Michael is Professor of Physics in the Physics Department at StFX, and does research in Solid State Physics. His research areas are in neutron scattering and magnetic structures of rare-earth and transition metals, especially incommensurate and density-wave structures, as well as dilatometry at cryogenic and very high temperatures. Together with Jan Genossar of the Technion, he developed the tilted-plate capacitance displacement sensor, which allows angstrom resolution at temperatures exceeding 1000 C.

In 2005 he was coordinator of Canadian efforts for the World Year of Physics 2005 (as declared by the United Nations) for the Canadian Association of Physicists (CAP).
In 2006 he received three awards. The StFX Friendship Award given in February 2006 was very pleasing. The Canadian Association of Physicists/Canadian Organization of Medical Physicists Peter Kirkby Memorial Medal for Outstanding Service to Canadian Physics was awarded at the CAP Congress in June 2006 and is a great honour which rather overwhelmed him. The Division of Condensed Matter and Materials Physics (DCMMP) of the Canadian Association of Physicists (CAP) selected the paper, "Sodium Nitrate - a difficult discontinuous phase transition", by Michael O. Steinitz, David A. Pink, J. Patrick Clancy, A. Nicole MacDonald and Ian Swainson, Vol. 82, 12, 1097 (2004), as the Best Condensed Matter/ Materials Paper in the Canadian Journal of Physics for Dec. 2004 -Nov. 2005.

Prior to coming to StFX in 1973 he was at the University of Toronto (PDF), Northwestern University (PhD), Cornell University (B.Engr.Physics), the University of Goettingen, Germany, the University of Pennsylvania, and Columbia University. He has twice been Lady Davis visiting professor for a year at the Technion, Israel Institute of Technology, in Haifa. He lectures on physics in English, German, French, and Hebrew.

He was President of the Canadian Association of Physicists during 1998-99 and chair of the board of directors of the Canadian Insitute for Photonic Innovations (ICIP/CIPI) from 1999-2002. He has served two terms as a member of the Board of Governors of St. Francis Xavier University. He was co-author, with Bev Robertson, of the Highly Qualified Personnel Section of the Review of Canadian Academic Physics.

Profiles at StFX and at the StFX Research Grants Office contain some further details.