Michiel started his work at WPI after finishing the chemical engineering program at the University of Twente in 1997. His thesis work in the Netherlands was performed in the Industrial Processes and Products group (now Industrial Polymerization Processes) under supervision of Prof. Westerterp and Prof. Weickert. The work, entitled "Reaction Kinetics of Metallocene Catalysts in Polymerization of Ethylene", was an experimentally oriented project looking to improve the experimental methods in gasphase polymerization of ethylene on metallocene type catalysts.

At WPI Michiel completed a Masters Thesis with the Heat and Mass Transfer group in 2000 entitled "Verification Studies of Computational Fluid Dynamics in Fixed Bed Heat Transfer", which is available as a pdf file online.

After succesfully concluding his Masters work at WPI, Michiel continued work towards a PhD. The project was finished in January of 2003 with a dissertation entitled "Influence of catalyst particle geometry on near-wall heat transfer using CFD", which is also available online.

Michiel then took a Marie Curie post-doc position with Johnson Matthey Catalysts in Billingham, UK where he continued some of his work with CFD modelling as well as performing work in the field of data management and mining. Currently, he is SNG Product Engineer at Johnson Matthey Catalysts.