Mike received his PhD in 2005 from the L.L. Thurstone Psychometric Laboratory at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill under the direction of Dr. David Thissen. He moved to the Ohio State University at the end of 2005 and started as an Assistant Professsor in the quantitative area in the Psychology Department in January 2006. He was promoted to Associate Professor in 2011. In 2017, Mike moved to Arizona State University, where he is currently a Professor in the quantitative methods area in the Department of Psychology.

In addition to his position at ASU, Mike is also a Managing Partner at Vector Psychometric Group, LLC, a psychometric software and consulting company.

Mike's research interests revolve around measurement issues in the social sciences. Much of his work to date has involved item response theory and factor analysis.