Dr. Pit Schmidt

Personal

I was born in 1971 in the vicinity of Leipzig a town in the eastern part of Germany. Thus, growing up behind the iron curtain till the age of eighteen when the wall came down. Since then I have been using the new opportunities and lived and worked in France and Switzerland for a couple of years as well as California. Momentarily, I have been settling in the suburban area of Munich enjoying to see my little daughter start up their journey through life.

Occupation

I have been graduating from Leipzig University with a degree in physics in 1996. I continued my education working at the famous CERN institute in Geneva earning a PHD from Mainz University in 2001 in the field of trapping and cooling large bunches of radioactive ions. A copy of my thesis can be found here. Afterward, I spent almost three years as a PostDoc with the group of Cliff Surko at UC San Diego developing a trap for antimatter plasmas. I mainly spent my scientific career as a person building machines others can do physics with. Unfortunately, it always takes a long time to get the devices to work and the number of publications is quite limited. Thus, leaving me no choice but leaving science and moving towards industry. So, I worked for a German jet engine producer for a year before starting to work as an engineer with a well known leading German car manufacturer. At the moment, I work for a joint venture of several European car manufacturers specializing in developing of car hybrid components where I head a team of embedded software engineers developing electronic control units for hybrid car battery systems.

Hobbies

I enjoy a number of hobbies besides being an avid ham operator if time permits. This includes but is not limited to scuba diving, riding my bicycle, and hiking in the desert.

The Mule

If you are interested why they call me the mule please have a look at the following picture:

It’s myself when starting a bike tour in Crescent City down the California Coast together with my wife. My bike is loaded with paniers in the front and back. The BOB trailer was loaded with its original case containing mainly containing the tent and our food. The water tight sack by Ortlieb on top housed the sleeping backs, pillows and mats. Most of the times I carried an additional case with the food at the bike rack. Don’t forget the two bottles with either Gatorade or my absolute favourite Ice Tea by Snapple and the CamelBak. The model of the later is called ‘Mule’ and that is what I got my nick name of …