Hi, my name is Ivona Cetinić. I use satellites to study invisible creatures
in the ocean at NASA. I use satellite called PACE and look at its data to tell
me something about health of the ocean. Specifically, what do teeny tiny
creatures called phytoplankton do in the ocean and for the ocean? Phytoplankton
are important because they do three things for us. They produce oxygen that
we breathe, they feed the oceanic food web, and they also control the flow of
the carbon from the atmosphere into the ocean. When I was in elementary school,
I was really lucky because my elementary school offered many different ways for
me to explore this scientific drive. So I had astronomy in middle school and
even in elementary school we did some programming things. Being an
oceanographer that takes me on this like amazing trips where you are in these
research vessels for months at a time studying the ocean doing beautiful
things but you're also far away from your family and that was always a
challenge for me. It especially became a challenge when I became a mom. I think I
felt it much more than my son did. But there was always a thing where you go
away for a month or two months at a time doing really cool science and kind of
like helping to make this world a better place, but then on the other side you're
leaving your family. Those are usually the biggest challenges for me. I was
once on a research cruise in Pacific. It was a crazy research cruise because it
happened in the middle of winter and being on Pacific in winter, it's very
bumpy. It's terrible and stuff. But one thing that we figured out is that
there was this teeny tiny phytoplankton that we kept seeing all the time and
looked like somebody's doing yoga with like hands up in the air and spread
legs. And we called the yoga Yoga Chaetoceros. That's a type of phytoplankton.
Turns out that that's actually a new species of phytoplankton that it hasn't
been described before. So that was really exciting like finding a new type
of phytoplankton in the middle of really really stormy Pacific. Maybe that's the
reason why nobody's seen it before because nobody was adventurous enough to
go there in the middle of the winter. I really like nature. I like hiking. I
like diving. I like sailing. Lots of things in the ocean. I really truly
believe that our brain is going to grow if we give it lots of different
exposures. So, I'm a musician. I play drums in a band. And I think that's
really important and that's something that I had since I was a kid. Trying to
nurture my scientific side but also my music side because it makes your
imagination grow and makes you better scientists. One cool thing about working
at NASA, working with the PACE team that I'm working is just like I'm just
one of the teeny tiny cogs and just by working together we make the magic
happen. That magic is called PACE. So, I'm really happy and honored every day
to be working with amazing people from PACE.