His research interests focus around the design of novel computing artifacts. His ASPLOS 2010 paper was the first peer-reviewed paper to identify and concisely describe the origins of the Dark Silicon problem, and to propose heterogeneity as a solution. His recent projects include Kremlin, a tool best described as "like gprof, but for parallelization"; GreenDroid, jointly led with Steven Swanson; and SD-VBS, a vision benchmark suite. As a PhD student, Michael was the lead architect of the 16-core MIT Raw processor, which was later commercialized into the 100-core Tilera chips. Prior to that, he co-authored the first version of the Connectix VirtualPC x86-to PowerPC translator, and hacked microkernels at Apple. He received the NSF CAREER Award in 2009, a PhD from MIT in 2007, and an AB from Dartmouth College in 1996.