Michael Freeston has over thirty years experience of academic and industrial Computer Science, specializing in database and knowledge base systems. He is best known in the international database community for his work on multi-dimensional indexing methods. He has also extensive experience of digital library systems, having worked on the development of the Alexandria geo-referenced digital library (ADL) at UCSB for almost 10 years.

From 1998 to 2001 he was Professor of Information Science at Aberdeen University, Scotland, and he is currently a visiting professor in the Department of Electronics and Computer Science at Southampton University in the UK, where he began his academic career in 1970. 

In 1985 he joined the European Computer-Industry Research Centre in Munich, Germany, to work on the development of advanced knowledge base system architectures. From there he moved to UCSB in 1996.