Michael received his PhD in biochemistry and protein crystallography at the EMBL (European Molecular Biology Laboratory) in Hamburg, Germany, and at the Charitè Berlin in 1992. After a postdoctoral fellowship at the Charitè, he joined the Biozentrum, University of Basel, Switzerland, as research assistant. End of 1995, he continued his career in industrial research at F. Hoffmann - La Roche as a lab head for X-ray crystallography. Since 2001 he has been Vice Director for Structure Research at Roche Basel and extended his responsibility with the appointment to the head of Discovery Technologies in 2008. In this function, he is responsible for technologies to support small molecule drug discovery including compound depository, assay development and screening, stem cell research, protein generation as well as analytics. The main research interest is to facilitate early small molecule drug discovery from target assessment & validation to hit & lead identification and optimization methods in various therapeutic areas including metabolic disease and neuroscience. He is lecturer in protein crystallography and pharmacy, author of more than 70 articles and patents and professor in structural biology at the University of Basel.