Michael is Director of UCL Centre for Systems Engineering and Head of the Technology Management Group at UCL's Mullard Space Science Laboratory (MSSL). He completed his first degree (MEng) in Engineering, Economics and Management at St John’s College, Oxford, and a PhD at MSSL in developing cooling technologies for spacecraft. He worked as a strategy consultant for Mercer Management Consulting (now Oliver Wyman) on projects in retail, energy and transport, including a project advising the Department for Transport on how to address the problems of the rail sector in the last days of Railtrack plc. He now conducts teaching and research at UCL in the areas of systems engineering and technology management in domains including transport, health, defence and aerospace, and is Programme Manager and a lead trainer for the European Space Agency’s Project Manager Training Course. He is a  Chartered Engineer and a member of APM, INCOSE and the IET.