A trailblazer who helped pave the way to a degree in biomedical engineering at The University of Texas at Austin was recently honored with an election to the National Academy of Medicine (NAM).
Christine Schmidt was one of the Department of Biomedical Engineering’s founding members and a faculty member faculty member from 2001 to 2012. In 2023, she was inducted into the inaugural UT Austin Department of Biomedical Engineering’s Academy of Distinguished Biomedical Engineers.
The NAM is considered one of the highest honors in the fields of health and medicine, recognizing individuals who have demonstrated outstanding professional achievement and a commitment to service. Schmidt was selected for her “outstanding leadership, pioneering research, and clinical translation in neural tissue engineering and wound healing.”
The NAM is one of three Academies that make up the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine in the United States. Studies from the National Academies are often congressionally mandated or commissioned by government agencies, and their recommendations can have lasting impact on domestic and global policy.
Earlier in 2024, Schmidt was inducted into the National Academy of Engineering in recognition of her more than 25 years of work to help advance the fields of neural tissue engineering and wound healing and for her leadership in diversifying bioengineering.
She is now the Pruitt Family Endowed Chair in the J. Crayton Pruitt Family Department of Biomedical Engineering at the University of Florida. In 1988 Schmidt obtained her Bachelor of Science from The University of Texas at Austin and her Ph.D. in 1995 from University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign–both in chemical engineering. She pursued her postdoctoral studies at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Biomaterials.
Article Adapted From McKetta Department of Chemical Engineering Website.
