Ella Schmidt studied physics at the Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nuremberg, followed by a PhD in crystallography. She then worked as a postdoctoral researcher within the Department of Inorganic Chemistry at Oxford University, UK.

Ella Schmidt works with disordered crystalline materials that occur in nature as geomaterials or in synthetic compounds. She uses simulations and experiments to investigate how microscopically different atomic arrangements affect macroscopic physical properties.