Jeffrey Brock, PhD

Dean Jeff Brock was recruited to Yale in July 2018 to assume the role of dean of science in the Faculty of Arts and Science (FAS). In this capacity, he oversees the day-to-day activities and mid- and long-term planning of the departments of: applied physics, astronomy, chemistry, geology and geophysics, mathematics, and physics; as well as ecology and evolutionary biology, molecular biophysics and biochemistry, and molecular, cellular and developmental biology.

In August 2019, Jeff was appointed to the additional role of dean of the School of Engineering & Applied Science (SEAS). From this unique position, serving simultaneously as the dean of engineering and the dean of science, Jeff leads strategic thinking bridging these multidisciplinary areas of research and teaching.

Prior to Yale, Jeff held several leadership roles at Brown University. He was a founding deputy director of the Institute for Computational and Experimental Research in Mathematics and established the campus-wide Data Science Initiative. Additionally, he was chair of the department of mathematics.

Jeff earned his undergraduate degree from Yale in 1992 and his Ph.D. in mathematics from UC Berkeley in 1997. He then held postdoctoral positions at both Stanford University and the University of Chicago. An elected fellow of the American Mathematical Society, Jeff’s research focuses on spaces with negatively curved, or “hyperbolic” geometry. His foundational work led to the geometric classification of objects called hyperbolic 3-manifolds. Recently, Dean Brock’s research has focused on connections between hyperbolic geometry and theoretical physics, leading to the idea of a geometric evolution of 3-manifolds reminiscent of heat flow, and on the notion of a topology and geometry, or shape of complex and high dimensional data sets.

Jeff resides locally with his wife, Sarah Cussler ’92, and their three children. An accomplished musician, he was the founding jazz bassist for the Vijay Iyer Trio, and a member of the Whiffenpoofs while in college at Yale.