Dr Abolfazl Zahedi holds PhD in Mechanical Engineering from Loughborough University (2013). During his doctoral research, he developed a crystal plasticity model to characterise the anisotropic deformation and damage behaviour of single crystals under excessive deformation. Following the completion of his PhD, he awarded a Marie Curie Research Fellowship, securing funding for a year to extend his collaboration with the Mechanics of Advanced Materials Research Group at Loughborough University. Subsequently, he joined the Advanced Forming Research Centre (AFRC) at the University of Strathclyde (2014), managing industrial projects in Advanced Manufacturing disciplines and leading the forming modelling and simulation group.
In 2015, he started his position as a research fellow at the School of Mechanical, Aerospace and Civil Engineering (MACE) at the University of Manchester. Here, he developed a discrete energy approach to understand the fracture behaviour of elastic-brittle polymers. His computational code has been integrated into the Code-aster FE software for public use.
Dr Zahedi appointed a Senior Lecturer in Mechanical Engineering at De Montfort University in 2018, during which time he served as the Research Lead of the Mechanical and Aeronautical Subject Group.
In 2023 he returned to Loughborough University as a Lecturer in Mechanics of Advanced Materials.
Dr Zahedi is recognized as a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (FHEA) and serves as an EPSRC peer review college.
