Pat Brown is an American scientist, businessman, and founder of Impossible Foods Inc. and. He is also professor emeritus at Stanford University, the co – founder of the Public Library of Science, inventor of the DNA microarray, and a former investigator at Howard Hughes Medical Institute.

In 1985, Brown and colleagues at UCSF defined the mechanism by which retroviruses, such as the AIDS virus, integrate their genes into the genome of the cells they infect, which helped lead to the development of new drugs to fight the disease.

When creating Impossible Foods, Pat Brown’s lab used science to understand what makes meat, dairy, and fish taste, smell, and feel the way they do, and sensory tests to understand what people love most. They studied proteins, textures, and flavors at a molecular level to find plant ingredients that behave the same way. One of their important first key discoveries was that heme – a molecule found in all plants and animals – is the magic ingredient that makes meat taste “like meat.”

He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the Institute of Medicine and recipient of the American Cancer Society Medal of Honor.

Brown received his BA, MD and PhD at the University of Chicago. His PhD involved the study of DNA topoisomerases.