Mr. Tetsuro Fukada (Laser and Optical Fiber Measurement Laboratory) a student in the Mechanical and Electrical & Electronic Engineering Course, Division of Science and Engineering, Graduate School of Natural Science and Technology, received the Student Poster Award at the Technical Committee on Optical Fiber Technology of the Institute of Electronics, Information and Communication Engineers (IEICE), held in Osaka in January 2026 (Reiwa 8). He presented his research titled “Strain Measurement in Concrete Curing Process Using Optical Frequency Domain Reflectometry.”
Mr. Fukada is joining the joint research with a major construction company on applying optical fiber sensors to infrastructure monitoring. In the award-winning study, optical fibers were embedded in concrete, demonstrating that strain generated inside the concrete during the curing (hardening) process can be measured in a distributed manner. This technique is expected to enable the observation of localized stress and shrinkage behavior within concrete, allowing detailed analysis of internal material dynamics.
Mr. Fukada studied disaster prevention engineering in the Department of Earth Sciences, Faculty of Interdisciplinary Science and Engineering. He then advanced to the Mechanical and Electrical & Electronic Engineering Course in graduate school, where he is currently working on his research theme by leveraging interdisciplinary knowledge.

Strain variation observed in a 40 cm-long concrete specimen from immediately after casting to an age of 168 hours.