Masters

Welcome to Brown College.

We are Laura and Steve Cox, the Masters of Brown College, and we look forward to personally welcoming you to Rice University and into the Brown family. We live in Brown house, situated in the lovely green space between the tower and the commons. We are here, day and night, to help you get the most from your time at Rice - to help you formulate and realize your goals in any and all directions; academics, public service, athletics, tattoo placement, etc. We are here to share meals, laughs, problems and solutions.

We have been at Rice since 1988. He is a professor of Computational and Applied Mathematics and she is a preschool teacher. Besides kids, Laura enjoys her 11 siblings, cooking, gardening, beading and entertaining. Besides Laura, Steve enjoys poetry, opera, racquetball and his bicycle. Laura grew up in East Troy Wisconsin on a farm outside of Milwaukee. Steve's nomadic parents finally parked their caravan in suburban Chicago when he was 9. We met as undergraduates in 1980 in Milwaukee and have been married since 1982. Steve's research foci are computational neuroscience - building models of neurons, circuits and brains as a means to designing better experiments that teach us more about the brain, and inverse spectral theory - determining the composition of an elastic body from knowledge of its resonant frequencies. Our own kids, Colin (24), and Simon (21), though on their own, will still (we hope) be round on occasion.

Our Brown family has 4 other chronological adults, Nancy our Coordinator, and our resident associates, Jenny, Joe, Baby James, and Glenn. We all work, live and hang at Brown for the same reason. Though we are here to help, Rice is wise enough to let students organize student activities and fortunate that incredible students step up to organize and lead. You'll see this first hand as Brown's UFOWeek coordinators, Mary, Chris and Peter, orient you in previously unidentified directions.

In anticipation of an exciting year we offer you our best regards. 

Laura and Steve Cox