Please join the Office of the Dean of Natural and Applied Sciences in welcoming Dr. Emery N. Brown to campus as this year’s Gentile Lectureship speaker. Dr. Brown’s presentation, entitled, “Deciphering the Dynamics of the Unconscious Brain Under General Anesthesia,” is open to the
public. Stop by a few minutes early to grab a seat and enjoy some refreshments! 

Emery N. Brown, M.D., Ph.D. is the Edward Hood Taplin Professor of Medical Engineering, Professor of Health Sciences and Technology and Professor of Computational Neuroscience at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT); the Warren M. Zapol Professor of Anaesthesia at Harvard Medical School; and an anesthesiologist at Massachusetts General Hospital.
Emery received his B.A. in Applied Mathematics (magna cum laude) from Harvard College.

After college he studied mathematics for a year as an International Rotary Fellow at the Fourier Institute in Grenoble, France. Upon returning from France, Emery enrolled in the Harvard M.D. Ph.D. He obtained his M.A. and Ph.D. in statistics from Harvard University and his M.D.
(magna cum laude) from Harvard Medical School.

For the last 20 years, Emery has focused his research on characterizing the neurophysiology of general anesthesia. His work has revealed that general anesthesia is not sleep but rather a pharmacologically mediated reversible coma. Indeed, a patient must be in a state of coma to
tolerate the trauma of surgery or that of an invasive diagnostic procedure. Emery’s research has shown that during anesthesia the brain is not turned off. Rather, the anesthetic agents produced highly structured, generally low-frequency, high-amplitude brain wave oscillations that disrupt
the communications among brain regions. These oscillations change systematically with anesthetic dose, drug class, patient age and patient state of health. Brown and his colleagues have demonstrated that EEG brain monitoring can be used to track these oscillations in real-time, and
thus, guide anesthetic dosing during surgery. He has also demonstrated that these oscillations may be used as the control signal for automated closed-loop anesthesia delivery.

Emery is a fellow of the IEEE, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Academy of Arts Sciences, and the National Academy of Inventors. Emery is one of only 25 people elected to all three National Academies: Medicine, Sciences and Engineering. He
is also a member of the American Philosophical Society. Emery served on President Obama’s Brain Initiative Working Group. At present he serves on the Board of Trustees of the Simons Foundation, the Board of Trustees of the Guggenheim Foundation, the Board of Directors of Humacyte, the Editorial Advisory Board of the New England Journal of Medicine, the Editorial Board of PNAS and on the Scientific Advisory Board
of the Neuroscience Program for the Tatiana Foundation in Madrid, Spain.

Emery has been widely recognized for his research accomplishments. He received an NIH Director’s Pioneer Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship in Applied Mathematics, the American Society of Anesthesiologists Excellence in Research Award, the Dickson Prize in Science, the Swartz Prize for Theoretical and Computational Neuroscience, the Gruber Prize in Neuroscience, and Doctor of Science Honoris Causa degrees from the University of Southern California, the State University of New York Downstate and Howard University. Finally, Emery was a recipient of the 2024 National Medal of Science Award.

Emery’s anesthesiology research has been featured in the New York Times, Scientific American, the MIT Technology Review, TED MED and on National Public Radio. 

The Gentile Interdisciplinary Lectureship at Hope was established in 2005 by faculty colleagues, former students, and friends of Dr. James Gentile. Gentile joined the Hope faculty in 1976 and served as dean for the Natural and Applied Sciences Division from 1988 to 2005, when he
became president of Research Corporation, a private foundation in Tucson, Arizona, that supports basic research in the physical sciences. After retiring from Research Corporation, he returned to Hope to serve a two-year appointment as dean from July 2013 through June 2015.
Recent lecturers include:
2024 Dr. Chris Avery, National Climate Assessment
2023 Dr. Francis Su, Harvey Mudd College
2022 Dr. Michael Guillen
2021 Dr. Sherri Mason, Penn State Behrend
2019 Mr. Ira Flatow, Science Friday
2019 Dr. Valerie Taylor, Argonne National Laboratory
2018 Dr. Peter Agre, Johns Hopkins University
2016 Dr. Andrew Christlieb, Michigan State University
2015 Dr. Cherry Murray, Harvard University
2015 Dr. Jay Demas, St. Olaf College
2015 Dr. Laura Listenberger, St. Olaf College

Dr. Brown’s visit is made possible by a gift to the Gentile Lectureship from the Kavli Foundation of Oxnard, California. The Kavli foundation is dedicated to advancing science for the benefit of humanity, promoting public understanding of scientific research, and supporting scientists and
their work.