 He earned his Ph.D. in 1986 from Princeton University, under the supervision of William Browder.He then worked as Szego Assistant Professor at Stanford University (1986–89) before joining the faculty at the University of Wisconsin–Madison; he moved to the University of British Columbia in 2005.Adem has held visiting positions at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, the ETH-Zürich, the Max-Planck Institute in Bonn, the University of Paris 7 and at Princeton University.