Clairvoyance

Schroeder seems to possess an incredibly accurate, although equivalently limited, clairvoyant ability. He is aware of nearly all things on his ship, as well as all creatures born on his ship, no matter where they are in the multiverse. Entities he cannot detect include gods and other creatures far beyond his personal scope. He has yet to offer anyone an explanation for this ability and his crew have stopped questioning it -- to his face, at least.

Psionics

Schroeder is a psionic of powerful skill. He is telekinetic, telepathic, and can temporarily exert his own willpower over other individuals -- the latter a technique he uses only in defense of himself or others.

Schroeder is a small, unimposing man, and not exactly the type one tends to imagine as the mastermind of a genetic laboratory. If anything he looks more like he should be a pediatrician, applying brightly colored bandages to the scraped knees of small children while distracting them with lollipops and a reassuring tone. He is on the shorter side and has a bit of a paunch, though it would be unfair to call him completely out of shape. He is no bodybuilder, certainly, but it would take more than a flight of stairs to wind him. His face is rounded, softened with age and wrinkled with laugh lines, while his eyes are small and blue, sparkling from his face over a flat nose and smiling mouth. His hair is blonde, cut very short but still shaggy, like an overgrown buzz cut. Patches of silver-white show at his temples.

As for clothes, Schroeder is fond of whites and greys. If he's not in his lab coat, he's in something like khakis and a pale grey sweater, swapping his scientist look for something more grandfatherly.

His left arm is cybernetic from the elbow down, an advanced model that can only be told from the real thing by the thin scar around his elbow. On sporadic occasions, he can be noticed rubbing through his sleeve it as if it aches or itches.

Schroeder is the kind of man a Dungeons & Dragons aficionado would call "Neutral Good." He is a man who always strives to do the right thing, which includes if he needs to sidestep around laws and regulations in order to achieve it. He is polite and resolute, with a friendly, gentle manner overtop a backbone of steel. Schroeder can come across as a little quirky at times with light banter, but when he needs to assert himself nothing short of a bulldozer (or a very well-worded argument) can dislodge him.

Schroeder is a very organized and cautious man. There's too many tales out there of scientists who are done in by an experiment gone wrong or taken too far, and Schroeder is very careful in all his undertakings so that he doesn't end up suffering a similar fate. Everything he does has a whole series of fail-safes built into it, and you won't find him keeping potentially life-saving secrets from his assistants!

Still, like many others, he returned from the Nexus drift not quite the same person that vanished into it. He no longer runs his labs just for the sake of experimentation, just to learn or see what happens. The only work he's willing to do now is that which fulfills the renewed oath he has made to medicine: always to help and never to harm. His labs will still perform biosynthesis to help bear children for those who cannot do so naturally, but now this is only a portion of the medical work he has set them to do. He is a man who accepts the guilt and blame for past actions without wallowing in it, and who actively moves to make things as right again as he is able.

He has secrets to be sure, and there are mysteries about him still -- how did he lose his arm? why is he so omniscient regarding his ship and his people? -- but he seeks to be known for who he is and who he is still moving forward into being, rather than dwell in his past.

Although he is not a ship captain in the traditional sense, Schroeder owns and operates the Abstract Destiny independently of any other known Nexus powers or organizations. His role is akin to being permanently Weyrleader or Primus, though he has no official title other than "Doctor". Despite the massive scale of the ship and its operations, he's more like the head of a family-owned business than an individual of political power.

More officially, and far more out of necessity than desire, he is the founder and an acknowledged co-leader of Nidus Caeligenus. He was instrumental in its creation, as much as he might like to hand off all its responsibilities to the refugees-turned-residents for whom it is their actual home.