Robert Brunner

Biography

Robert Brunner is the Chief Disruption Officer at the Gies College of Business at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, where he is also a Professor of Accounting, holds an Arthur Andersen Fellowship, and is a University of Illinois-Deloitte Foundation Center Scholar. Since joining Gies in 2017, he has helped guide efforts to incorporate emerging technologies into business education and operations, including founding the Disruption Lab (dLab), leading development of iBlock (the first business school blockchain), and organizing blockchain summits featuring industry leaders such as Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin. He currently holds affiliate positions in Computer Science, Electrical and Computer Engineering, Physics, and Statistics, as well as at the Beckman Institute and NCSA. His current research investigates how financial information flows through markets and shapes market structure, applying methods from generative AI, deep learning, network science, and information theory. His AY26 work as a Center Scholar produced The Data Scoop, a four-case instructional series demonstrating how generative AI can democratize data analytics education. Brunner holds a bachelor’s degree in physics from Purdue University and a Ph.D. in astrophysics from the Johns Hopkins University. He completed postdoctoral research at the California Institute of Technology.