Prof. Bob J. Schmitz, Ph.D.

Bob Schmitz is professor in the Department of Genetics at the University of Georgia.

His main research interests are population epigenomics and mechanisms of epigenetic inheritance. In particular, he is interested in how phenotypic plasticity and diversity are determined by natural and spontaneous epigenetic variation. Recent advances in genomics have enabled the acquisition of sequence-level data at unprecedented speed and resolution. As a result, genomes of thousands of individuals are being analyzed to determine the total genetic variation within a species and the impact of these variants on phenotypic variation. What is missing from these efforts is the identification of environmental, spontaneous, and natural epigenetic alleles (epialleles). His group applies epigenomic approaches to populations to study the effects of epialleles on life history traits and to understand their role in determining responses to the environment.

Bob Schmitz is a Visiting Fellow at CAS in November 2023 at the invitation of Prof. Dr. Claude Becker (LMU/CAS Young Center) and Prof. Dr. Korbinian Schneeberger (LMU/CAS Young Center).

On Friday 10 November 2023 Bob Schmitz will give a lecture at the Biozentrum entitled "Deciphering cis-Regulatory Elements at Single-Cell Resolution in Plant Genomes".