Dr. Schmidt is responsible for managing activities that maximize the research potential and public usage of our telescope and instrument suite at Yerkes. He is also pursuing his own research interests, working with students, and active with public programming. He comes to Yerkes from Texas A&M where he was an Associate Research Scientist leading lab instrumentation projects including optical and opto-mechanical design, detectors, and control systems. He has been involved with the development of a variety of optical and infrared astronomical instruments including imagers, spectrographs, interferometers, and calibration systems for telescopes ranging in size from 0.25m to 25m in diameter located in the US Southwest, Hawaii, Chile, and Argentina. Before Texas A&M, Luke was an Instrumentation Scientist with the Magdalena Ridge Observatory Interferometer project and a Postdoc working on NESSI, a NIR spectrometer designed to study exoplanet atmospheres.