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Computer scientist, engineer and inventor Dr. Mark Dean has left his mark in the computing world by being part of a number of key developments. Among Dr. Dean’s accomplishments, helping create the PC monitor and creating ports for peripheral devices are notable. Born in Jefferson City, Tenn. on March 7, 1957, Dean was a gifted student-athlete who later excelled at the University of Tennessee.

Graduating at the top of his engineering class in 1979 with a degree in electrical engineering, he went to work for IBM shortly after. One of Dean’s early projects was working alongside fellow engineer Dennis Moeller on the Industry Standards Architecture (ISA) systems bus, which would allow users to plug printers, disk drives and other devices in standalone desktop machines.

Dean also worked on the development of the color PC monitor, and led a groundbreaking team of researchers in 1999 to develop the world’s first gigahertz processing chip. The new chip revolutionized computing, giving way to the fast machines that we currently use today. Dean currently holds three original patents with IBM and is associated with 20 patents overall.

Along with his degree from the University of Tennessee, Dean also holds a master’s from Florida Atlantic University and a Ph.D from Stanford University, all in electrical engineering. In 1996, Dean was named an IBM Fellow, the first African-American bestowed with the honor. In 1997, he was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame and won the Black Engineer of The Year President’s Award. Dean is now the John Fisher Distinguished Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the University of Tennessee. Dean was also a computer science professor at Harvard.

 

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