Since his PhD in the Theory of Condensed Matter, Mike has acquired over 40 years experience in the field of theory and simulation of materials. He held posts at Harwell Laboratory, the Fritz-Haber-Institute in Berlin, the Max-Planck-Institut für Metallforschung in Stuttgart, and Queen's Unversity Belfast, where he was Professor in the Atomistic Theory of Materials and Head of the Atomistic Simulation Centre until joining Imperial in January 2006.

He was a founder member of the Thomas Young Centre - London Centre for Theory and Simulation of Materials, and has served as its Director and Deputy Director.

His main research interest is in exploring the links between electronic structure of materials, the behaviour of their atoms, thermodynamic functions and the evolution of microstructure. His joint appointment between the Departments of Physics and of Materials at Imperial is appropriate to the nature of this research.

Mike is a reviewer for EPSRC, and for the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft as well as other overseas agencies. He won the Born Medal in 2005 for contributions to the understanding of interatomic forces (the subject of his 2003 book) and for making links between atomic scale modelling and the structure and thermodynamics of interfaces. In 2014 he was a recipient of an Alexander von Humboldt Research Award. In 2017 he won the Mott Medal and prize of the Institute of Physics. He was elected as Fellow of the Royal Society in 2021. In 2022 he won the Dirac Medal of the Instutute of Physics.