Michelangelo, native from Belgium, completed studies at both the Universities of Ghent and Berne. After graduating at the age of 21 as Licenciate in Law (Lic. Jur.) at Ghent University, he gained an LLM degree in international law at the University of Bern, writing his master thesis on the "Right to a Sane Environment under the Privacy Provision of the ECHR" (Prof. Dr. Walter Kälin).
In 2005, he joined the World Trade Institute to work in the Swiss NCCR Trade Regulation project on biotechnology, focusing his research on patent law and how it applies to biotechnological inventions. Michelangelo currently writes his PhD on patents in the field of animal genetic inventions (Prof. Dr. Thomas Cottier) and published several articles on the diverging national rules of patenting biotechnological inventions, on public-private partnerships and IPRs, on the so called evergreening of patents and on the international harmonisation of biotechnology law. Recently, he was elected to be PhD Representative in the IEW/WTI-NCCR Management Board.