Schmidt joined CERN after receiving his PhD from the University of Hamburg in 1984 and has been involved in several accelerator projects, including the SPS proton–antiproton collider, LEP and the LHC. For several years he headed the programme for technical and doctoral students and participated in the CERN Accelerator School, both as lecturer and as tutor. He has supervised many students, several at PhD level. The Superconducting Cavity Group at CERN and the Institute of Nuclear Physics at TU Darmstadt have worked together for many years on the development of superconducting cavities for accelerator applications, under the leadership of Achim Richter. Current collaborative work between CERN and TU Darmstadt, led by Schmidt and Norbert Pietralla from Darmstadt, focuses on the protection of accelerators operating with high beam intensity, in particular the LHC