Richard B. Brown received the Outstanding Alumnus Award for 2010 from the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Brigham Young University. Some of the highlights from his distinguished career are summarized below.
Education: Doctor Brown received both the BSEE (1976) and MSEE (1976) degrees from BYU. After five years in industry, he returned to school and completed his PhD degree at the University of Utah in 1985.
Professional Career: After completing his PhD, Doctor Brown joined the faculty at the University of Michigan. While there, he developed an integrated circuit design program that was recognized by Intel Corporation as the model curriculum for teaching VLSI. His research group designed state of the art microprocessors and low power mixed-signal embedded microcontrollers.
After serving as Department Chair at the University of Michigan, Dr. Brown was selected in 2004 as the 11th Dean of the College of Engineering at the University of Utah. During Dr. Brown’s tenure as Dean, the College of Engineering has seen a doubling of research expenditures, a doubling of PhD student enrollment, and a near doubling of degrees granted.
In addition to his academic work, Dr. Brown has founded several companies, most recently Mobius Microsystems (acquired in 2010 by Integrated Device Technology). One development of Mobius Microsystems is an all-silicon clock generator that eliminates the need for a crystal-based clock. While at the University of Michigan, he founded two companies based on sensor/electronic systems that were later acquired by larger firms. In 2010, he founded e-SENS, which was recently awarded a Utah Center of Excellence grant.
Professional Activities: Doctor Brown has served as Guest Editor for the IEEE Proceedings and as Associate Editor for the IEEE Transactions on VLSI Circuits. He has chaired several international conferences and has served on numerous conference advisory committees. He holds 17 patents and has authored more than 200 research publications. He has advised 27 PhD students.
Awards: Dr. Brown has been widely recognized for his significant accomplishments and highly productive career. While at the University of Michigan, he received awards for both excellence in teaching and excellence in research. The Michigan Association of Governing Boards of Universities and Colleges recognized him with the Distinguished Faculty Award in 2000. He was also awarded the Arthur F. Thurnau Endowed Professorship and was an IBM Faculty Fellow from 2001 to 2005. He was named the Distinguished Educator of the Year in 2010 by the Utah Technology Council. He also received the Distinguished Young Alumnus Award in 2003 from the University of Utah as well as the Outstanding Alumnus Award in 2010 from Brigham Young University.