Rate My Professor Amy Schmid

Research in Schmid's lab focuses on how microbial cells, particularly extremophiles in the domain Archaea, make decisions in response to environmental cues, governing growth under optimal conditions or deploying damage repair systems under stress. Her studies examine networks regulating cell physiology like growth and division during extreme stressors including saturated salt, high temperature, and nutrient starvation, providing insights into evolutionary origins of stress responses shared across life. Employing systems biology approaches such as computational modeling, functional genomics, and molecular microbiology, her work spans microbial stress response and archaeal molecular biology. She has received the NSF CAREER award in 2017, the Biology Award for Distinguished Teaching and Service in 2011, and a Fulbright Fellowship in 1997. Key publications include "A predictive model for transcriptional control of physiology in a free living cell" (Cell, 2007), "Archaeal cells share common size control with bacteria despite noisier growth and division" (Nature Microbiology, 2018), "Clustering gene expression time series data using an infinite Gaussian process mixture model" (PLoS Computational Biology, 2018), and "Prevalence of transcription promoters within archaeal operons and coding sequences" (Molecular Systems Biology, 2009). The lab also develops microbiology and bioinformatics workshops for K-12 students, teachers, and researchers.