Michael received his Ph.D. in Computer and Information Science from the University of Pennsylvania in August 2001, and he spent one year as a post-doctoral associate affiliated with the Information Assurance Institute of the Computer Science Department at Cornell University. During academic 2008 - 2009, he was on sabbatical in Cambridge, England. From September to November he was at Microsoft Research and from December to August 2009 he was at the University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory.