Robert A. Brown

College of Science and Engineering, November 2, 2017

Robert A. Brown received a Ph.D. in chemical engineering in 1979 from the College of Science and Engineering at the University of Minnesota.  For the past 11 years, he has served as president of Boston University.  He is considered to be an international leader in computational modeling of crystal growth, viscoelastic fluid mechanics, applied mathematics, and advanced numerical simulation.  Prior to his appointment at Boston University, he held academic leadership positions at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (M.I.T.), including provost (1998-2005), dean of the School of Engineering (1996-1998), and head of the Department of Chemical Engineering (1989-1995).  As a faculty member at M.I.T., he published over 250 papers and advised many graduate students and post-docs.  Brown served as the executive editor of the Journal of Chemical Engineering Science from 1991 to 2004.  In 2008, the American Institute of Chemical Engineers named him one of the 100 most influential chemical engineers in the modern era.  He is a member of three national academies:  the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.  Because of his extraordinary contributions to higher education in Singapore, he was named honorary citizen in 2006, which is the highest form of recognition given by the Singapore government to any non-Singaporean.