Mike received his B.S. in 2005 from Hofstra University, where he got his first taste of academic research in the laboratory of Joanne Willey, Ph.D., studying sporulation in the bacterium Streptomyces coelicolor. He received his Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2012, where he worked on the transcriptional regulation of stem cell state in the laboratory of Rudolf Jaenisch, M.D. Mike began his studies of somatic mutations in the human brain in 2013 during his postdoctoral fellowship in the laboratory of Christopher A. Walsh, M.D./Ph.D. at Boston Children’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School. Mike has received numerous awards and honors for his work, including the Kreig Cortical Explorer Award from the Cajal Club, the Charles H. Hood Child Health Award, and the Glenn Foundation, American Federation for Aging Junior Faculty Award, and the NIH Director's New Innovator Award. He was named as a Next Generation Leader by the Allen Institute for Brain Science.