Professor Brooks is a Professor in the School of Engineering. Since completing his PhD in 1994, Professor Brooks has been an Senior Lecturer at the University of Wollongong (1993-2000), an Associate Professor at McMaster University (2000-2004), a Senior Princpal Research Scientist at CSIRO (2004-2006) and a Professor at Swinburne since 2006.

Since joining Swinburne, Professor Brooks has been the Associate Dean of Research, Head of Mathematics at Swinburne and Pro-Vice Chancellor (Future Manufacturing). He currenty co-ordinates research for Extra Terrestrial processing at the University and a Program Leader in the ARC Steel Innovation Hub. He has also been active in recent years working with Physicists on Dark Matter detection research. Professor Brooks has published over 250 papers on fundamental aspects of steelmaking, aluminium production and materials processing in general. He has won significant international awards  from the TMS, AIST, ASM and IOM3 for his contribution to metallurgical processing. Professor Brooks is a Fellow of the Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining (UK).