He also chairs the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee at SIUC.

He teaches an advanced course in immunology and presents immunology and host defense lectures to medical students. His research investigates structural changes in major histocompatibility proteins. He retired in 2009, but remains active in the department as a researcher and teacher. Since 1981, he has been in the Department of Microbiology at Southern Illinois University Carbondale where he was Associate Professor and Chair, and Director of the Molecular Biology, Microbiology, and Biochemistry Graduate Program. As a postdoctoral fellow, he worked at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York on the structure of major histocompatibility complex proteins. His doctoral work at the State University of New York at Buffalo investigated antibody specificity and antibody idiotypes. He then worked at Case Western Reserve University, conducting research on the serology and epidemiology of Streptococcus pyogenes. in Biology from Cleveland State University. He lives beside a peaceful and quiet lake with his wife, Nancy, five shelter dogs (Gaino, Snuffy, Pepto, Peanut, and Merry), and four horses (Springer, Feivel, Gwen, and Festus).

Mike’s nonscientific interests include forestry, reading, and caring for his dogs and horses. He currently serves on the editorial board of Environmental Microbiology. In addition to his research papers, he has edited a major treatise on phototrophic bacteria and served for over a decade as chief editor of the journal Archives of Microbiology. Mike’s research is focused on bacteria that inhabit extreme environments, and for the past 12 years he has studied the microbiology of permanently ice-covered lakes in the McMurdo Dry Valleys, Antarctica. In 2003 he received the Carski Award for Distinguished Undergraduate Teaching from the American Society for Microbiology.

In 2001 he received the SIUC Outstanding Scholar Award. In 1988 Mike was selected as the Outstanding Teacher in the College of Science and in 1993, the Outstanding Researcher. He has coauthored Biology of Microorganisms since the fourth edition (1984) and teaches courses in introductory microbiology, bacterial diversity, and diagnostic and applied microbiology. Following a three-year postdoctoral in the Department of Microbiology, Indiana University, Mike moved to Southern Illinois University Carbondale, where he has been a professor of microbiology for 32 years. His graduate research was on the hot spring bacterium Chloroflexus in the laboratory of Thomas Brock. (1976) in Bacteriology from the University of Wisconsin, Madison. in Biology and Education from Wisconsin State University Stevens Point (1971) and his M.S.

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