University of Alabama at Birmingham Vice President of Research Chris Brown, Ph.D., has announced he will retire, effective July 1, 2026, concluding a distinguished career in research, teaching and higher education administration that includes almost ten years of transformational growth leading the UAB Office of Research.
A national search for UAB’s next vice president of Research will be led by a broad search committee chaired by Dean of the Heersink School of Medicine and Senior Vice President of Medicine Anupam Agarwal, M.D., and co-chaired by UAB Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs Janet Woodruff-Borden, Ph.D.
Brown, also a tenured professor in the Department of Biology, has played critical roles in several of UAB President Ray Watts’, M.D., key initiatives since joining the university in January 2017.
Most notably, Brown led Watts’ aggressive goals for growth in UAB’s research funding and impact. During his tenure, UAB’s annual research expenditures grew from $561 million to $866 million — an increase of 54 percent — which Brown says translates into saving and improving more lives.
Brown serves as vice chair of the Research Strategic Initiative Executive Steering Committee, an initiative to empower research excellence, impact, scholarship, and innovation to drive knowledge and job creation focused on increasing our positive impact and improving society.
“I am proud to have had the opportunity — along with my talented colleagues in the Office of Research — to help implement President Watts’ aggressive vision to realize UAB’s potential to positively affect as many people’s lives as possible through our research enterprise,” Brown said. “As a result, we’ve greatly enhanced our research infrastructure to support our faculty, staff and students and the great work they do, and I know that important work will continue.”
Brown also helped UAB maintain research operations during the global COVID-19 pandemic.
“There may be no more rewarding experience than helping steer the research community when major disruptions like COVID threaten the important work of our faculty and staff,” Brown said. “While it was incredibly difficult and stressful, and I always wish we could have done more, I remain proud of the contributions the Office of Research made in UAB’s collective efforts to maintain critical operations during that time.”
Under Brown’s leadership, UAB developed the “Grand Challenge” program to bring the extensive expertise of UAB to bear on major societal problems. From this came Live HealthSmart Alabama which works across the state to enhance the health of all citizens through nutrition, physical activity, and access to health care through direct engagement with communities.
“It is an honor to have played a role in this program,” Brown said, “and to see that the great work carried forward by others is having — and will continue to have — such a great impact on the citizens of Alabama.”
UAB and its 1,270 funded principal investigators continue to rank highly in federal research and development expenditures, maintaining the institution’s place in the top 5 percent of all universities.
President Ray Watts says Brown’s leadership played a significant role in UAB’s research successes in the last decade.
“The impact of our research is not in the dollars, but in the lives we touch in positive — and many times transformative — ways,” Watts said. “Chris has been dedicated to that purpose for almost a decade and an active member of the Blazer community. When he isn’t advancing our research mission, you would often find him and his wife Sue at football, basketball or soccer competitions or at UAB’s cultural and art events. I sincerely thank Chris for his dedication to this university and wish him the very best in retirement.”
Brown is proud of the foundation he helped build and is confident the best is yet to come for UAB Research.
“UAB is a special place with extremely talented faculty and staff dedicated to improving as many lives as possible through all of its missions — research and innovation, education, patient care, and community service,” Brown said. “This university is among the most consequential entities in the state, and the research we do here is a major part of that. I look forward to its continuing impact on Alabama and the world” Brown said. “It has been a privilege to have been a part of this great institution.”
Brown received his BS degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and his MS and PhD from North Carolina State University (NCSU). After a postdoctoral fellowship in biochemistry at the University of Missouri-Columbia and seven years running the space biology laboratories at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, he returned to NCSU where he took a faculty position in the Department of Plant and Microbial Biology. There he directed the NASA Specialized Center of Research and Training in Gravitational Biology, conducted research, and taught. Prior to arriving at UAB, he directed the North Carolina Space Initiative, served as Associate Vice Chancellor for Research Development at NCSU and later took on the role Vice President for Research at the 16-campus University of North Carolina System.
For many years, Brown’s research focused on the effects of spaceflight — that is, altered gravity and lighting conditions — on plant growth, development, and metabolism. He led and/or participated in numerous projects on the Space Shuttle and the International Space Station. He developed an in-person and on-line graduate/undergraduate course in Space Biology which he offered at the University of Central Florida and then at NCSU. Currently he is the principal investigator for a 3-year, $2.8 million grant from the National Science Foundation to UAB to promote research administration as an attractive career option via undergraduate minor programs and graduate/undergraduate certificates at universities across the country.
He currently serves on the boards of Southern Research, the UAB Research Foundation, Innovation Depot, the MS/AL Sea Grant Consortium, and the Alabama EPSCoR Steering Committee.
A national search for UAB’s next vice president of Research will be led by a broad search committee co-chaired by UAB Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs Janet Woodruff-Borden, Ph.D., and Dean of the Heersink School of Medicine and Senior Vice President of Medicine Anupam Agarwal, M.D.