Inducted in 2025 for redefining the future of food by integrating cutting-edge technology and sustainability to solve grand challenges.
Ethan Brown is the founder and chief executive officer of Beyond Meat, a company dedicated to creating meat products from plants. The company’s flagship product, the Beyond Burger, revolutionized the meat aisle by being the first plant-based burger sold in the meat case alongside beef at major grocery chains from Walmart to Whole Foods Market. Beyond Meat has also partnered with leading restaurant chains including McDonald’s, which continues to sell the company’s products in various European countries.
One of Beyond Meat’s key innovations lies in its deeply scientific approach to building meat directly from plants. By deconstructing meat into its essential components—amino acids, lipids, carbohydrates, minerals, and water—and rebuilding them using plant-based ingredients, Beyond Meat delivers significant health benefits to the consumer while reducing greenhouse gases by 90 percent, and land and water use each by 97 percent, compared to compared to a conventional beef burger.
Before founding Beyond Meat, Brown worked in the clean energy sector, including in the public sector on restructuring of the nation’s electric grid to support renewable power, before joining the world’s leading proton exchange membrane fuel cell developer, Ballard Power Systems, rising to report directly to the Company’s CEO. Though passionate about clean energy, Brown returned to a childhood spent visiting his family’s farm in Garrett County, Maryland, and began to see a larger opportunity to impact climate change by bringing innovation to agriculture. He began to focus on how a change in meat production—producing it directly from plants versus feeding plants to animals—could simultaneously address human health, climate, natural resource, and animal welfare challenges.
Launched in 1985, IHOF recognizes metamorphic innovations achieved by UMD alums, faculty, and members of the UMD community. Past recipients have included Glenn L. Martin ’51 (posthumously inducted in 1987), George J. Laurer ’51, Robert Briskman M.S. ’61, Angel P. Bezos ’69, Emilio A. Fernandez ’69, Jeong H. Kim Ph.D. ’91, Naomi Ehrich Leonard Ph.D. ’94, and Robert E. Fischell ’54, Sc.D. (honorary) ’96.