I am a polymer chemist and work at IBM Research where I lead a group of chemists, computer scientists and software developer to develops AI tools to help scientists to discover faster. Our focus is on the Expert-AI Interaction and to find way how to enable human experts to co-create with AI as a peer. As a side role at IBM Research, I am the vice-chair of our physical science council, and our goal is to promote exploratory physical science research at IBM with objectives that are 10 years out or more. I am also the mom of two amazing children and through raising them and realizing the different opportunities kids have in our society, I got passionate about early STEM education for all children, no matter of race, gender, or socio-economic status. Over the years, I volunteered at different schools to offer science demonstrations and lately, through ACS, got involved in providing science projects through the Redwood City library program. Last year, I received the YWCA emergent leader award partly due to my contribution to early STEM education. I would like to serve as an alternate councilor for the ACS Silicon Valley section to bring more awareness to early STEM education in order to raise a diverse group of kids to become our next generation scientists.
Biography
Kristin Schmidt has a PhD from University of Bayreuth, Bavaria Germany. She then did a postdoctoral fellowship at UC Santa Barbara conducting morphological studies of organic solar cells and light emitting diodes using X-ray scattering, diffraction and spectroscopy. Kristin has worked for BASF, SLAC and is now a Research Scientist at IBM.