Robert J. Schmitz

Robert J. Schmitz is an Associate Professor in the Department of Genetics at the University of Georgia and a Hans Fischer Fellow at the Technical University of Munich (TUM) Institute for Advanced Study. His research focuses on epigenetic mechanisms driving phenotypic variation in plants, including DNA methylation, chromatin dynamics, and epigenetic inheritance. He earned his PhD in Genetics from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and conducted postdoctoral work at the Salk Institute.

His research aims to identify regulatory elements critical for crop improvement and understand spontaneous epialleles' molecular basis and heritability. Notable contributions include the discovery of epigenetic clocks in plants and the role of heterochromatin in epiallele formation. He has secured funding from NSF, DOE, and the United Soybean Board for projects on cis-regulatory elements and biofuel crop engineering.

Awarded the Pew Biomedical Scholarship (2015–2019), UGA Foundation Professorship (2020), and ISI Highly Cited Researcher (2020), Schmitz serves as Senior Editor for The Plant Cell and Associate Editor for Current Protocols in Plant Biology. His work bridges epigenomics and evolutionary biology, advancing tools like single-cell ATAC-seq for regulatory landscape analysis.

• Education: PhD in Genetics (2007, UW-Madison), Postdoc at Salk Institute (2008–2012)
• Grants: NSF-funded projects on regulatory elements in legumes, NSF/DOE grants for plant epigenetics, and collaborative research on maize development.
• Labs/Teams: Schmitz Lab at UGA focuses on epigenetic variation and crop improvement, collaborating with TUM on epigenetic clocks and mutation dynamics.