Born 1965 in Ansbach. Study of material science at the Friedrich-Alexander-University in Erlangen-Nürnberg with a focus on materials for electro-technology, glass and ceramic, electronic devices. 1995 doctoral degree at the Max-Planck-Institute for Metals Research in Stuttgart (summa cum laude). After one year of post-doc in Stuttgart, he spend two years as a guest scientist at the Technion (Israel Institute of Technology) in Haifa with a scholarship from the Alexander von Humboldt society. 1999 return to the MPI for Metals Research as a group leader with a research focus on thin metallic films. 2005 professor of Material Physics at the University of Leoben. At the same time Dehm became director of the Erich Schmid Institute for Material Science of the Austrian Academy of Sciences and Head of the Department Materials Physics at the Montanuniversität Leoben. He is a director at the Max-Planck-Institut für Eisenforschung since 2012 and Professor at the Ruhr-Universität Bochum.