Every year I organize a lab professional development day. It takes some time and creativity to put on, but everyone learns something new. I was fortunate to get a lot of training and professional development along the way, and this is how I can give my lab the same experience.

Anyone else get emotional watching the USMNT celebrating their win while an entire stadium sings “County Roads”? Just me?

Congrats to Katarina, who presented her work on developing Meteor at the recent Chemical Biology in the Greater Los Angeles Area Meeting and won a poster prize!

Delta has included an instrumental version of “Born This Way” in their boarding music, happy pride.

This week in the lab we’ve turned in article proofs, resubmitted a manuscript, submitted a new manuscript, had a grant rejected, and had a grant selected for funding. It’s amazing to see how far my lab has come in 4 years! I’m so proud of our accomplishments.

Check out our new biosensor for methionine, Meteor! Plasmids will be deposited with Addgene soon!

☄️New biosensor!☄️ We present Meteor, our GFP-based methionine optical reporter, which can be used to measure methionine dynamics across scales, from subcellular to organisms like C elegans! Plasmids will be deposited with Addgene. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Today I received a departmental award for excellence in inclusion & mentoring! It really means a lot to me to receive this award, and that all my efforts to be an effective mentor to my trainees, at UCLA, and beyond are recognized. Thank you so much to my lab members who nominated me for this award.

The staff at @sciam.bsky.social is hosting a Summer Reading Challenge! With prizes! Details on how to join here: tinyurl.com/jny9p9rn (Send me ur book recs! 🤓) #SciAmBookBingo #SciAmSummerReading

The California primary election is this coming Tuesday! I dropped my ballot off at a secure drop box in my neighborhood and my ballot has been received and accepted!

Dropped my ballot off at a secure drop box! Less than a week left to vote, California!

It took me about 40 minutes but I have voted! I’ll drop off my ballot tomorrow morning at the secure drop box in my neighborhood. Bless the legal aid groups who put together voter guides for the 2+ pages of judges.

My not discussed grants (submitted in Oct, reviewed in May) have been upgraded to Not Discussed+!

Even with federal grants largely restored, scientists say the Trump administration is still preventing those funds from reaching them. The consequences, they say, are already becoming clear. n.pr/4dwU7Fi

Will you survive? drugmonkey.wordpress.com/2026/05/15/w...

📚New review! Led by our amazing post-bac Arnav, we have put together a history of AMPK biosensors & highlighted some cool use cases! We hope this review will help broaden the adoption of biosensors in the field & increase our understanding of dynamic AMPK activity. portlandpress.com/biochemj/art...

Growing up, my dad took us to conferences. DC, Santa Barbara, Florida. Now my parents are going with me to conferences. Here’s my mom and I in Honolulu for Pacifichem. Happy Mothers Day, Mom.

This Canvas outage reminds me of that time in grad school when a fellow TA deleted the grades for all 500 students taking gen chem lab from Blackboard (we managed to recover the grades).

🍾 Congrats to @charlotteek.bsky.social the 7th graduate student to advance to candidacy in the Schmitt Lab! Charlotte passed with flying colors!

SHARE SHARE SHARE youtu.be/ms5DzHgDbN4?...

The Stand Up for Science Foundation (a nonpartisan 501c3) is launching a new Institute to craft and implement policy that will address the damage to federal agencies and institutions, recenter evidence-based decision making, and reestablish the United States as a global leader in science. 2/7

✨New Review✨ Coordinated by Mia Sung, we contributed to a new review about non-invasive imaging of single cell dynamics! Written by leaders in the field, this comprehensive review discusses how we can measure single cell dynamics, with a section on metabolite biosensors. www.cell.com/trends/cell-...

Abstracts due in 2 weeks for the Signal Dynamics FASEB! Many speaking slots will be filled from submitted abstracts events.faseb.org/event/Dynami...

Ari Belshi hosted “All In” tonight on MS Now and has a great segment about the destruction of biomedical research in the US. podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/a...

These days doing academic science can feel pretty bleak. Then my trainees show me amazing data that makes us really excited about the questions we are asking and it gives me a bit of "hope core" as someone said today.

I called my representative and spoke to a staffer.

UCLA has defeated South Carolina 79-51 to win the women's NCAA basketball tournament, securing the Bruins' first national title in the program's history. https://cnn.it/3PIV3hP

I spent a month’s worth of rent on Olympic tickets, but I’m going to the women’s soccer, rugby 7s, and skateboarding finals!!!!

The Orange Cat Brain Atlas is here. 🧠🐈 Today, we published the first comprehensive cellular map of the orange cat brain. The new atlas reveals a single, specialized neuron responsible for behaviors like staring at walls, knocking objects off tables, and the 3am "zoomies."

Spring break

I enjoy going to conferences and visiting friends on the East Coast but I do a very poor job of adjusting to the time change. It’s nice to be back in LA and getting normal amounts of sleep! And of course, my cats.

I live a 15 min drive from the beach in LA. Next week we might get to 90F or more…in March. 🫠

The Schmitt Lab is at ASBMB! Check out our posters over the next few days!

The Schmitt Lab will be at ASBMB 2026! Check out our posters and learn about what the Schmitt Lab has been up to!

I’m visiting my PhD advisor today to give a departmental seminar!! One thing I have missed about the east coast: trains with good connections.

Join me for a Natty Boh and crab dip pretzel and check out posters from the Schmitt Lab at ASBMB 2026!

I’m calling my congresspeople about this, but I’ve also started DMing political/news commentators to try to get more than just scientists on BlueSky talking about what is happening with funding for scienxe www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Well, the DOJ has done it: they have filed a lawsuit against the University of California over antisemitism. The complaint contains some falsehoods. But as someone who teaches and writes about Title VII, I'm equally struck by what the complaint doesn't say. A few thoughts— 🧵

Obligatory Los Angeles earthquake post. I shared my (very brief, light) shaking experience with scientists at Berkeley using the MyShake app.

BREAKING: The Department of Education has ended its directive that attempted to restrict diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts in schools nationwide. This is a victory for academic freedom and education equity.

The Health and Human Services secretary seems as committed to swimming in jeans as he is to destroying the nation’s immune system. 👖 www.rollingstone.com/politics/pol...

We’ve been using SAVEMONEY for a while and it works great!!

As a Culver City resident, I would argue the crime is there aren’t enough protected bike lanes. And I can’t decide which bakery to go to tomorrow morning.

My quote of the day Over and over, nature shows that it's a really tough adversary. That's why it's important that we invest in laboratories, disease detectives, research, mosquito control, the public health system around the world to find, stop, track, prevent health threats. Tom Frieden

This is a genuinely huge, sweeping victory today for the University of California—or rather, for us, its faculty, acting through our faculty associations, while the UC itself maintained a strict policy of deer-in-headlights silence. The Trump admin has given up its appeal of a powerful injunction:

📣 First preprint from the TeSlaa lab 📣 We investigated how methyl-rich nutrient, choline, is used in the body and how systemic one-carbon metabolism responds to dietary methyl-donor deficiency. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Rep. Delia Ramirez to DHS officials: "I have as much respect for you as I do for the last white men who put on masks to terrorize communities of color. I have no respect for the inheritors of the Klanhood and the slave patrol. Those activities were criminal and so are yours."

I’m a white lady who grew up in the midwestern United States, lived in urban areas my entire adult life, has never been to Puerto Rico, and I knew that was sugar cane.