Dr Christian Schmidt

Scientific advisor

Dr. Schmidt is a biophysicist and entrepreneur who has founded and built several successful biotechnology companies.

He studied electronics, physics, and biophysics at the University of Jena (Germany) and obtained his PhD in 1995 working on the use of patch clamp methods for physiology of slow anion channels in guard cells.

In 1996, his research interest moved towards the study of local neocortical circuits using patch clamp techniques (The Neurosciences Institute, La Jolla, USA).

In 1997, Dr Schmidt built the first planar patch clamp systems using giant proteoliposomes at EPFL, Lausanne. Further research on cell membrane interactions with silicon surfaces resulted in the first single channel recordings and stable giga seals on planar surfaces.

In 1998, Dr Schmidt founded TransSense Sarl (Lausanne), which prepared the transformation of these inventions into commercially applicable systems.

In 2000, he was co-founder of Cytion SA (Lausanne), which started to commercialize these systems. Aiming towards rapid market penetration, Cytion SA was sold to Molecular Devices Corporation in 2001.

After working as CSO of Cytion SA/MDCC until 2002 he became an independent advisor and joined picoDrill in January 2008. Dr. Schmidt holds several patents in the areas of membrane biophysics and microtechnology. Dr. Schmidt is the inventor of ETF technologies and founder of picoDrill SA.