I photographed Karl Deisseroth & Michelle Monje-Deisseroth in Michelle’s office at Stanford. Between them on the table is her PhD notebook, opened to a page from the period when they were actively collaborating on her doctoral research. It is an artifact in the truest sense. A working record of ideas taking shape. Handwritten equations, sketches, annotations. The physical residue of long hours spent thinking together, testing assumptions, and pushing at the edges of what was known at the time.

Karl is widely known for inventing optogenetics, a breakthrough that made it possible to control specific neurons with light and permanently altered the trajectory of neuroscience and psychiatry. Michelle is a neuro oncologist whose work revealed that neurons do not merely coexist with cancer but can actively drive the growth of brain tumors, especially in children. Her research reshaped how scientists understand the relationship between the nervous system and cancer, opening entirely new therapeutic directions.

What struck me in this moment was how naturally their scientific lives intertwine. The notebook is not just symbolic. It marks a real period of shared intellectual labor, when their collaboration was formative rather than retrospective. Before prizes, before widespread recognition, before entire fields reorganized around their ideas.

This is what scientific partnership looks like at its most honest. Not just co authorship or proximity, but sustained curiosity carried across years. The notebook holds the memory of that time. The photograph holds the present. Together they tell a story about how deep science is often built. Slowly. Carefully. In conversation. And sometimes, with the person you choose to build a life with.