“Being in the microscopic world is like getting a superpower. We now see things that I didn’t know about before.”

Inside a single drop of ocean water are millions of microbes, tiny organisms individually invisible to the naked eye, but their abundance makes them visible from space.

Among them are diatoms, microalgae that generate about 20 percent of the Earth’s oxygen and convert up to 20 percent of the Earth’s carbon dioxide into organic matter through photosynthesis.

2024 Schmidt Science Fellow Claudia Fusco pivoted from neuroscience to marine microbiology to explore this hidden world.

Explore Claudia’s journey in our latest We Are Schmidt Science Fellows film.

As a neuroscientist, Claudia was fascinated by how molecules and cells can give rise to something as complex as abstract thinking.

But driven by the urgency of climate change, she changed direction to study the ocean.

Today, Claudia is investigating what happens inside individual diatom cells as ocean temperatures rise: which genes switch on and off, how cells respond to environmental stress, and how their interactions with other microorganisms change.

Schmidt Science Fellows gave Claudia the opportunity to build on her experience in neuroscience and follow her curiosity from the inner workings of the brain to the microscopic world of the ocean.

She hopes this interdisciplinary approach will reveal more about what makes diatoms remarkable and, ultimately, contribute to our understanding of how we can protect them as our planet changes.

There is also a deeply personal dimension to Claudia’s sense of urgency. Having children has changed how she thinks about time and the future.

“You see your future in front of your eyes.”

Climate change, she says, is not something that will affect us five generations from now.

It is impacting us today.

The possibility of doing something about it has given her the courage to cross disciplines and pursue a new scientific direction.