Biologist Matthew Brown honored with MSU’s highest research award
STARKVILLE, Miss.—Mississippi State University Professor Matthew Brown, the Donald L. Hall Professor of Biology, has received the university’s 2025 Ralph E. Powe Research Excellence Award, MSU’s top honor for research achievement.
The Powe Award, established in memory of the late MSU alumnus and longtime research vice president Ralph E. Powe, recognizes one faculty member each year whose contributions exemplify the university’s commitment to impactful, original research.
A leading figure in evolutionary biology, Brown is internationally recognized for his work exploring the origins of multicellularity and comparative genomics. He has published more than 70 peer-reviewed papers with nearly 9,000 citations, secured more than $3.4 million in research funding and served as president of the International Society of Protistologists.
“I’m truly honored to receive the Ralph E. Powe Research Award and deeply grateful for the continued support of the College of Arts and Sciences and the Department of Biological Sciences,” said Brown. “My research could be considered rather niche, so having such recognition is gratifying.”
Brown’s research focuses on protists—single-celled eukaryotes that are neither animals, plants, nor fungi. While the study of protists remains one of the most underexplored areas of biology, Brown said their diversity and complexity make them vital to understanding life on Earth.
“The broader world of eukaryotic microbes is vast and still largely mysterious,” Brown said. “We get to explore life forms that most people don’t even realize exist, yet they represent the majority of eukaryotic diversity on Earth.”
In his MSU laboratory, Brown and his team study how microorganisms fit into the tree of life and how complex organisms evolved from microbial ancestors. Their work often focuses on amoeboid organisms, which display surprisingly complex behaviors.
“Some of these amoebas can even come together to form multicellular structures, blurring the lines between single-celled and multicellular life,” he said.
Brown traces his passion for biology to his undergraduate years at the University of Arkansas, when an introductory course sparked an unexpected fascination with microbial behavior.
“What initially drew me to science wasn’t genetics or evolution—it was behavior,” he said. “Learning that these invisible organisms could behave, cooperate and organize was mind-blowing. That curiosity has guided my career ever since.”
His research now combines microscopy, genomics, bioinformatics and evolutionary biology to study how life evolved across billions of years. “Receiving this award is incredibly validating because it recognizes the unique, interdisciplinary nature of our work,” Brown said. “Our diversity of skills has helped us build strong international collaborations and bring attention to a part of biology that is both ancient and surprisingly relevant today.”
This month, Brown received a grant of more than $800,000 from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, in collaboration with Texas Tech University, to expand and sustain PhyloFisher, a community-driven software suite that provides a transparent framework for constructing large-scale phylogenomic datasets. The Brown Lab will receive $436,427 to help expand the software’s reach to study a wider variety of life forms across the tree of life and host training workshops that promote collaboration and skill-building among evolutionary biologists worldwide. The collaboration is co-led by Alexander K. Tice, a former graduate student of Browns who now is an assistant professor at Texas Tech.
Last year, Brown’s research was published in the prestigious journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. His study investigated the fossil record of microbial eukaryotes, specifically testate amoebae that lived roughly 750 million years ago. His findings may help scientists understand Earth’s evolutionary past and potentially inform predictions about the planet’s ecological future.
In 2021, Brown received a National Science Foundation grant exceeding $1 million to explore the evolutionary history of the Amoebozoa lineage, one of the oldest branches of the eukaryotic tree.
Since joining MSU in 2013, Brown has earned multiple honors for his contributions to science. He was named the 2018 College of Arts and Sciences Dean’s Eminent Scholar, the college’s top faculty award for scholarship, and is a Fellow of MSU’s Institute for Genomics, Biocomputing and Biotechnology.
For more details about Brown’s research, visit www.amoeba.msstate.edu.
For more information about MSU’s College of Arts and Sciences and the Department of Biological Sciences, visit www.cas.msstate.edu and www.biology.msstate.edu.
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