Professor Browning is the Chair of Electron Microscopy in the Schools of Engineering and Physical Sciences at the University of Liverpool.
He received his undergraduate degree in Physics from the University of Reading (1988) and his PhD in Physics from the University of Cambridge (1991).
He has held positions at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (1992-1995), Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (2003-2006), Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (2006-2011) and most recently was Laboratory Fellow and Chemical Imaging Initiative Lead at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (2011-2017). He was also Assistant/Associate Professor of Physics at the University of Illinois - Chicago (1996-2002) and Professor of Materials Science (2003-2011) and Molecular Biology (2009-2011) at the University of California-Davis.
He is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the Microscopy Society of America (MSA).
He received the Burton Award from the MSA in 2002 and the Coble Award from the American Ceramic Society in 2003 for the development of atomic resolution methods in scanning transmission electron microscopy.
With his collaborators, he also received R&D 100 and Nano 50 Awards in 2008, and a Microscopy Today Innovation Award in 2010 for the development of the DTEM.
He has over 380 publications (h-index=84) and has given over 300 invited presentations in advanced electron microscopy.