Donna J. Brown is an Associate Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and a Research Associate Professor in the Coordinated Science Laboratory. During 1995-96 she served as Assistant Dean and Director of Women in Engineering. Dr. Brown has also held positions at the University of Colorado at Boulder and at Ecole Normale Supérieure des Télécommunications (Télécom Paris) in Paris, France. She received her B.A. in Mathematics from Wellesley College, S.M. in Electrical Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Ph.D. in Computer Science also from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Prof. Brown has done research in the areas of VLSI layout, combinatorial algorithms, and parallel and distributed algorithms and architecture. Her current research focuses on the use of web-based technology in education. She is director and co-developer of Mallard^TM, an asynchronous learning environment on the World Wide Web.

Prof. Brown received the 1999 University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Campus Award for Innovation in Undergraduate Instruction Using Educational Technologies and is also the recipient of the 1999 IEEE Major Educational Innovation Award.