Dr. Schmidt is pursuing two separate lines of research, Medical Education and Microbial Biochemistry. In his role as Curriculum Fellow, he conducts Medical Education research on the impact of innovative curricular interventions on the acquisition of Biomedical knowledge, the reduction of academic stress and the development of Interprofessional collaboration skills.

In his role as a biomedical researcher, he explores the role of metabolic adaptations in the virulence of the human pathogenic yeast C. albicans. To succeed as a pathogen, C. albicans needs to maintain a complex equilibrium of energy metabolism and storage to adapt to sudden changes in the host environment. Dr. Schmidt’s research aims at characterizing the contributions of mitochondrial and cytosolic pathways of energy generation to the survival of C. albicans under conditions of nutrient withdrawal, starvation stress and pharmaceutical interference.