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Originally from the Chicago area, Matthew Brown spent summers visiting grandparents in rural Illinois, and hiking in local nature preserves. His family frequently camped on vacations, and he was very active in Scouting, reaching the rank of Eagle Scout in 1998. This time spent in nature led to a hobby collecting skeletons of animals that he found in the woods and in farm fields, which led to a volunteer opportunity working for in a paleontology lab at the University of Chicago. 

This volunteer position quickly turned into a paid preparation job in the Sereno lab, where he worked on the holotype material of the dinosaurs Suchomimus, Aerosteon, Jobaria, Nigersaurus, and the "SuperCroc," Sarcosuchus. In 1999, Brown moved up Lake Shore Drive to The Field Museum to work on the Tyrannosaurus rex SUE , and seven years later, after a stint at Disney's Animal Kingdom Theme Park managing the Field's remote preparation lab, he moved to the National Park Service and Petrified Forest National Park. During his three years at Petrified Forest, he ran the preparation lab, designed and installed exhibits, and took part in paleontology, biology, and archeology field work. 

Brown joined the University of Texas paleontology team as Laboratory Manager in 2009, and began by building state of the art fossil preparation and histology facilities centered around research and teaching. He designed an innovative course in paleontology laboratory methods that integrates museum theory, conservation philosophy, emerging technologies, and hands-on training to standardize methodological instruction. In spring of 2014, Brown took on the role of supervising all of the Texas Vertebrate Paleontology labs and collections.

His primary research goal is to develop a more thorough understanding of how past and future treatments affect specimens as sources of data, and the impact these treatments have on the science of paleontology. This approach examines how historic and current practices in the field, laboratory, and collections interplay, and how the scientific community interprets these results in the literature. He also studies how such events foster an evolution of best practices, policy, and law, and he advocates for fossils on public lands.

Brown served as the first Society of Vertebrate Paleontology Preparators Professional Development Subcommittee Chair, and in 2008, he organized the first Fossil Preparation and Collections Symposium at Petrified Forest, and steered the annual meetings for 10 years as they eventually morphed into the new Association of Materials and Methods in Paleontology. Brown also serves as the Society for the Preservation of Natural History Collections Representative to SVP, previously chaired the SPNHC Federal Collections Committee, and cosponsored creation of the SVP Collections and Repository Committee. In 2011 he was awarded the SVP Preparators Grant and used the funds to develop the Essential Competencies for the Vertebrate Fossil Preparator.