Eller College Innovator Awarded the Thomas R. Brown Chair in Management and Technology

TUCSON, Ariz. –  March 25, 2013 – Hsinchun Chen, a professor of MIS at the UA Eller College of  Management, has been named the new holder of the Thomas R. Brown Chair in  Management and Technology.

The chair is  awarded to those whose professional accomplishments mirror those of its  namesake, MIT and Harvard alumnus Thomas R. Brown, who co-founded Burr-Brown  Research Corporation in Tucson in 1956, and headed it until his retirement in  1998. Burr Brown was a manufacturer of precision electronic equipment and was  acquired by Texas Instruments in 2000.

Chen, an imminent  scholar in data mining and informatics, is director of the Artificial  Intelligence Laboratory at the Eller College. It is through his lab that he  developed the Dark Web project to track terrorism online, as well as the  crime-fighting product COPLINK®, which allows law enforcement agencies to draw  information from multiple databases and identify associations between crimes.  The latter technology formed the basis of a spinoff company, Knowledge Computing  Corporation, which has gone on to be a Tucson success story. The firm merged  with crime analytics company i2 before being purchased by IBM Corporation. Chen  is also founder of Caduceus Intelligence Corporation, a UA  spinoff company in healthcare information systems.

The Brown Chair was  awarded to Chen following a rigorous internal nomination process helmed by  senior Eller faculty. “It was clear that the chair should be awarded to an  outstanding faculty member who is not only firing on all cylinders of academe,  but also an innovator who is turning ideas into real impact,” said Len Jessup,  dean of the Eller College. “Dr. Chen’s work does just that.”

Sarah  Smallhouse, president of the Brown Foundations, added, “Dr. Chen’s innovations  will surely benefit mankind in important ways, and there is no doubt in my mind  that were my father alive today, he would be honored to be associated with this  creative work. The Brown Foundation trustees are most pleased Dr. Chen has been  chosen to carry on the legacy of Tom Brown and Burr-Brown. He is a fantastic  example of how an academic researcher can move new ideas from their laboratory  into practice.”