Presidential Scholars Program

Dr. Brenda Rubenstein is currently an Associate Professor of Chemistry and Physics at Brown University. She is also a graduate trainer in the Molecular Biology, Cell Biology, and Biochemistry (MCB) Department and Computational Biology Program. While the focus of her work is on developing new electronic structure methods, she is also deeply engaged in rethinking computing architectures and computational biophysics. She is furthermore deeply committed to educational equity and is known for her research mentoring, teaching, equity, and outreach efforts.

Prior to arriving at Brown, Prof. Rubenstein was a Lawrence Distinguished Postdoctoral Fellow at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. She received her Sc.B.s in Chemical Physics and Applied Mathematics at Brown University, her M.Phil. in Computational Chemistry while a Churchill Scholar at the University of Cambridge, and her Ph.D. in Chemical Physics at Columbia University.

Prof. Rubenstein has been a lifelong advocate of educational equity and diversity. As a kid, she grew up in a working/lower middle class suburb of New York City with no emphasis on education and negligibly few with college degrees. She is here because of luck and the dedication of a few exceptional teachers who took a few moments to suggest some risky, but potentially life-transforming paths. She strongly believes in paying the confidence they put in her back to others.

In her spare time, Prof. Rubenstein is an avid outdoorswoman and athlete who is proud of her encyclopaedic knowledge of basketball and rap. But, usually, she is found reading some paper about something that hasn’t become a reality yet or singing Greatest Hits from the Cars at her son, Orion's, suggestion.