Prof. Dr. habil. Oliver Schmitt

Oliver Schmitt studied human medicine at the University of Lübeck (MUL). He received his doctorate in 1991 at the Institute of Anatomy of the MUL on the aging of the human putamen. In 1992-1993 he completed his AiP at the Academic Teaching Hospital in Heide. He received his license to practice medicine after the AiP in 1993. In 2001, he habilitated in the overall subject of anatomy on the multimodal architecture of the human brain. In 2002 he joined the neuroscientific research group of the Institute of Anatomy at the University of Rostock with a focus on neurodegeneration of the dopaminergic system. In 2004, he passed the specialist examination for the subject of anatomy. In 2007 he was appointed as apl. professor for the subject Anatomy in the Medical Faculty of the University of Rostock. In October 2021, he was appointed Professor of Anatomy at the Medical School Hamburg.

Teaching activities

Oliver Schmitt received his university didactic training at the universities of Lübeck and Rostock. He has been familiar with various academic teaching formats for 30 years. He has taught dissection courses and courses in microscopic anatomy. He has used various didactic methods to conduct anatomical seminars and seminars with clinical references. In addition, he has expertise in clinically oriented seminars on live anatomy in preparation for clinical examination courses. He designed and conducted special seminars on topographic sectional anatomy and ultrasound anatomy. He also conducted continuing education and surgery courses for clinicians. In connection with a research focus on image-analytical segmentation of cells in histological images, he also led a seminar on mathematical image analysis at the University of Rostock.

Research focus

Oliver Schmitt's research focus is on the subfields of connectomics and neuroproteomics in neuroscience. In the focus areas of connectomics and neuroproteomics he investigates the changes of neurodegenerative processes in stroke models, models of Parkinson's syndrome, multiple sclerosis. For this purpose, subcompartments such as synaptomes, membrane proteins and myelin sheath proteomes are differentially analyzed to understand effects of new experimental therapeutic strategies. In connectome research, his group has for the first time mapped the bilateral, directional, and weighted connectome (peripheral and central nervous system) of the laboratory rat based on all available tract-tracing studies. Connectivity data are analyzed and visualized using the platform-independent software framework neuroVIISAS. This approach is used to study network dynamics in network damage of multiple sclerosis and stroke. This is done with parallelized computational models (network diffusion, neural masses, population models, bilateral circuits with single neuron models such as Hodgkin-Huxley in combination with modeling of dynamic demyelination and remyelination). Due to the generic approach, connectomes, of mouse, rhesus monkey and other organisms are now available, so that differential interspecies connectome analyses are also performed.