Dr. Michael McGuinness joined the faculty of PCOM as an assistant professor of anatomy in 1999, teaching gross anatomy and histology. In 2005, he received the Lindback Foundation Award for distinguished teaching. In 2007, he became a course director for the gross anatomy section of Structural Principles of Osteopathic Medicine (SPOM) and continues to teach in both the gross anatomy and histology sections of that course. In 2012, he helped develop and became co-director of Human Gross Anatomy, a summer course taught to physicians assistants and physical therapists.

As a supervisor of graduate and undergraduate research, he has trained several students in microscopy, confocal microscopy, cellular and molecular biology techniques. Dr. McGuinness served as a postdoctoral research associate at the R.W. Johnson Pharmaceutical Research Institute from 1997 to 1999, where he began the first detailed study of estrogen response in Sertoli and Leydig cells. This research generated valuable information for the use of estrogenic compounds to treat osteoporosis, cardiovascular disease, cancer and infertility. Ongoing research continues to focuses on the effects of estrogens on cell interaction in the testis. More recently, Dr. McGuinness has maintained interest in how steroids affect physiology, but has switched focus to study how estrogens influence the interaction between monocytes and endothelial cells and their role in inflammation.