On May 9, 2011 Dr. Michael A. Savageau, Distinguished Professor of Biomedical Engineering, received an honorary Ph.D. from the University of Lleida, in Spain. Dr. Savageau is a pioneer in what is now known as systems biology. His work has had a major impact on the definition of this field, which combines computer science, mathematics and engineering with molecular biology, the study of evolution and synthetic biology.
Dr. Savageau holds degrees from The University of Minnesota (B.S.), The University of Iowa (M.S.), and Stanford University (Ph.D.). He was a postdoctoral fellow at both UCLA and Stanford University prior to joining the faculty at The University of Michigan. He initiated Michigan’s interdisciplinary training program in Cellular Biotechnology and its interdisciplinary Bioinformatics Program. He also chaired the Department of Microbiology and Immunology from 1992-2002 and was named the Nicolas Rashevsky Distinguished University Professor in 2002. In 2003 he moved to the University of California, Davis, where he chaired the Department of Biomedical Engineering from 2005 to 2008. Dr. Savageau is an American Association for the Advancement of Science Fellow and Member of the National Academies of Science Institute of Medicine.
His honors include Guggenheim Fellow and Fulbright Senior Research Fellow at the Max-Planck-Institut für Biophysikalische Chemie, Göttingen, Germany; Michigan Society of Fellows; Foundation for Microbiology Lecturer; Institut des Hautes Études Scientifiques Award, Bures-sur-Yvette, France; Moore Distinguished Scholar at the California Institute of Technology; 79th Josiah Willard Gibbs Lecturer for the American Mathematical Society; American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering Fellow; and Stanislaw Ulam Distinguished Scholar Award from the Center for Nonlinear Studies, Los Alamos National Laboratory. He was Editor-in-Chief of Mathematical Biosciences from 1995 to 2005, and serves on advisory panels for the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, the Keck Foundation, and the National Academies of Science.
