Amy K. Schmid is Professor of Biology in the Department of Biology at Duke University, where she has served since 2009. She began as Assistant Professor from 2009 to 2018, advanced to Associate Professor from 2018 to 2024, including as David M. Goodner Associate Professor from 2022 to 2024, and was promoted to full Professor in 2024. Additionally, she holds positions as Associate of the Duke Initiative for Science & Society since 2018 and Faculty Network Member of The Energy Initiative from 2012 to 2022. Schmid earned her B.S. from Marquette University in 1997 and Ph.D. from the University of Washington in 2004. She is Co-director of Graduate Studies in the Duke Biology Department since 2020. Her professional contributions include serving as Editor for Microbiology and Molecular Biology Reviews in 2019 and various ad hoc reviewing roles for journals such as Archaea Journal, Molecular Microbiology, and Nucleic Acids Research. She has chaired sessions at Gordon Research Conferences on Archaea and co-chaired Archaea Online in 2021.

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.

Professional Email: amy.schmid@duke.edu