Michel Goldman graduated as a medical doctor 1978 from Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB), Belgium, and received his PhD in medical sciences in 1981 from Université de Genève, Switzerland. He is board certified in internal medicine in 1984. From 1990 to 2008, he heads the Department of Immunology-Hematology-Transfusion at Erasme Hospital in Brussels, and from 2004 to 2009 serves as the first Director of the Institute for Medical Immunology built on the Charleroi campus of ULB, with the support of GSKBiologicals and the Walloon Region.

In 2009, Michel Goldman becomes the first executive director of the Innovative Medicines Initiative (IMI) a joint undertaking between the European Commission and the European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations.