Dr. Brown earned a D.Phil. in Neurophysiology (Oxford, 1973) and an M.D. (Harvard, 1975). After a neurology residency at the Massachusetts General Hospital/Harvard Medical School (1980), he joined the faculty at the Massachusetts General Hospital and co-directed the Neuromuscular Clinic. In 2008, he became the chair of neurology at UMass Chan Medical School and served in that capacity through 2018, when he became the Director of Neurotherapeutics for UMass Chan Medical School. He currently holds the Donna and Robert J. Manning Chair of Neuroscience. With colleagues, Dr. Brown identified several ALS genes including SOD1 (1993) and FUS/TLS (2009). He also defined causative gene defects in hyperkalemic paralysis (skeletal muscle sodium channel, 1991), limb girdle dystrophy type 2B (dysferlin, 1998), and hereditary sensory neuropathy (serine palmitoyl-transferase, 2001). He and colleagues demonstrated that antisense oligonucleotides (1994) and siRNA (2004) can be employed to suppress the SOD1 gene in vitro. At UMass Chan, he and his team initiated two proof-of-concept human trials of gene suppression therapy in familial ALS, targeting SOD1 (AAVrh10-microRNA, 2020) and C9orf72 (anti-sense oligonucleotides, 2022). He is a member of the National Academy of Medicine, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a past president of the American Neurological Association.