Dr. William Schmidt will be on campus this fall, working in Dr. Glaser’s Honors Introductory Biology Lab as a Collaborative Teaching Fellow. Dr. Schmidt has a postdoctoral fellowship from the American Heart Association and is based at The Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. His research focuses on novel molecular mechanisms that regulate striated muscle contraction, and in particular cardiac contraction, so as to identify potential targets for the treatment of heart disease. His project is entitled, “Investigation of Actin Acetylation as a Modulator of Cardiac Muscle Performance,” and he is focused on determining the effects of actin acetylation on cardiac muscle contraction and identifying proteins that may regulate actin acetylation levels in vivo.