Dr. Alan J. Brown, CAPT, USN (Ret.)

Award: Harold E. Saunders Award - Lifetime Achievement
Year: 2021
Recipient: Dr. Alan J. Brown, CAPT, USN (Ret.)
Reason:for his significant contribution to naval engineering as set forth in the following  

CITATION:

During Dr. Alan Jeffrey Brown’s career of 40 years and counting, he has earned broad acclaim as a world renown Naval Engineering expert contributing to a wide variety of topics in over 65 technical publications. Dr. Brown, Captain USN (Ret.) has literally written the book on “Ship and Marine Engineering System Concept Design.” Dr. Brown was a regular technical delegate representing United States with US Coast Guard at the International Maritime Organization (IMO). He has testified before Coast Guard and Maritime Transportation Subcommittee, US House of Representatives, as US expert in collision, grounding, oil spill prediction and safety of double hull tankers.

Dr. Brown has pioneered a new and critical area of naval engineering research in developing advanced multi-objective analytical and statistical optimization methods for rigorously exploring the entire design solution space. He has also provided exemplary technical leadership in successfully introducing a number of other compelling methodologies. Dr. Brown’s leading-edge research and development results have profoundly affected not only the way important technical decisions are made but also the way naval ships are designed. His original work is documented in a number of ASNE and SNAME technical papers.

Equally important is Dr. Brown’s strong leadership in developing the next generation of Naval Engineers. Dr. Brown served as Captain in the U.S. Navy Engineering Duty Officer community focusing on ship operations, maintenance, repair, salvage, oil spill response, design, construction, ship systems research and development assignments with U.S. Navy ships, fleet staff, shipyards, NAVSEA, and OPNAV. Dr. Brown refined these experiences into his lecture courses and informed his research at MIT and Virginia Tech. He restructured the Virginia Tech undergraduate ship design course, which is now the only undergraduate program in the country, with the exception of the Naval Academy, that teaches warship design, and with the support of the Navy, he has introduced submarine design. Under his visionary leadership, Dr. Brown has pulled together the Virginia Tech Ocean Engineering ship design research, teaching and service activities into a powerful, productive program that is receiving acclaim throughout the international naval engineering community. Over a naval and academic career spanning 40 years, Dr. Brown has become, without question, a world-leading expert on the military effectiveness and affordability of warship designs using multi-objective optimization techniques and crashworthiness and damage assessment probabilistic methods.

The American Society of Naval Engineers is proud to name Dr. Alan J. Brown, Captain USN (Ret.) the recipient of the 2021 Harold E. Saunders (Lifetime Achievement) Award.