Centering People in a Global Science Fellowship
Schmidt Science Fellows
Role
Creative Director + Project Lead
Agency
Visceral
Services
Discovery · Information Architecture · Content Strategy · Visual Identity · Website Design · Production · Activation
The Challenge
Schmidt Science Fellows came to Visceral as a new initiative with a radical premise: the next generation of scientific breakthroughs will come from researchers who cross disciplines. The program funds the world's most exceptional PhD students to pursue postdoctoral research outside their own field, a deliberate pivot designed to produce a new kind of science leader. The challenge was building, from the ground up, a digital platform capable of carrying that ambition: attracting the world's best emerging scientists to the program, articulating an unfamiliar idea to the scientific community, and matching the prestige of the people behind it.
The Approach
We developed a bold, modern design system, built around dynamic media and a visual language as forward-looking as the science. The architecture places the fellows at the center. Video vignettes and rich profiles tell their personal stories and the impact of their pivots, making the interdisciplinary leap tangible and human. A custom-built fellow directory organizes cohorts year by year and makes the leap visible at a glance, the chemist becoming a neuroscientist, the engineer becoming a climate researcher. It's a platform built to grow with the program: new cohorts, new partnerships, and new breakthroughs.
The Result
Schmidt Science Fellows now has a platform built for the ambition of its mission. A bold design system reflects the bleeding edge of the science the fellows pursue. Their stories, and the pivots that define them, are at the heart of the platform. The work that started as a radical idea now has a digital home equal to it.