Dr. Chris Brown is the Director of the North Carolina Space Initiative. He is also the Director of Space Programs for the Kenan Institute for Engineering, Technology & Science and the Director of the NASA Specialized Center of Research and Training (NSCORT) in Gravitational Biology, both at NC State University. He also serves as a Senior Scientist for the Biological Sciences Branch at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

Dr. Brown received a B.S. in Botany (1981) from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and his M.S. in Horticulture (1984) and Ph.D. in Botany (1987) from NC State University. Following this, he was a Food for the 21st Century postdoctoral fellow in the Biochemistry Department at the University of Missouri-Columbia.

In 1989, Dr. Brown joined the NASA Kennedy Space Center Life Science Support Contract and established the Space Biology Laboratory program and facilities at the KSC. While there, he established research efforts to elucidate the response of plants to the spaceflight environment. His performed studies on unique lighting and nutrient delivery systems for space and investigated plant metabolism using ground-based models for microgravity such as clinorotation and centrifugation. He was the PI or Co-I on six spaceflight experiments with plants on the Space Shuttle. Dr. Brown has over 60 publications on topics in gravitational and space biology, development of technology for spaceflight, and plant physiology. He has been invited to present scientific lectures and seminars at numerous national and international settings. His current research interests include the development of viable bioregenerative life support systems for long-term space missions.

In 1996, Dr. Brown worked with colleagues at NC State University, Wake Forest University, Baruch College (NY), Dynamac Corporation and NASA to establish the NASA Specialized Center of Research and Training (NSCORT) in Gravitational Biology, where he has served as Director since 2000. In the last five years, members of the NSCORT have published more that 170 articles and abstracts and interacted with over 5,000 teachers, students and members of the general public in formal and informal educational settings to promote scientific interest and literacy.

As a Visiting Associate Professor of Botany in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at NC State University, Dr. Brown teaches an on-campus and distance education course in Space Biology. He is the plant biology discipline scientist for a web-based teaching resource for college level Space Biology courses and is developing his own CD and web-based teaching materials. Dr. Brown has been a participant in the Space Life Sciences Training Program at the Kennedy Space Center since 1989. He has been invited to present numerous educational lectures and seminars to groups ranging from schoolchildren to the NASA Senior Managers at Headquarters and the Kennedy Space Center. Dr. Brown serves on the governing board for the American Society for Gravitational and Space Biology, is a Fellow of the NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts and is an active member in several scientific societies.