Brian Haynes obtained his BE and PhD in Chemical Engineering at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia. In the early stages of his career, he worked with some of the luminaries of the combustion field, including Professors Bob Bilger (Sydney), Heinz Georg Wagner (Göttingen), and Adel Sarofim (MIT). He has studied the fundamentals of a wide range of combustion problems including NOx formation, sulfur chemistry in flames, soot formation, ash behaviour, and carbon oxidation and gasification.

        Since 1983, Brian Haynes has been a member of the Department of Chemical Engineering at the University of Sydney where he holds a Personal Chair in Combustion. His current research interests include chemical kinetics of sulphur species in combustion, combustion of treated wood, catalytic combustion, and combustion and heat transfer in microchannels. He also studies the application of microstructured systems to the creation of miniaturised chemical plant.

       He has been a member of the Combustion Institute since 1972 and is currently President of the Institute (2004-2008). He is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering, a Fellow of the Institution of Chemical Engineers, and a Fellow of the Institution of Engineers (Australia).