BSc in Chemistry - 1993; PhD in Mineralogy and Crystallography - 1997.
Researcher with habilitation for Full Professorship at U. Pavia, Italy and Executive Outreach Officer at the International Union of Crystallography (IUCr), UK.
He was Project Manager for the International Year of Crystallography 2014. Michele Zema was awarded with Premio Panichi 2008 by the Italian Society for Mineralogy and Petrology. Elected coordinator of the Commission on Crystallographic Teaching of the Italian Crystallographic Association (AIC), he has directed and organized several international crystallography schools, including the 1st European Crystallography School in 2014 and the first two editions of the Crystallography Beyond Diffraction series, which he has founded.
He is Scientific Coordinator of the IUCr-UNESCO OpenLab, a network of crystallography schools and labs implemented in over 25 countries, and serves or has served on several other roles: Executive Committee of the AIC; IUCr Committee for the Crystallography in Africa initiative; IUCr Commission on Crystallographic Teaching; Oversight Committee for the IUCr Education and Outreach Fund; Steering Committee for the African Light Source; Executive Committee for Lightsources for Africa, the Americas and Middle East Project (LAAMP); Advisory board for the African Crystallographic Association; Organizing Committee of the Panafrican series of conferences on Crystallography.
He convened a session at the World Science Forum 2017. He acted as facilitator for the foundation of several national crystallographic associations worldwide.