Michael Sheetz, PhD, who served as the inaugural chair of the Department of Cell Biology at Duke University School of Medicine, died on January 20, 2025, after a brave battle with multiple myeloma.
Sheetz was chair of the department from 1990 to 2000. During his decade-long tenure, he made significant contributions to the field of cell biology, fostering a culture of innovation and excellence.
Sheetz was born in Hershey, Pennsylvania, in 1946. He earned his PhD at the California Institute of Technology and pursued a post-doctoral fellowship at University of California San Diego. His early work remains highly cited. He held positions at UConn Health Center in Farmington, Connecticut, and Washington University in St. Louis. Following his career at Duke, he held a professorship in Biological Sciences at Columbia University. Later, he was recruited by the National University of Singapore to be the founding director of the Mechanobiology Institute, which he led for 10 years.
Sheetz’s professional passion was science, and he was an original and highly productive scholar. He was best known for having discovered kinesin, for which he won the Lasker, Wiley, and Massry Prizes. He recently received a $6 million grant from the State of Texas Cancer Prevention and Research Foundation to study how the loss of rigidity sensors he discovered enable cancer cell growth.