
Claudia Schmidt-Dannert
Claudia Schmidt-Dannert
BTI Director
Distinguished McKnight Professor, Dept. Biochemistry, Molecular Biology and Biophysics.
Dr. Claudia Schmidt-Dannert joined University of Minnesota faculty in 2000 and became the Director of the BioTechnology Institute in 2022. She is a Distinguished McKnight Professor and Kirkwood Chair of Biochemistry in the Department of Biochemistry, Molecular Biology and Biophysics.
Claudia completed her B.S. and M.S. in Biochemistry and Genetics at the TU Braunschweig and finished her PhD research at the National Research Center for Biotechnology in Braunschweig. She then moved to the University of Stuttgart as habilitant and group leader of the Molecular Biotechnology group and subsequently joined 2018 Chemistry Nobel Laureate Prof. Frances Arnold’s group at the California Institute of Technology to carry out her research on “molecular breeding of pathways” funded by a fellowship from the German Science Foundation. Since then, she has collected many notable achievements, such as a Packard Fellowship in Science and Engineering and McKnight Fellow- and Professorships.
In her free time Claudia loves all things outdoors, including birds, hiking, cycling, and canoeing. She is also known to regularly run marathons, and sometimes, triathlons.