Shakardokht Jafari

Shakardokht (Shakar) Jafari () is a Medical Physicist and an award-winning innovator based at the Surrey Technology Centre. She developed an efficient and low cost method of measuring a medical dose of radiation.
Early life and education.
Jafari was born in Daykundi, Afghanistan in 1977. Jafari and her family were forced to leave Afghanistan when war broke out, and at the age of six she spent six months travelling as a refugee to Iran. When she turned 14, her father told her she must marry her cousin. However, she managed to convince her parents and the cousin to cancel the marriage. This meant she could continue her education. Jafari completed her BSc in radiation technologies at Tabriz University of Medical Sciences in 2000. After moving back to Afghanistan in 2003, Jafari taught in the Kabul Medical University. and completed a master's degree in radiation physics there while working. In 2010 she moved to the University of Surrey to study a master's in medical physics. In 2014 she appeared on Manoto, a Persian television network, discussing her career and education. In 2015 she became the first Afghan woman to earn a PhD in Medical Physics. She was awarded the "Schlumberger Foundation" Faculty for the Future award for her second year of studies.
Research and career.
Jafari developed a string of tiny calibrated silica beads that can be used to measure radiation inside a patient's body. She demonstrated that the amount of radiation each bead receives can be measured using a simple thermoluminescence reader. The glass beads cost significantly less than contemporary Dosimeters and also address the dosimetric challenges of modern radiotherapy techniques. They ran proof-of-concept experiments at Queen Alexandra Hospital in Portsmouth. She was inspired to create the beads because of the lack of cancer treatment in Afghanistan, where her father died prematurely of cancer. In 2016 Jafari became one of 15 women entrepreneurs to win a £50,000 Innovate UK Infocus Award. She is the founder and CTO of TRUEinvivo. A patent for her technology was granted in 2019. Jafari is part of the UK Sirius programme for graduate entrepreneurs.
In 2018 Jafari featured in the SPIE Women in Optics planner.
Personal life.
Jafari met her husband Ibrahim in 1998 and they have three children. She discovered she was pregnant with her third child a few days after learning that she herself had cancer. Her consultant surgeon at the Queen Alexandra Hospital in Portsmouth told her it would be possible to keep the baby. Jafari was able to have chemotherapy while pregnant and said they "want baby Sina to be a message of hope to other families".