Michael W. Deem

Michael William Deem is an American engineer, scientist, inventor, and entrepreneur. He is known for his work in biochemical and genetic engineering, and for his contributions to parallel tempering methods in computational science.

Education Deem received a Bachelor of Science degree with a major in chemical engineering from the California Institute of Technology in 1991 and a Doctor of Philosophy degree in chemical engineering from the University of California, Berkeley in 1994. His doctoral thesis research was titled Field-theoretic treatment of disordered systems, He served as the founding director of Rice’s graduate program in systems, synthetic, and physical biology (2012–2014) and as chair of the bioengineering department (2014–2017).

He has been elected Fellow of the American Physical Society, the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the Biomedical Engineering Society. Deem has received several awards, including a National Science Foundation CAREER Award (1997), recognition as a Top 100 Young Innovator by the MIT Technology Review (1999), an Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship (2000), the Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award (2002), the Allan P. Colburn Award of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (2004), the Professional Progress Award of AIChE (2010), the Edith and Peter O'Donnell Award from the TAMEST, a visiting scholar appointment with Phi Beta Kappa (2012–2013), The experiment caused "global outrage", and He Jiankui was imprisoned for his role. In November 2018, Rice University announced a full investigation into Deem's involvement in the CRISPR'd baby project. During the investigation, Rice discovered Deem had applied for funding from a "foreign talent program", but failed to disclose it to the university. The results of the investigation are unknown. According to Benjamin Hurlbut, who received access to some records relating to the trial, Deem was "unambiguously" involved, but Hurlbut was unsure whether Deem violated federal ethics law. Deem resigned from Rice University in summer 2020.

Selected publications