Born in Boston and raised in upstate New York and Southern California, Michael entered the six-year Liberal Arts â€" Medicine Program with a minor in Spanish literature at Boston University in 1983. The program, designed to develop humanistic physicians, channeled students toward the liberal arts and clinical medicine. Key interests during medical school were the neurosciences, particularly brain substrates of psychiatric disease. Nonetheless, the opportunity to exploit technology and treat disease less invasively drew Michael to interventional radiology and postgraduate training in diagnostic radiology.
Fellowship training in Neuroradiology, with its focus on neurological disease and burgeoning field of Interventional Neuroradiology, was a logical next step. Due to the intensity and breadth of clinical training, little time was available for scholarly pursuits during this seven-year period. His first faculty appointment as Assistant Professor of Radiology at Einstein, however, became a turning point. Through a newly established collaborative relationship between Einstein and the Center for Advanced Brain Imaging (CABI) at the Nathan S. Kline Institute for Psychiatric Research (NKI), Michael was afforded the opportunity to immerse in neuroimaging research and then develop his own research program. During this time, with the support of an NIMH Mentored Clinical Scientist Career Development Award, Michael completed a Ph.D. in Neuroscience at Einstein, executing work that redefines our understanding of somatosensory cortical organization as well as its representation using electrical and hemodynamic (MRI) measures.
In parallel with his basic science work, Michael developed and directs a program investigating mild Traumatic Brain Injury and its effects on cognitive disability. Thus, with current work at the interface of basic science, technology and clinical medicine as well as between brain and behavior, Michael has come full circle to again embrace his original interests in the nature and basis of dysfunctional human behavior.