As a graduate student in Jasper Rine's laboratory at University of California at Berkeley, Michael studied the sterol biosynthetic pathway and its rate-limiting enzyme HMG-CoA reductase in baker's yeast. His postdoctoral work was on developmental genetics and microRNAs with Robert Horvitz at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He then worked in the biotech industry, first on the use of model organisms for drug discovery and then on tumor angiogenesis. Michael currently handles research manuscripts in the fields of cardiovascular diseases, precision medicine & big data, and bioengineering & biotechnology. He joined Nature Medicine in 2003 and is based in the New York office.