Abhinav Sharma

I’m a Berkeley Haas MBA candidate working to move defense and dual-use technology from R&D into adoption and scale.

Before Haas, I was an aerospace engineer who developed engineering software and analyses for government and commercial customers. Beyond that work, I identified government research and development opportunities and led technical proposals that won $1.45M in Defense Department and NASA contracts.

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Abhinav Sharma
  • Aerospace PhD, University of Michigan
  • Helicopters, fixed-wing aircraft, UAVs, and advanced air mobility
  • Simulation, flight control, and multidisciplinary design optimization

Selected projects

Government, commercial, and doctoral work

U.S. Army STTR small-business research award · Phase I to Phase II · 2022–2025

Designing Aircraft That Change Shape in Flight

A morphing UAV reshapes its wings in flight, and every change alters airflow, structural loads, and the best flight path, each feeding back on the others. I identified the opportunity, led the proposals end to end, and assembled and led a six-person industry–academic team with Prof. Joaquim Martins of the University of Michigan. Working with researchers at the Army Research Laboratory (ARL), I guided the technical work and developed the Python framework that optimizes all three together. Prof. Martins’s group built separate software, and both were delivered to ARL. The program advanced from a ~$173K Phase I to a ~$1.15M Phase II.

Phase I awardPhase II awardAIAA Aviation 2025 paper

AI-generated illustration of a morphing UAV with faint outlines of alternative wing configurations along a dashed orange flight path.
AI-generated illustration of a morphing-wing UAV, not a specific aircraft.

NASA SBIR small-business research award · Phase I · 2021

Designing the Aircraft and Its Flight Controls Together

Flight controls are conventionally designed after an aircraft’s body and wings are fixed. We optimized them together with the airframe from the start, on an aircraft with distributed electric propulsion, a layout that spreads electric propellers along the wing. As principal investigator, I led the technical proposal that won a competitive ~$125K NASA SBIR Phase I award, then carried out the technical work and published the results as first author with Prof. Joaquim Martins and Jeffrey Keller.

NASA SBIR awardAIAA SciTech 2023 paper

AI-generated illustration of an aircraft on approach, with eight electric propellers along the leading edge of the wing and white lines tracing the airflow over it.
AI-generated illustration of a distributed electric propulsion concept, not a specific aircraft.

Commercial and research work

Advanced Air Mobility Modeling and Simulation

I delivered aircraft design and performance analyses for multiple clients. Through my own networking and cold outreach, I also won two new, unnamed clients in advanced air mobility, the emerging market for electric and vertical-takeoff aircraft, adding ~$100K in new revenue.

AI-generated illustration of a six-propeller aircraft whose wing tilts as it transitions from hover to forward flight, with lines tracing the airflow over the wing.
AI-generated illustration of a tiltwing concept, not a specific aircraft. The wing rotates between hovering and forward flight.

University of Michigan · PhD · Office of Naval Research–supported · 2017–2019

Simulating Helicopter Operations at Sea

A helicopter landing on a ship must contend with a moving deck and the turbulent airwake the ship generates. I developed a simulation that couples both with the helicopter’s flight dynamics and controls, and applied it to UH-60A shipboard operations. I published the work in the Journal of Aircraft with Ashwani Padthe and Peretz Friedmann.

Journal of Aircraft paper

AI-generated illustration of a UH-60 helicopter hovering above the stern flight deck of a moving ship, seen from the hangar.
AI-generated illustration of a UH-60 over a moving flight deck. The UH-60A is the aircraft I modeled.

Current direction

What happens after the technology works

The questions I keep returning to: who owns the problem, who pays to solve it, and what stands between a prototype and a purchase order.

Defense and dual-use technology

My work has centered on the early stages of government R&D: finding opportunities, shaping the technical concept, and leading proposals. At Haas I’m studying the stages that follow: how new technology is acquired, integrated into existing systems, and fielded.

Customer discovery and adoption

With my team at Berkeley, I completed customer discovery through the National Science Foundation’s I-Corps program, interviewing customers to test our assumptions under the guidance of program mentors. It taught me how much separates a working technology from its adoption.

Autonomy and integrated design

The NASA and Army projects shared one idea: design the parts of an aircraft that interact together simultaneously, not one at a time. I want to bring that approach to autonomous systems, where software and hardware are inseparable.

Research

Selected papers

All publications on Google Scholar