Peres has served many leadership roles in the School of Photographic Art and Sciences including associate school director, media art and technology graduate program director, and program director photographic sciences. He also served as program director of the Biomedical Photographic Communications department for nearly 25 years. He is currently the Gannett Chair.

Peres' expertise includes photomicrography as well as other bio-medical photographic applications. His current work explores contemporary media and he has been actively publishing most of his career and in March 2021 his 10th book, Natural Science Imaging and Photography was released. He served as editor-in-chief of the Focal Encyclopedia of Photography - 4th edition. He serves as the Series Editor of the Focal Press Applications of Scientific Photography. Over the last two decades, he has become one of the world leading snowflake photographers and his pictures have been published by Time, CNN, the Weather Channel and Mashable. He has presented papers and imaging-related workshops all over the United States and world in Sweden, Canada, the UK, Austria, Tanzania, the Netherlands, Germany, India, and Australia. 

He serves as one of the long-standing leaders of the signature annual RIT Big Shot event and the Images from Science project. He has won numerous awards including the RIT Eisenhart Award for Outstanding Teaching; the RIT Gitner Prize presented for outstanding performance in the graphic arts (2X); the Louis B. Schmidt Award presented by the BioCommunications Association for life time contributions to the Biocommunications industry; and the 2010 RIT Frank Romano prize for innovation in publishing in the graphic arts. 

Michael earned a masters degree in instructional technology and holds bachelors degrees in biology and biomedical photographic communications. He is also a registered biological photographer.

Prior to joining the RIT faculty, he worked at the Charleston Division of the West Virginia University as a medical photographer and was the supervisor of photography at Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit.