Professor and Chair, Biomedical Engineering, University of Florida

Christine Schmidt

Christine E. Schmidt, Ph.D., Pruitt Family Professor and Chair of the Department of Biomedical Engineering at the University of Florida, is the current President of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE). Schmidt was inducted as an AIMBE Fellow in 2009 and previously served as Chair of the College of Fellows for 2015-2016.

Schmidt earned a bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering at the University of Texas at Austin. She also earned her doctorate in chemical engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She conducted postdoctoral research at MIT as an NIH Postdoctoral Fellow, joining the University of Texas at Austin Chemical Engineering faculty. Schmidt has served as Chair of the Department of Biomedical Engineering at the University of Florida since 2012.

Schmidt is a Fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE), the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the Biomedical Engineering Society (BMES), and a Fellow of Biomaterials Science and Engineering (FBSE) of the International Union of Societies of Biomaterials Science and Engineering.

Her research focuses on engineering novel materials and therapeutic systems to stimulate damaged peripheral and spinal neurons to regenerate. Taking a unique approach to this problem, she uses electrically conducting polymers and natural-based materials (e.g., hyaluronic acid-based biomaterials, decellularized tissues) to create therapies that can electrically, chemically, biologically and mechanically trigger neurons, at both the macroscopic and nanometer-scales.