Joseph S. Brown is an Assistant Professor at the Leslie Dan Faculty of Pharmacy and Faculty Advisor to the Medicinal Chemistry Self-Driving Lab (MedChem SDL) at the University of Toronto. Before his faculty appointment, he was a PhRMA Foundation Drug Discovery Postdoctoral Fellow at MIT with Bradley Pentelute, specializing in combining machine learning with AS-MS to identify high-affinity ligands from diverse peptide and abiotic libraries. He earned his PhD in Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering from Cornell University with Christopher Alabi as a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow.

Grants

• Accelerate Faculty Start Up Funding Award — Acceleration Consortium (Canada First Research Excellence Fund, CFREF), 2025–2030 (PI)
• "In silico Directed Evolution for Biodiscovery of Cardiovascular Peptide Therapeutics" — Acceleration Consortium (CFREF), 2025–2028 (Co-PI with PI Keith Pardee)
• "Parallel Chemical Synthesis Platform Powered by Reaction GFlowNets" — Acceleration Consortium (CFREF), 2026–2027 (Co-PI with PI Michał Koziarski)
• "Automated Discovery of Therapeutic Peptides using an AI-Guided Self-Driving Laboratory Platform" — Canada Foundation for Innovation / Ontario Research Fund (CFI/ORF) John R. Evans Leaders Fund, with Institutional Operating Fund supplement, 2026–2031 (PI)
• "From Sparse Data to Design: A Self-Driven Framework for Accelerating Peptide Design" — Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) Discovery Grant with Launch Supplement, 2026–2031 (PI)
• Start-up Funding — University of Toronto (PI)

Awards

• Co–authored Spotlight Presentation, AI for Accelerated Material Design, Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS) (2024)
• Young Investigator Best Oral Presentation Award in Session, Canadian Chemistry Conference and Exhibition (2023)
• Outstanding Oral Presentation, Gordon Research Conference on Chemistry and Biology of Peptides (2022)
• Elizabeth A. Schram Young Investigator Oral Presentation (2nd), 27th American Peptide Symposium (2022)
• MIT Chemistry Mentorship Spotlight Award (2021)
• Editor’s Collection at Organic and Biomolecular Chemistry (2020)
• Best Paper of the Year Award, Smith School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering (2019)

Students and Mentoring

University of Toronto

• Mary Calleja (Summer 2026) — LDFP USRP Student
• Jongwhi Kim (Summer 2026) — LDFP USRP Student

Acceleration Consortium (Staff Scientist)

• Justin Wong (Summer 2024) — Undergraduate Research, Acceleration Consortium; now OD Student, University of Waterloo
• Rubiana Farin (Summer 2024) — Undergraduate Research, Acceleration Consortium; now MASc Candidate, Biomedical Engineering, University of Toronto

Postdoctoral Fellowship, MIT

• Patrick Hauck (Sept 2019–Feb 2020) — MSc Thesis, MIT Chemistry; now Senior Scientist, Novartis
• Sarah Antilla^† (Jan 2020–Mar 2024) — Graduate Research, MIT Chemistry; now Scientist I, Novo Nordisk A/S
• Amanda Cowfer^† (Jan 2020–Mar 2024) — Graduate Research, MIT Chemistry; now Scientist, Snapdragon Chemistry
• Azin Saebi^† (Jan 2020–Mar 2024) — Graduate Research, MIT Chemistry; now Associate Director, Strategy and Growth, Eli Lilly
• Michael Lee^† (Oct 2020–Mar 2024) — Graduate Research, MIT Chemistry; now Senior Advisor, Protomer Technologies
• Stephanie Hanna (Fall 2020) — Graduate School Application and Manuscript, MIT Chemistry; now PhD Student, Baker Group, University of Washington
• Ridings Bald (Summer 2021) — Undergraduate Research, MIT Chemistry; now Undergraduate, Physics and CS, MIT
• Lia Lozano Salazar (Fall 2021) — Graduate School Application, MIT Chemistry; now PhD Candidate, McKinnie Lab, UC Santa Cruz
• Roman Misteli^† (Jan–Aug 2022) — Co-Supervised MSc Thesis, MIT / ETH Zurich; now PhD Student, Bernardes Lab, University of Cambridge

Graduate Fellowship, Cornell

• Andrew Cosachov (Jan 2014–Jan 2016) — Undergraduate Research, Cornell CBE '14; now Executive Director, JP Morgan Chase & Co
• Grace He^† (Jun 2015–Jun 2017) — Undergraduate Research, Cornell CBE '17; now Operations and Delivery Senior Manager, COTA
• Akash Vaidya^† (Jun 2015–Sept 2018) — Undergraduate Research, Cornell CBE '18; now PhD Candidate, Solomon Group, University of Delaware
• Vincent Rigoglioso^† (Sept 2016–Sept 2018) — Undergraduate Research, Cornell CBE '18; now Faculty Educator, Germantown, PA
• Joseph Hassler^† (Jun 2016–Sept 2018) — Undergraduate Research, Cornell CBE '18; now PhD, Hackel Group, University of Minnesota
• Nana Antwi (Jun–Dec 2018) — Undergraduate Research, Cornell CBE '20; now Data Scientist, Synopsys Inc
• Manisha Kunala (Jun–Dec 2018) — Undergraduate Research, Cornell CBE '20; now PhD Candidate, UMass Chan Medical School
• Chris Mulvaney (Jun–Dec 2018) — Undergraduate Research, Cornell CBE '20; now Process Engineer, Automation & Control Specialists

† Co-authored publication with this mentee.