Donald R. Brown

Donald R. Brown is a Professor and Department Head of Electrical & Computer Engineering at Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI), where he has been since 2000. He holds the Weston Hadden Endowed Professorship. His research focuses on machine learning, wireless communications, synchronization, distributed computing, and game-theoretic analysis of networks. He earned his B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Connecticut (1992, 1996) and Cornell University (2000), respectively. Prior to WPI, he worked at General Electric (1992–1997). He has held visiting roles at Princeton University and served as a Program Director at the NSF (2016–2018).

• Education: BS (1992, Summa Cum Laude), MS (1996) from UConn; PhD (2000) from Cornell.

Research interests span signal processing, communication systems, and networking, with recent emphasis on age of information, distributed MIMO systems, and synchronization protocols. His lab, SPINLab, has been funded by NSF, DARPA, and industry partners.

Recent work includes studies on information freshness in multi-hop networks, machine learning for communication systems, and synchronization techniques. He has received over $900,000 in grants and supervised numerous graduate students.

• Awards: Weston Hadden Professorship, NSF REU Supplement, DARPA DURIP award.

Advising and grants highlight his leadership in collaborative projects, including work on distributed beamforming and wireless power transfer. SPINLab collaborates with institutions like BBN Technologies and MIT Lincoln Labs.