Michael Sheetz

Michael Patrick Sheetz was a cell biologist at Columbia University, and a Distinguished Professor and the founding Director of the Mechanobiology Institute at the National University of Singapore. He pioneered mechanobiology and biomechanics. In May 2019, Sheetz joined the University of Texas Medical Branch, Galveston, as a tenured Professor, in the department of biochemistry and molecular biology where he holds the Robert A. Welch Distinguished University Chair in Chemistry.

In 1968, Sheetz earned a bachelor's degree at Albion College, and in 1972 received his Ph.D. from the California Institute of Technology. In 1985, he became a professor of cell biology and physiology at the Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri. In 1990, he was appointed as a William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of Cell Biology at Columbia University, New York. He has also been a professor at Duke University.