Kendra Schmidt

PhD Candidate

Kendra earned her Bachelor’s degree in Biomedical Science with a focus on infection biology from the Marburg University and continued her Master’s in Biomedicine at the University of Würzburg. During an internship at the Karolinska Institutet in 2024, she strengthened her passion for translational immuno-oncology by contributing to the establishment of a neoantigen bead vaccination against colorectal cancer (CRC). She then pursued her Master’s thesis on the development and validation of human Transwell®-like CRC models at the Fraunhofer TLZ-RT in Würzburg. In several laboratory rotations and Research Assistant positions, she gained valuable experience in primary cell culture and phenotyping, organoid generation, and bioreactor operation. Interested in applying her expertise to microfluidic chip platforms, she started her PhD at the Micro-Organo Lab in 2026. As part of the Immune MPS project funded by the Carl Zeiss Foundation, she investigates intricate cancer-immune cell crosstalks on a multi-organ, pumpless MPS to advance pre-clinical research of personalized immunotherapies.

Besides lab work, Kendra enjoys camping trips in the mountains, running and creating soulfood dishes with friends in her free time.