People: M-A grad wins top science honor People: M-A grad wins top science honor (June 15, 2005)

Frank L. H. Brown, a 1990 graduate of Menlo-Atherton High School, this week joined an elite group of scientists and engineers.

An assistant professor of chemistry and biochemistry at the University of California, Santa Barbara, Mr. Brown is among 58 people across the country chosen for Presidential Early Career Awards for Scientists and Engineers.

The award is given by the U.S. government to promising young scientists and engineers embarking on their careers. It's deemed by many organizations to be the highest national honor for these researchers.

Groups including the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Agriculture choose the award nominees. Mr. Brown was nominated by the National Science Foundation.

"Frank Brown embodies all of the outstanding characteristics this award recognizes: innovative and imaginative research, stellar teaching and student mentoring, and good citizenship," Martin Moskovits, UCSB's dean of science, said in a press release.

"Using his highly sophisticated computations, his work could lead to new medical therapies, reducing the cost of discovering new pharmaceuticals," he added.

According to the press release, Mr. Brown was honored for "developing new computational algorithms for the investigation of cellular phenomena that is resulting in new computational tools to investigate cell membrane dynamic and cytoskeletal assembly."

This marks only the second time that a UCSB faculty member has received such an award, the press release states.

Mr. Brown earned a bachelor of science degree in chemistry and a bachelor of arts degree in applied mathematics from the University of California, Berkeley, and a doctorate in physical chemistry from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

His parents, Morris and Denise Brown, are longtime residents of Menlo Park.

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