The current Schmidt Lab celebrated the lab turning 20 years old with a party! The students and postdocs surprised Christine with an awesome shirt, photo cake (with photos dating almost back to 1996) and a wonderful wall plaque.
The Schmidt Lab officially “started” in Fall 1996 in the Chemical Engineering Department at the University of Texas at Austin. The first Schmidt Lab graduate students were Tyrell Rivers and Beth Furnish, who were soon joined by Joel Collier as an MS student (Joel is currently a professor at Duke) and Jennie Leach and Terry Hudson. Many more followed! For a complete list of Schmidt Lab Alumni, see: http://bme.ufl.edu/labs/schmidt/alumni/
In celebration of 20 years, the Schmidt Lab has had a few Skype sessions with former students from the early years of the lab as a way for current students to get to know the past leadership (and meet the names on early papers!) of the group and for current group members to learn about options in both industry and academics. We had two amazing Skype sessions with Dr. Terry Hudson who is currently at Genentech in South San Francisco and Jennie Baier Leach, who is an Associate Professor at the University of Maryland Baltimore County. Both had unique insights into career options (and fun tidbits from past life in the Schmidt Lab while at the University of Texas at Austin).
Thanks to all the current and past graduate and undergraduate students, postdocs, and research staff who have impacted the Schmidt Lab over the most amazing 20 years!
