He received his BA in 1992 from Yale and his PhD from Harvard in 1996 under the supervision of Joseph Harris. From 1996 to 2000 he worked as a Dickson Instructor at the University of Chicago; for part of this time he was supported by a National Science Foundation Postdoctoral Research Fellowship. He was a faculty member at Rice University from 2000 to 2015 and chaired its mathematics department from 2009 to 2014. He has held visiting positions at the Mittag Leffler Institute in Stockholm, the Chinese University of Hong Kong, and the University of Paris (Orsay).

Brendan’s research focus is algebraic geometry. He enjoys geometric questions inspired from number theory, problems natural from an arithmetic perspective but with surprising geometric implications. He also likes classification problems involving a wide range of techniques, from the classical theory of algebraic curves through Hodge theory and birational geometry.

Brendan has written more than 60 research papers and has authored or co-edited seven books. His work has been recognized with a Sloan Research Fellowship, a National Science Foundation CAREER award, and the Charles W. Duncan Award for Outstanding Faculty at Rice. He is a Fellow of the American Mathematical Society. Brendan has co-organized numerous conferences and workshops, including the 2006 Clay Summer School in Arithmetic Geometry, the Spring 2009 program in Algebraic Geometry at MSRI, and the 2015 AMS Summer Institute in Algebraic Geometry. Since 2016, he has been Director of the Institute for Computational and Experimental Research in Mathematics at Brown University.