Professor Katsumi Matsumoto named Fulbright U.S. Scholar

Collaboration will help expand research into the global carbon cycle

MINNEAPOLIS / ST. PAUL (05/08/2026) — University of Minnesota Twin Cities College of Science and Engineering Professor Katsumi Matsumoto has been named a Fulbright U.S. Scholar and will spend part of the 2026-27 academic year in Germany advancing research on the global ocean carbon cycle.

The prestigious Fulbright Scholars Program offers U.S. higher education faculty, administrators, and professionals grants to teach and conduct cutting-edge research across the globe.

Matsumoto uses advanced climate and ocean modeling powered by the Minnesota Supercomputing Institute to study how the oceans absorb and store carbon dioxide produced by human activity. His work quantifies critical environmental metrics, such as the amount of human-emitted fossil fuel CO₂ absorbed by the world's oceans. A primary focus of his research is the chemical composition of marine plankton and its pivotal role in regulating the global carbon cycle. 

"Understanding how our oceans breathe and store carbon is one of the most pressing challenges in climate science today," said Matsumoto. "This collaboration gives us the opportunity to combine different approaches and improve how we predict the impacts of climate change on marine ecosystems."

As part of his Fulbright Fellowship, Matsumoto will spend his sabbatical at the GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel, Germany.

During his residency, he will collaborate with senior scientists specializing in the Transport Matrix Method, a unique mathematical framework in oceanography. This partnership aims to:

• Integrate expertise in marine plankton chemical composition with advanced mathematical modeling.
• Develop a novel approach to quantifying the global ocean carbon cycle.
• Account for complex oceanic processes that have historically been overlooked in climate models.

Matsumoto joined the University of Minnesota faculty in 2005. He previously served as program director for the National Science Foundation’s Division of Ocean Sciences and has held research positions at the Geological Survey of Japan and Princeton University. He earned degrees from Brown University, the University of Chicago, and Columbia University. 

The Fulbright Program, the flagship international academic exchange program sponsored by the U.S. government, has fostered mutual understanding between the United States and other countries since 1946. Each year, the U.S. Congress appropriates funds to the U.S. Department of State to sponsor the Fulbright Program. Many foreign governments contribute substantially as well. Additional direct or in-kind funding is provided by U.S. and foreign institutions of higher education, non-governmental organizations, private organizations, corporate partnerships, and individual donors.

Read more about Matsumoto’s research on the Ocean Biogeochemistry Group’s website.