Michel van Putten studied Medicine in Leiden and Applied Physics in Delft. In 2000, he got his Ph.D. in Applied Physics from Delft, and registered as a neurologist/clinical neurophysiologist.

Michel van Putten is heading the Department of Clinical Neurophysiology of the Medisch Spectrum Twente, a large teaching hospital, and he chairs the Clinical Neurophysiology (CNPH) group at the University of Twente (utwente.nl).He is co-Founder of Clinical Science Systems, a company that develops clinical EEG software. His research involves the pathophysiology of epilepsy, ischaemia, brain monitoring in the ICU and fundamentals of EEG generation.