Fadime Stemmer

Your brain is full of microplastics: are they harming you? Plastics have infiltrated every recess of the planet, including your lungs, kidneys and other sensitive organs. Scientists are scrambling to understand their effects on health.

Plastics have infiltrated every recess of the planet, including your lungs, kidneys and other sensitive organs

go.nature.com/4j1dLeY

Participants of the March 2025 C-CoMP cruise AE2504 sit together on the top of the R/V Atlantic Explorer. Photo shared by Ben Acosta.

Co-chief scientists Elizabeth Kujawinski and Sonya Dyhrman hug and reflect as they watch the sunrise from the deck of the R/V Atlantic Explorer at the end of the second C-CoMP cruise, AE2520. Photo by Erin Maybach.

Participants (left to right: Claire Garfield, Eleanor Lawrence, Amanda Ellis, and Emily Hu) of the September 2025 C-CoMP cruise AE2520 sit together on the R/V Atlantic Explorer as they wait to disembark from Bermuda for the cruise! Photo by Fadime Stemmer.

Members of the cruise team work together to prepare the CTD rosette for deployment. Photo by Claire Garfield.

🌊🦠#FieldworkFriday
Team work makes the dream work! We asked our cruise team and they agree - team work is essential for troubleshooting and creating a positive environment for all on board 🚢, laying the groundwork for forging lasting connections that last beyond the cruise! 🧪

📣 Special thanks to our moderator and panelists for representing microbes 🦠 in the #oceanpavilion @cop30brazil.bsky.social in the only microbial panel at #cop30.

Microbes play key roles in climate. They need to be considered in navigating what happens next for our planet 🌎!

It was a great pleasure and privilege to having been one of the co-chairs of the 2025 GCC together with Chloe and Joey!

Thank you so much to all our organizers, our keynote speakers Dr. Hilary Palevsky and Dr. Marcela Loría-Salazar, as well all participants. You made this conference so special!

The science personnel of C-CoMP Cruise AE2520 (and Clio) stand together on the stern of the R/V Atlantic Explorer. Parts of the Woods Hole dock and village frame the background of the photo. Photo provided by Elizabeth Kujawinski and edited by Laura Gray.

The science personnel of C-CoMP Cruise AE2520 (and Clio) stand together on the stern of the R/V Atlantic Explorer while making various fun poses. Parts of the Woods Hole dock and village frame the background of the photo. Photo provided by Elizabeth Kujawinski and edited by Laura Gray.

🌊🦠#FieldworkFriday!
And that’s a wrap 🎬on C-CoMP Cruise 2 🚢! We (C-CoMP + AE) accomplished an impressive feat - 95 CTD casts, 110,778 L of sw filtered with @clio-thebgcauv.bsky.social, eddy sampling, & 9 exp types across 3 locations - to characterize marine chemical currencies & microbes!

Successful dive and recovery to the eddy center, 18 sample depths down to 800 meters deep and engineering tests completed too.

"Borrowed" Banner of pirates of the proteome and AUV Clio on the fantail of the Atlantic Explorer in the Sargasso Sea

We heard there were some wannabe pirates at the mass spectrometry conference in Baltimore last summer. Somehow their banner ended up in the Bermuda Triangle... (From one robot to another @evosep.bsky.social, I blame the humans.) #piratesoftheproteome #ASMS2025

We're out at sea with C-COMP @microbialplanet.bsky.social and the AUV Clio. Clio's social media account has migrated from the other place to the blue place @clio-thebgcauv.bsky.social , follow for mild sarcastic pseudo-first robot humor
updates...

Michael Jakuba and Chip Breier, along with other members of the research team and crew of the Atlantic Explorer, ready Clio for deployment during the 2025 C-CoMP March cruise. Photo by Daniella Asturias.

Clio partially submerged at the ocean’s surface somewhere in the Sargasso Sea. Photo by Claire Garfield.

A view of Clio with its back panel removed. The panel is removed to access the stack of clamshells holding the filters containing microbial biomass that were filtered at depth by Clio. Photo by Daniella Asturias.

On the 2025 C-CoMP March Cruise, some members of the Clio team (from left to right: Daniella Asturias, Matt McIlvin, Fadime Stemmer, Loay Jabre) pose with a stack of Clio's clamshells shortly before removing and sectioning the filters for metaproteomics and metagenomics analyses. Photo by McKenzie Powers.

🌊🦠#FieldworkFriday!
During the C-CoMP March Cruise, Clio, the biogeochemistry AUV, was used to collect particle samples for proteomics and metagenomics from various depths within the water column. Check out some of these photos of Clio in action:

Headshot of Fadime Stemmer. Photo provided by Fadime Stemmer.

Fadime prepares to collect seawater samples from the CTD rosette on the deck of the R/V Atlantic Explorer during a stormy day at sea. Photo by Loay Jabre.

Fadime prepares for a Clio deployment in a lab on the R/V Atlantic Explorer during the March 2025 C-CoMP cruise. Fadime stands behind a lab bench that is covered with Clio filter rigs encased in bags. Photo by Loay Jabre.

📣#MTTM
Fadime Stemmer (@fuuchan20.bsky.social) is a MIT/ @whoi.edu Joint Program PhD Student working with @maksaito.bsky.social. She is investigating the role that proteases (enzymes that degrade proteins) play in marine carbon cycling & how trace metal availability impacts these processes.

Call for Applications for the 2025 Graduate Climate Conference, hosted by MIT and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.

Applications are due by June 15th. To learn more and apply, please visit our website: graduateclimateconference.github.io.

We hope to see you this fall!