Mark Dean

Mark Dean was born in Jefferson City Tennessee and displayed a natural liking and understanding for technology and invention at a young age. Dean and his dad once constructed a tractor from scratch.

Dean holds both a master’s and bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering. He is both an inventor and computer engineer, and was part of a team that developed the ISA bus. He led a design team for making a one gigahertz computer processor chip.

Dean holds three patents, a licence justifying ownership on an invention, for being the co-creator of the IBM personal computer released in 1981. He is the first African-American to become an IBM Fellow, which is the highest level of technical excellence at the company.

In 1997, he was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame — think the Hollywood’s walk of fame but for engineers and inventors!

Currently, he is the interim dean of the Tickle College of Engineering and is the John Fisher Distinguished Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the University of Tennessee.