Professor, Director, Fraunhofer Center for Manufacturing Innovation

PhD, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

phone: (617) 353-1888
email: sharon@bu.edu
website: www.fhcmi.org
office: 15 St. Mary’s Street, EMB 101

Research Interests

Electromechanical machine design, controls, automation, biotech/biomedical instrumentation, devices, & rapid micro-diagnostics platforms

Professor Sharon believes that although biotechnology is an area with rapid scientific advancements, it is also an area in which the necessary engineering and manufacturing technologies have not kept pace with the science. This has created a bottleneck that must be addressed rigorously and aggressively to facilitate continued rapid advancement of the field. Towards that end, he has created the Boston University – Fraunhofer Alliance for Medical Devices, Instrumentation, and Diagnostics. The goal of the Alliance is to accelerate the process of taking medical innovations from the Laboratory to the Patient-Point-of-Care, by bringing together engineering faculty, physicians and full time engineers to physically realize the concept in a rapid and cost-effective manner.

In the area of rapid diagnostics, Prof. Sharon’s group focuses on the integration of microfluidic methodologies, high precision micromachining manufacturing techniques and nanotechnology to address unmet needs in sample preparation, cell and tissue culture, and clinical diagnostics. In conjunction with Professors Alexis Sauer-Budge and Catherine Klapperich, his group has developed a flexible Lab-on-a-Chip platform and associated instrumentation and demonstrated complete, end-to-end DNA-based diagnostics on a chip. This includes lysing of the cells, DNA extraction, PCR, detection, and all the necessary processing steps. Additionally, the Group is conducting research leading to novel methods for rapid antibiotic susceptibility detection within minutes, and development of rapid nucleic acid isolation for high throughput applications

In the area of flexible automation, Prof. Sharon is developing novel manufacturing systems for a variety of applications, ranging from sub-micron alignment for the manufacture of fiber-optic components, to large-scale automated production of plant-based vaccines, to high-speed assembly of consumer products.

Selected Publications

• Biao Li, Thomas Schwarz, Andre Sharon, “Implementation of Microfluidic Devices at a Transparency,” Journal of Micromechanics and Microengineering, 16 (12): 2639-2645 Dec 2006.
• Biao Li, Yu Zhu, Andre Sharon, “Quasipassive Positioning Platform for Nanoscale Management of In-Plane Motion,” Applied Physics Letters, 89 (4): Art. No. 043110 July 24 2006.
• Biao li, Aurelien Gueit, Andre Sharon, “Thickness Management in 3D Laser Manifacturing of Suspended Structures in a Single SU-8 layer,” Review of Scientific Instruments, 77, 0 June 2006.
• Biao Li, Holger Wirz, Andre Sharon, “Optimizing Fiber Coupling with a Quasi-passive Microoptical Bench, IEEE Journal of Microelectromechanical Systems, 14, 1339, 2005.
• Biao Li, H. Yu, A. Sharon, and X. Zhang, “Rapid Three Dimensional Manufacturing of Microfluidic Structures Using a Scanning Laser System,” Applied Physics Letters, 85 (12), pp. 2426-2428, 2004.