - “Desarrollo de herramientas educativas dirigidas al estudio de líneas de transmisión, guías de onda y fibra óptica” (2022)
- Luis Bahamondes Pastén - Implementación y estudio de factibilidad de un detector óptico Kramers Kronig para sensores distribuidos Rayleigh en fibra óptica (2021)
- Paulo Rivera Rivera - "Diseño de experiencias de laboratorio para el estudio de fibra óptica y componentes de enlaces ópticos" (2020)
- Mauricio Jofré Prieto - "Diseño y Construcción de un Sensor phi-OTDR Para Detectar Perturbaciones en Polines de Correas Transportadoras" (2019)

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:
• 4 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 Universidad Pública de Navarra, Pamplona, Spain
• 1 PhD Thesis at Bar-Ilan, Ramat Gan, Israel
• 1 PhD Thesis at Padova University, Padova, Italy
• 1 PhD Thesis at Indian Institute of Technology Madras, Chennai, India.

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
• Latin American Workshop on Optical Fiber Sensors (LAWOFS), since 2019
• Latin America Optics and Photonics Conference (LAOP), since 2022
• Pacific Rim Conference on Lasers and Electro-Optics (CLEO-PR), since 2023
• Optica Sensing Congress, since 2023
• Optoelectronics and Communications Conference (OECC), in 2021
• International Commission on Optics (ICO), in 2020
• World Congress of Optics and Photonics (WOCP), in 2020
• Asia-Pacific Optical Sensors (APOS) Conference, in 2016
• International Conference on Photonics (ICP), from 2015 to 2017

o Outreach and Scientific Community Involvement
• Preparation of project proposals granted with more than 4.5M USD (total project funding over 6.5M USD).
• Associate Editor of OSA/IEEE Journal of Lightwave Technology
• Associate Editor of the Optical Fiber Technology Journal (Editorial Elsevier).
• Technical Co-Chair of the 26th International Conference on Optical Fibre Sensors (OFS-26), Lausanne, Switzerland, September 2018 (conference supported by OSA).
• 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 Optica (former Optical Society of America – OSA) since 2012. Senior Member since 2020.
• Member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) since 2020.
• 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 13.09.2023: “Technology developed by Chilean researcher allows the detection of seismic events using optical fibre and artificial intelligence” Article (in Spanish) describing the development and demonstration of an earthquake early-warning system based on machine learning tools for fibre-optic distributed acoustic sensing data using a submarine optical cable offshore Valparaiso, Chile. The press release was published in several national and local newspapers and non-scientific press for general public.

• 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.