Photo Credit: Simons Foundation
In awarding the 2026 honorary degrees, President Maurie McInnis read the following personalized citation.
World renowned statistician, computational neuroscientist, and anesthesiologist, your groundbreaking research has revolutionized how we understand the brain at its most mysterious edges. Through rigorous statistical modeling and elegant experimentation, you have revealed anesthesia not as a blunt shutdown of the mind but a structured, dynamic reorganization of brain activity. Your work has uncovered new ways to study a range of effects in the brain, including mental illness. An inspirational professorial presence at both MIT and Harvard, you are one of only 19 scientists who have been elected to all three national academies: Science, Engineering, and Medicine.
Intrepid explorer, for illuminating the rhythms of the unconscious brain, we are proud – in full consciousness – to confer on you the degree of Doctor of Medical Sciences.
Dr. Emery N. Brown is a distinguished American statistician, computational neuroscientist, and anesthesiologist renowned for his contributions to understanding the neuroscience of anesthesia and for developing statistical methods for neuroscience data analysis. His multidisciplinary approach has bridged the fields of anesthesiology, neuroscience, and statistics, leading to significant strides in both medical practice and theoretical research. He holds dual appointments as the Warren M. Zapol Professor of Anaesthesia at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), as well as the Edward Hood Taplin Professor of Medical Engineering and Computational Neuroscience at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
Brown was born and raised in Ocala, Florida. His parents, Benjamin and Alberta Brown, taught high school mathematics. He grew up inspired by Roberto Clemente, the Puerto Rican baseball player and humanitarian who played for the Pittsburgh Pirates. Brown’s mother was from Pittsburgh, and every summer, Brown’s father would take him and his brother to see the Pirates play at old Forbes Field. Brown admired Clemente for his outstanding talent, understated demeanor, and humanitarian efforts, which continue to influence Brown’s career and personal life. He graduated from Phillips Exeter Academy, and during high school, he spent a semester studying Spanish in Barcelona, Spain. Brown received his Bachelor of Science degree in applied mathematics (magna cum laude), his MA and a PhD in statistics, and his MD (magna cum laude) from Harvard University.
Brown began his research career developing statistical models to characterize the properties of the human circadian clock. This included quantifying how light shifts the phase of the human clock as a function of the phase in the clock’s cycle at which light is administered and demonstrating that the intrinsic period of the human clock is closer to 24 rather than 25 hours. Later, Brown used his statistics expertise to help circadian researchers measure the efficacy of shift-work schedules designed based on circadian physiology.
Photo Credit: Len Rubenstein
Following his anesthesiology residency at MGH, Brown focused his research on developing statistical methods for a broad range of neuroscience data. He quickly realized that these methods could be used to monitor anesthetic states from electroencephalogram (EEG) recordings measured during surgery. Brown established that each anesthetic has a specific EEG signature that changes based on mechanism of action, anesthetic dose, patient age, and patient state of health. He has shown that a primary mechanism through which anesthetics produce unconsciousness is by sustaining large amplitude, low-frequency oscillations that impair communication among brain regions. He established that the EEG can be monitored in real-time to guide anesthetic dosing thus, improving the safety and effectiveness of anesthetic practices. Brown’s work has revealed that general anesthesia is not sleep, but rather a pharmacologically mediated reversible coma.
As a pioneer in his field, Brown has received numerous accolades. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and is the first African American, first statistician and first anesthesiologist to be elected to the National Academy of Medicine, National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering and the National Academy of Inventors. His groundbreaking work has been recognized with the National Institutes of Health Director’s Pioneer Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship in applied mathematics, the American Society of Anesthesiologists Excellence in Research Award, the Swartz Prize for Theoretical and Computational Neuroscience and the Gruber Prize in neuroscience. In 2024, he received the National Medal of Science.
Brown served on President Obama’s Brain Initiative Working Group, and now, serves on the Simons Foundation board of trustees, the Jury of the Merkin Prize, the editorial board of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) and advisory board of the New England Journal of Medicine.
