Michel Gerhard Breitfellner studied astrophysics at the University of Vienna, Austria and did his PhD about shockwaves in stellar atmospheres of pulsating stars at the Observatoire de Haute Provence (OHP) in France (1993).

He is working since 1994 as a contractor for ESA starting as Calibration Scientist for the Infrared Space Observatory ISO (1994-2000), continuing later as Community Support Scientist for the XMM-Newton Observatory (2000-2008) and finally as Science Operations Engineer for Venus Express (2010-2015) and Mars Express (2015-today).

Since 2000 he is also the General Manager of Serco Gestion de Negocios S.L.U., the Spanish branch of Serco PLC providing service to ESA at ESAC.

In 2010 he started together with some colleagues the CesaR initiative, in the beginning on a purely voluntary basis. Since then CesaR has become an official part of ESA's educational programme and Michel is coordinating the CesaR activities.