Emile Bruneau, research associate and lecturer at the Annenberg School for Communication, director of Annenberg’s Peace and Conflict Neuroscience Lab, and lead scientist at the Beyond Conflict Innovation Lab, died September 30 from a brain tumor. He was 47.

Dr. Bruneau was born in California. Shortly thereafter, his mother developed schizophrenia. Dr. Bruneau credits his mother for inspiring what would become one of his core professional interests: empathy. By being forced to understand his mother’s reality, he developed a strong sense of empathy at an early age, as well as a desire to understand more about the human mind. Dr. Bruneau went on to Stanford University, where he earned his degree in human biology in 1994. He spent the next seven years in the Bay Area, teaching high school and elementary school. 

He volunteered at a conflict resolution-focused camp for Catholic and Protestant boys in “The Troubles”-era Ireland. After three weeks of seeming success, an all-out brawl broke out on the last day, split along religious lines. Dr. Bruneau realized then that conflict resolution strategies lacked any scientific evidence as to what actually works. He was also in South Africa at the end of apartheid and in Sri Lanka during a Tamil Tiger attack. Seeing the darkest impulses in humanity—and how similar they seemed across cultures—led him to his life’s work: using the tools of neuroscience to bring groups of people together and building lasting peace.

Dr. Bruneau received his PhD in cellular and molecular neuroscience from the University of Michigan in 2008. While he loved looking at how brain cells change, Dr. Bruneau was drawn more to questions about how minds change. As a postdoc at MIT, he learned the tools of neuroimaging to identify brain regions associated with conflict and how different experimental interventions altered participants’ brain activity. 

In 2015, Dr. Bruneau joined the Annenberg School at Penn, first as a visiting scholar and then as a research associate and lecturer. He established the Peace and Conflict Neuroscience Lab, which has a tagline that neatly summarizes Dr. Bruneau’s professional mission: “Putting science to work for peace.” In addition to studying empathy, Dr. Bruneau’s research was concerned with metaperceptions, which concern how someone believes their enemy sees them­—beliefs that are often harsher than reality. The lab also studied dehumanization, the degree to which people view outgroups as less than fully human—a strong predictor of violence against them. He was also the lead scientist for Beyond Conflict, a global non-profit focused on reducing conflict and promoting reconciliation. 

Annenberg School Dean John L. Jackson, Jr. described Dr. Bruneau as “the most humane person I have ever met. Emile spoke with such kindness and optimism and hope about the world around him, even as his research forced him to focus on some of most intractable and violent problems that plague us as a people,” said Dean Jackson. “I found him an inspiration.”

A short film about Dr. Bruneau’s life can be found at www.asc.upenn.edu/emilefilm.

Dr. Bruneau is survived by his wife, Stephanie; and children, Clara and Atticus. 

Donations in honor of Emile Bruneau can be made to the Germantown Mutual Aid Fund or the Miquon School’s Financial Aid Fund.