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Mark Dean

Mark Dean

Professor Emeritus, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, the University of Tennessee

Education

  • B.S. 1979, Electrical Engineering, the University of Tennessee, Knoxville
  • M.S. 1982, Electrical Engineering, Florida Atlantic University
  • Ph.D. 1992, Electrical Engineering, Stanford University

While an undergraduate, Dean worked at ALCOA as a co-op student in the Minority Engineering Scholarship Program. After graduating in 1979, Dean began working as a chief engineer at IBM. As a result of his work, Dean holds three of the original nine patents on the standard IBM personal desktop computer that served as a basis for all personal computers. Additionally, Dean was the chief engineer for the development of numerous other subsystems in the original IBM PC.

In 1997, Dean was named director of the Austin Research Laboratory and director of Advanced Technology Development for the IBM Enterprise Server Group. In this capacity, Dean managed the team that developed the world’s first 1GHz CMOS microprocessor, leading to the processor in the Sony Playstation 3. In 2000, Dean became vice president for Systems Research at IBM’s Watson Research Center. Advancements developed by his research team included petaflop supercomputer systems structures (BlueGene), digital visualization, design automation tools, and memory compression.

In 2003, Dean became vice president in IBM’s Storage Technology Group and vice president for Hardware and Systems Architecture in IBM’s Systems and Technology Group. In 2004, he was appointed vice president of the IBM Almaden Research Center and senior location executive for Silicon Valley. An IBM Fellow, he retired from the company as Vice President of Technical Strategy & Worldwide Operations. In 2013, Dean returned to UT as the John Fisher Distinguished Professor in the Min H. Kao Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. While at UT, he served as the college’s interim dean from August 2018 until July 2019. He has since retired and now serves in an emeritus professor role.

In 2000, U.S. News and World Report named Dean as one of the “Innovators of the 21st Century.” His invention of the Industry Standard Architecture, which permits add-on devices such as keyboards, disk drives, and printers to a motherboard, earned him election to the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 1997. Dean was only the third African-American to receive this honor. He is an IEEE Fellow, a NSBE Distinguished Engineer, and was named the CCG Black Engineer of the Year in 1997 and 2000, respectively. He also received the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Ronald H. Brown American Innovators Award and the National Institute of Science Outstanding Scientist Award. For attaining extraordinary distinction and success in his field, Mark Dean was awarded the 2012 University of Tennessee Distinguished Alumna/Alumnus Award.

Dean, who has 40 patents or patents pending, is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the National Academy of Engineering.