Mathematician's Prestigious Fellowship Drives New Discoveries in Marine Microbiology

Pivot Fellow Natasha Blitvic and her mentor, Roman Stocker. Michael Lisnet/Simons Foundation

A Queen Mary University of London mathematician has been recognised by the Simons Foundation for the success of her ground-breaking transition into marine microbiology, demonstrating how expertise from one discipline can unlock new insights into some of the world's most complex scientific challenges. 

Professor Natasha Blitvic recently completed a Simons Foundation Pivot Fellowship, a highly selective programme designed to support outstanding researchers as they move into entirely new fields of study. The fellowship, launched in 2022, addresses a longstanding challenge in academia: enabling established experts to apply their talents beyond traditional disciplinary boundaries. 

The recognition reflects both the significance of Blitvic's research achievements and the exceptional nature of the fellowship itself. While interdisciplinary research is widely encouraged, dedicated funding schemes that provide researchers with the time, mentorship and resources needed to make a genuine disciplinary transition remain rare. The Pivot Fellowship was specifically created to overcome these barriers, pairing fellows with leading mentors and providing support to build expertise and networks in a new field. 

A probabilist by training, Blitvic built her academic career in pure mathematics, specialising in probability theory and the study of how apparently random systems can reveal predictable underlying patterns. Through the fellowship, she turned her attention to marine microbial ecosystems, a field vital to understanding global climate systems and ocean health. Marine plankton are responsible for roughly half of all photosynthesis on Earth, while microbes play a crucial role in cycling nutrients such as carbon, nitrogen and phosphorus through the environment.

Working alongside mentor Professor Roman Stocker at ETH Zurich, Blitvic applied advanced mathematical approaches to questions in microbial ecology, helping researchers better understand how random processes shape microbial behaviour in the oceans. Her work focused on incorporating stochasticity – the role of chance and randomness – into ecological models, enabling more accurate analyses of microbial systems and their large-scale environmental impacts. 

During the fellowship, she contributed to several high-impact projects, including research into how bacteria locate food sources and how microbial interactions influence the movement of carbon through marine ecosystems. One project led to the identification of a phenomenon the researchers termed "stochastic resilience", helping explain how specialised bacteria can survive even in nutrient-poor environments. The findings suggest these microbes may play a more significant role in global carbon sequestration than previously thought. 

The success of Blitvic's fellowship underscores the growing importance of bringing together expertise from different disciplines to tackle major scientific questions. Her mentor, Professor Stocker, highlighted the value of the collaboration, noting that Blitvic's mathematical perspective broadened the thinking of researchers across his group and helped inspire new experimental approaches.

Having completed the fellowship in 2025, Blitvic is continuing to develop the collaborations and research directions that emerged from the programme. She is now working to expand the interdisciplinary model that underpinned the fellowship, exploring new opportunities for mathematicians, ecologists and experimental scientists to work together on shared challenges. 

For Queen Mary, the achievement represents both individual excellence and the wider impact that can be achieved when researchers are supported to take bold intellectual risks. In a highly competitive research landscape, fellowships of this calibre are not only marks of distinction but also powerful catalysts for innovation, enabling talented academics to cross traditional boundaries and generate knowledge with far-reaching scientific and societal impact.

Find out more about the Fellowship and her work here: Pivot Fellow Natasha Blitvic Brings Math to Marine Microbiology