Brian Aull is from Indianapolis, Indiana. Raised in the Roman Catholic faith, he attended St. Andrew the Apostle Catholic school and Brebeuf Jesuit Preparatory School. He then studied electrical engineering at Purdue University and at MIT, earning his Ph.D. in 1985. He lives in Cambridge MA and works as a staff scientist at MIT developing solid-state image sensors.

Brian became a Bahá’í in 1981 after a personal search to reconcile the world’s religious systems, integrate spirituality with a scientific world view, and understand how the spiritual and moral development of the individual relates to the progress of society.

In 1985, he became active in efforts to present The Promise of World Peace to leaders. The presentations to members of the Cambridge City Council lead to the Council’s passage of a resolution warmly praising the statement as a valuable resource for peace work. In 1986, he presented the statement to the Cambridge Peace Commission, a city government department dedicated to preventing nuclear war through local peace education initiatives. He was invited to become a member of the Commission’s volunteer board and later chaired it. In this context, and later as a board member of the Coalition for a Strong United Nations, Brian had become immersed in “the prevalent discourses of society,” long before this phrase came into common use in the Bahá’í community. In many conversations with peace and justice activists, he worked to understand more deeply and explain more clearly Bahá’í teachings about social change, governance, and a consultative approach to decision making.

Brian’s recent book, The Triad, grew out of this experience and his reflections on the contrast between Bahá’í concepts of civic life and the political practices of American society at large.