Bio

Michael’s research investigates questions at the intersection of technology entrepreneurship and scientific labor markets, with implications for both academic scholarship and policy.  The primary focus of his research examines the early careers of science and engineering doctorates, especially careers as employees in technology startups and the impact of U.S. immigration policies on the career choices of foreign-born high-skilled workers. He also investigates the commercialization of university research discoveries through startups, with a focus on the composition of academic founding teams and the impact of university startups on regional economic development.

Michael has published in leading management and science journals including Management Science, Research Policy, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, and Science. His research has also been featured in leading media outlets including The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Washington Post and Forbes. He was awarded the Kauffman Foundation Junior Faculty Fellowship in Entrepreneurship Research and his research has been funded by grants from the National Science Foundation.

Michael is an Associate Professor of Strategy & Entrepreneurship at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign’s Gies College of Business. He has been on the faculty of Cornell University’s SC Johnson College of Business, Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business, the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School and the University of North Carolina’s Kenan-Flagler Business School. He teaches MBA and undergraduate courses on Entrepreneurial Strategy, Technology Strategy and core Strategy to business and engineering students.

Michael received his Ph.D. in Strategy from Duke University and a Bachelor of Business Administration in Decision Sciences from Georgia State University. He co-founded an educational software startup while in high school and pursued an early career as an entrepreneur for eight years before beginning his undergraduate and doctoral studies. He also founded a mobile medical diagnostic software startup related to his undergraduate research to aid community healthcare workers in developing countries to diagnose communicable diseases.