In 1998, she received her Diploma in Biology from the Georg-August-University in Göttingen, Germany. She completed her PhD studies on liver cell biology in the lab of Dr. Augustinus Bader at the German Research Center for Biotechnology in Braunschweig, Germany, and received her PhD in Biology (summa cum laude) from the Technical University Braunschweig, Braunschweig, Germany, in 2002. She performed postdoctoral studies on cell biology and liver stem cell biology in the labs of Dr. Augustinus Bader (University of Leipzig, Germany), Dr. Lola M. Reid (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, North Carolina), and Dr. Christof Niehrs (German Cancer Research Center, Heidelberg, Germany). Dr. Schmelzer came to Pitt in 2008.