Harald Schmidt, a 2009–10 Commonwealth Fund Harkness Fellow in Health Care Policy and Practice, is assistant director on the Nuffield Council on Bioethics, where he has worked since 2002. His duties include writing reports, managing working parties and other projects, and representing the council nationally and internationally. His work has focused on quality and efficiency of health care, equity, and access to care in the fields of public health, health care-related research in developing countries, pharmacogenetics and, currently, personalised health care. Schmidt is also a research associate at LSE and has published on issues around personal responsibility for health in journals including the BMJ, the Journal of Medical Ethics, and Health Economics, Policy and Law.

He previously held a research position at the Centre for Bioethics, University of Münster, and worked at the interface of politics and academic ethics in bioethics units in the German Parliament, the German Ministry of Health, and the European Parliament. He received an MA in philosophy in 2001 from the University of Münster and began working towards a Ph.D. at the London School of Economics and Political Science in 2007.