Dr. Schmidt is a Distinguished Professor, the J. Crayton Pruitt Family Endowed Chair, and former Department Chair for the University of Florida J. Crayton Pruitt Family Department of Biomedical Engineering. Prior to joining UF, Dr. Schmidt was the B.F. Goodrich Endowed Professor at the University of Texas at Austin in both Biomedical Engineering (founding member) and Chemical Engineering. She earned her Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and her B.S. in Chemical Engineering from the University of Texas at Austin. She is an elected member of the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and a Fellow of the American Institute of Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE), the National Academy of Inventors (NAI), the Biomedical Engineering Society (BMES), the American Society for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the International Academy of Medical and Biological Engineering (IAMBE), and the International Union of Societies for Biomaterials Science and Engineering (FBSE/IUSBSE). She is an inductee into the Florida Inventors Hall of Fame and an elected member of the Florida Academy of Science, Engineering and Medicine of Florida. Dr. Schmidt has received other prominent recognitions, including AIMBE’s prestigious Pierre Galletti Award, the BMES Diversity Award (UF BME Representative), the TERMIS-AM Commercialization/Innovation Award, the Clemson Award for Applied Research from Society For Biomaterials, the American Competitiveness and Innovation Fellowship from the National Science Foundation, and the Chairmen's Distinguished Life Sciences Award from Christopher Columbus Fellowship Foundation and U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Dr. Schmidt’s research has focused on neural tissue engineering and wound healing, and currently is geared toward therapies for spinal cord injury repair. Her work is the foundation for the Avance Nerve Repair graft from Axogen and the VersaWrap Protector from her affiliated start-up company, Alafair Biosciences.