Michael received his PhD in Computer Science from Carnegie Mellon University, and is currently a professor in the School of Computer Science at The University of Auckland leading NAOInstitite for Natural, Artificial and Organisational Intelligence) and its component Strong AI Lab (SAIL), a member of the Centre for Brain Research (CBR), and Scientific Director of Precision Driven Health. 

He is author of numerous publications in areas ranging across neural networks, parallel computer architecture, multimedia information retrieval, web browser design, genetic design, computational linguistics and speech recognition and is a inventor on six US patents.

Previously he was a manager and distinguished research staff member at IBM T J Watson Research center, CEO at Curious Cat Company, building assistants that actually understand you and what you do; and is a past Vice President for Research at Cycorp, and CEO at Cycorp Europe, where he lead research in automated knowledge acquisition from text and dialogue, automated reasoning, and intelligent human-computer interaction.