Eleanor C. Browne

Eleanor C. Browne is an Associate Professor in the Department of Chemistry and an Institute Fellow at the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES) at the University of Colorado Boulder. Her research focuses on aerosol formation and growth mechanisms in Earth's and planetary atmospheres, combining field measurements, laboratory experiments, and instrument development. She holds a Ph.D. from UC Berkeley (2012) and completed postdoctoral work at MIT (2012–2015).

Her expertise spans aerosols & clouds, planetary atmospheres, organosilicon chemistry, and trace gas analysis. Key research areas include new particle formation dynamics, planetary haze chemistry (e.g., Titan and Archean Earth analogs), and environmental fate of siloxanes. She leads the Browne Group, advancing instrumentation like Kendrick mass defect analysis for atmospheric data visualization.

Recent work includes studies on sulfur’s role in planetary haze optical properties, oxidation mechanisms of methyl siloxanes, and gas-phase urea’s atmospheric significance. Awards include the 2022 ACS Environmental Au Rising Star Award and the 2019 American Society for Mass Spectrometry Research Award. Her research has been deployed at DOE’s Southern Great Plains field site and leverages NASA’s planetary mission data.