Sara Bagherifard is Associate Professor at the Department of Mechanical Engineering of Politecnico di Milano, Italy. She graduated from Iran University of Science and Technology with a degree in Mechanical Engineering and was awarded Ph.D. in Mechanical Systems Engineering in 2011 by Politecnico di Milano.
Following her PhD, she held multiple Research Associate, Postdoctoral Fellow and Adjunct positions at University of Cambridge (UK), MIT (US), Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology (US) and Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU). She became Assistant Professor in 2017, and Associate Professor in 2022.
Prof. Bagherifard has received ERC-Consolidator grant (2021) and has been the PI or co-PI of multiple European, National and industrial projects. She has received various awards including ASTM International Additive Manufacturing Young Professional Award (2021), Best Talk Award from European Conference on Structural Integrity of Additively Manufactured Materials (2019), Electrolux Corporate award from Switch2Product Innovation Challenge program (2019), Young Scientist Lecture Gold Prize from 10th International Conference on Surfaces, Coatings and Nanostructured Materials (2015), Polimi International Fellowship (PIF) (2014), Roberto Rocca Italy-MIT post-doctoral fellowship, International Schlumberger Fellowship Faculty for The Future (2011 and 2012), Best Presentation award from 14th International Seminar of Ph.D. Students (2009) and Young Researcher’s Award from 20th National IGF conference (2009).
The research interests of Prof. Bagherifard include design, development and deployment of multifunctional materials for load-bearing applications. She implements theoretical, numerical, machine learning and experimental approaches to identify, understand and manipulate the process-structure-property linkage in coatings and additive manufactured materials. Her major research interests are solid state deposition for coating, multi-material additive manufacturing and repair, simulation, design and application of mechanical surface treatments to improve the structural integrity of metallic materials and modulate their interaction with the immediate environment.