Professor Brooks was born in Detroit Michigan and took his early education in chemistry, physics and mathematics in rural Michigan elementary, middle and high schools. He received a Bachelor of Sciences degree from Alma College in these disciplines in 1978. While at Alma, he played football in his freshman year and midfielder on the soccer team for three years.

Remaining in the midwest, Dr Brooks pursued graduate studies at Purdue University under the direction of Professor Stephen A. Adelman. His graduate work focused on the development of non-equilibrium statistical mechanical theories for reactions on surfaces, in solids and in liquids using molecular timescale generalized Langevin (MTGLE) theory. In 1982 he received his Ph.D. in Physical Chemistry from Purdue University.

Postgraduate work at Harvard University with Professor Martin Karplus between the years of 1982 and 1985 focused on theoretical and computational biophysics. Dr Brooks was the recipient of an NIH Postdoctoral Fellowship between 1983 and 1985.

In 1985 Professor Brooks joined the Chemistry Faculty of Carnegie Mellon University. He rose through the academic ranks at CMU, being promoted to Professor of Chemistry in 1992. He received an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship in 1992 and during this period, 1992-1993, spent a sabbatical year working at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm Sweden and The Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla California. Professor Brooks moved his research group to The Scripps Research Institute in 1994. Very recently, Professor Brooks became more in touch with his roots by moving to the University of Michigan, where he holds the positions of Warner-Lambert/Parke-Davis Professor of Chemistry and Professor of Biophysics. He and his group moved to U of M in January, 2008.

Professor Brooks has received a number of honors and awards. In 1997 he was recognized for his pioneering work in computational biophysics with a Computerworld Smithsonian Award , which includes a permanent exhibit of his work in the Smithsonian Institute in Washington D.C. In 2002 he was inducted as a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of the Sciences.

Professor Brooks' service to the scientific community includes several stints on review panels for the NIH and NSF, reviewing for all of the major scientific journals, as well as founding and serving on the Steering and Oversight Committees of the La Jolla Interfaces in Sciences Interdisciplinary Training Program and the Center for Theoretical Biological Physics . He currently directs an NIH funded research resource center for Multiscale Modeling Tools in Structural Biology (MMTSB). He is an Editorial Board Member for the journals Proteins and Molecular Simulation . Since January 2004 he has been the North American Editor for the Journal of Computational Chemistry .

Professor Brooks has served or is serving as academic advisor to fifteen Ph.D. students (four are currently faculty members and three are doing postdoctoral studies) and forty-three Postdoctoral collaborators (thirteen are currently in faculty positions). He has authored or co-authored around 240 papers, including the book Proteins: A Theoretical Perspective on Dynamics, Structure and Thermodynamics , which was a collaborative effort with M. Karplus and M. Pettitt.