Robert Brunner is the associate dean for innovation and chief disruption officer at Gies College of Business. He joined the College in 2017 and also serves as professor of accounting and Arthur Andersen fellow. Brunner previously worked in the University of Illinois' School of Information Science, Department of Astronomy, and the National Center for Supercomputing Applications. He currently holds affiliate appointments in the Departments of Computer Science, Electrical and Computer Engineering, Physics, and Statistics, as well as the Beckman Institute and the National Center for Supercomputing Applications. He holds a bachelor's in physics from Purdue University, a PhD in astrophysics from the Johns Hopkins University, and did postdoctoral work at the California Institute of Technology.