Professor Mark Burns received the College of Engineering's Research Excellence Award for 2003-04. The college recognizes faculty annually for high standards of excellence, dedication to teaching, passion for research and commitment to service.
Professor Burns is constructing microfabricated devices that can essentially shrink a room full of complex chemical analysis equipment down to the size of a penny. The class of devices, commonly referred to as “lab on a chip,” can perform DNA analyses faster and more economically than current technology. The devices are self-contained and can be designed to be operated from a laptop computer or other portable electronic devices. To date, Burns has constructed numerous components including a micro pump that operates by temperature differences, a micro reactor that can selectively amplify or cut DNA, and a micro separation unit that can separate DNA based on size. He has also constructed an entire device integrating all of these components that is little more than 1 cm2; this device is part of the permanent collection of the National Science Museum in London, England. His research in this area has generated a number of high profile publications including several in Science and has been funded by 7 grants from the National Institutes of Health totaling over $15 M.
The potential impact of this work is virtually unlimited. Production of self-contained chemical analysis systems could greatly reduce the time and expense associated with everything from medical diagnosis to agricultural pest identification. The goal of Prof. Burns, in conjunction with his collaborators, is to construct self-contained, battery powered, microfabricated systems capable of detecting and sequencing DNA and RNA samples. A particularly important application of this technology would be in the diagnosis of infectious diseases. Culturing of samples that normally take days to process could be replaced by a simple test completed in minutes. Other applications include the identification of crime suspects, that analysis of food-borne pathogens, and the categorization of endangered species in remote locations.