Elke Schmidt carried out her doctoral research with Prof. Christian Wandrey at the Institute for Biotechnology (Nuclear Research Center) in Juelich. She received her Ph.D. degree in 1987 from the Institute for Chemistry of the Rheinische Friedrich Wilhelm University, Bonn. During the last 16 years at Ciba-Geigy, Norvatis and Syngenta, she held various positions in R&D, during the last 10 years in Crop Protection Research.
Her main interest is focused on biotransformation, natural products discovery and fermentation development for small molecules and proteins.