As an undergraduate student, he attended University of Bradford to study chemistry where he obtained his bachelor's degree with first class honours, and was awarded the Griffin and George Prize for being the most outstanding graduate.
[5][4] After these post-doctoral stints, he was appointed as a Lecturer at the University of Edinburgh where he was subsequently promoted to the rank of Reader and then to Professor.
[5][4][6][7] In 2014, he was elected as the President of the Chemical Biology Interface Division of the Royal Society of Chemistry for a term of three years.
[15][16] In collaboration with AstraZeneca, they invented Scorpion Primers system, a fluorescence-based real-time PCR method that can identify mutations and Single-nucleotide polymorphism in human genome.
[25][26][27] Most recently, his group is focusing on the Click chemistry based chemical modification of DNA and its application in bionanotechnology sector.
[37][38] In 2004, Brown co-founded (along with two of his University of Southampton colleagues) Primerdesign, a company which designs and manufactures products for quantitative Real-time polymerase chain reaction.