Michael grew up in a western suburb of Chicago called Aurora, IL, or better known as Wayne's World. He got his BS in Psychology and Chemistry at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. After which, he employed as a technician working on analytical method development at Abbott Laboratories. From 1998-2002 he was a PhD student at Penn State University working in Stephen Benkovic lab on the Bacteriophage T4 replisome assembly and dynamics. In 2003, he started a postdoctoral fellowship in Ron Laskey's laboratory at the University of Cambridge/Hutchison MRC in the UK. In 2006, he started his independent career at the University of Pittsburgh Chemistry department. Starting 2014, he moved his laboratory to Baylor University, where he currently lives with his family. There, the Trakselis laboratory is currently studying aspects of DNA replication and repair spanning from the very in vitro biochemical to the very in vivo cell and human biology.
