A robust adaptive neural observer design is proposed for a class of parabolic partial differential equation (PDE) systems with unknown nonlinearities and bounded disturbances. The modal decomposition technique is initially applied to the PDE system to formulate it as an infinite-dimensional singular perturbation model of ordinary differential equations (ODEs). By singular perturbations, an approximate nonlinear ODE system that captures the dominant (slow) dynamics of the PDE system is thus derived. A neural modal observer is subsequently constructed on the basis of the slow system for its state estimation. A linear matrix inequality (LMI) approach to the design of robust adaptive neural modal observers is developed such that the state estimation error of the slow system is uniformly ultimately bounded (UUB) with an ultimate bound. Furthermore, using the existing LMI optimization technique, a suboptimal robust adaptive neural modal observer can be obtained in the sense of minimizing an upper bound of the peak gains in the ultimate bound. In addition, using two-time-scale property of the singularly perturbed model, it is shown that the resulting state estimation error of the actual PDE system is UUB. Finally, the proposed method is applied to the estimation of temperature profile for a catalytic rod. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.