Dr. Schmitz received her PhD from the University of Tübingen, Germany. She joined Dr. Sulzer’s lab at the Department of Neurology, Columbia University in 1998 to work on the regulation of dopaminergic transmission and how it is affected by drugs of abuse such as amphetamine. She became Associate Research Scientist in the Department of Neurology in 2001 and is currently studying axonal growth and synapse formation in dopamine neurons.