Ian Brown is a Senior Physicist at the Lawrence Berkeley national Laboratory, Berkeley, California. His research interests include the development of plasma and ion sources and their application for materials synthesis and modification. In 1984 he established the Plasma Applications Group at the Berkeley Laboratory and was Group Leader there until his retirement in 2001. He maintains an interest in ongoing research and is actively involved in a number of collaborative research programs; his work on vacuum arc ion sources and materials surface modification has won several awards.