He received his Ph.D. in 1993, again under Lamb's direction, who said that Brand worked 18 hours a day for nine months to complete his research and dissertation. In 1995 Brand left Spyglass. Continuing his fascination with space, for a while he worked for NASA leading the team that designed the computer data format used by NASA's Earth Observing System. He founded a new company, Fortner Research in Sterling, Va., which is dedicated to data visualization analysis technology and programming language technology. Both Brand Fortner and Monica Fortner give credit to the University of Illinois.
Scientists achieve immortality through their contributions to the knowledge base of the species.