Schmidt earned his B.S. from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 1981 and Ph.D. from MIT in 1988.[4] His doctoral advisor was Stephen D. Senturia and his thesis was entitled "Microsensors for the measurement of shear forces in turbulent boundary layers".[5]
Career
In 1988, Schmidt became a faculty member of the MIT Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department. From 1999 to 2006, He was the director of the Microsystems Technology Laboratories at MIT.[6] In 2016, he was named the Ray and Maria Stata Professor at MIT.[7] Schmidt became an associate provost at MIT from 2008 and assumed the role of provost in 2014.[8]
He is a recipient of the National Science Foundation Presidential Young Investigator Award in 1991.[9] He was named as a fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) in 2004 for contributions to design and fabrication of microelectromechanical systems.[7]
His teaching and research work is in the field of micro- and nanofabrication technologies for sensors, actuators, and MEMS.[10] Schmidt has co-founded or co-invented the core technology of seven start-up companies.[3][11]
