A weekend hike

Enjoyed visiting Montreal Diabetes Research Centre @crchum.bsky.social to give a talk on our new stories on cardiolipin and phosphatidylserine on MASLD. Thanks for hosting @glim2016.bsky.social @alquierthierry.bsky.social @dnachicken.bsky.social!

Elizabeth successfully defended her Master's thesis on preclinical and clinical projects related to GLP1s. She graduates with MS/RD and will pursue an MD.

Center for Metabolic Health (CMH) at the University of Utah is inviting applications for our Postdoctoral Rising Stars in Metabolism held on Sept 2, 2026. If you are a postdoc with an exciting METABOLISM story, apply using the QR code by April 24. Please share with your colleagues.

Dr. Precious Opurum is now the 10th PhD student to graduate from the Funai Lab

Females are protected from semaglutide-induced muscle loss in ob/ob mice

A High-fat, High-salt Diet Model of MDAKD Impairs Bioenergetic Efficiency for ATP Synthesis

Djeeaahhhhhh!!!

Bye bye Sundance, we will miss you

I just realized my last name is "fun AI"

Benfica!!!

False

Annual lab cleaning

Excited to announce that registration is officially open for #METPHYS2026! All meeting details can be found here: www.sablesys.com/metphys-the-...

Night skiing

New Years holiday cooking is over. School restarts tomorrow.

First shred of 2026

I do not approve this

300 sushis (there was a 6th plate)

Yesterday I had to explain to my sons that I used to get cheap calling cards from Chinatown and used payphones out on the street to call my family in Japan 30c/min because the dorm phone didn't have the ability to call international and my cell had 10 times higher rates. No we did not have WhatsApp.

Hit the slopes and made us some steak dinner for my birthday

As 2025 nearing to its close, lots of places are doing matches to end-of-year donations. We made our $10k contribution to Helen Keller International, the Road Home, Fourth Street Clinc, and the Utah Food Bank. Please consider giving to those less fortunate.

Junior Jazz Night

Twas the night before Christmas

Meetings are not work

In my case, this painstaking labor in the process through which the science gets done. Science isn't measuring stuff in a lab. It's thinking deeply, extracting the heart of idea from the soup of thoughts running through my mind, molding it, and finding a way to communicate that idea to others.

Intraorganellar pH gradient and microdomains because cytoplasm is ordered and crowded and get in the way for protons to get to places

Organelles do NOT have a single uniform pH. And if you think they must, because “protons diffuse fast,” this paper is for you. A thread on why that assumption is wrong; and what we found instead. 🧵 1/n

I am a stickler for interdependent aims, related but not completely dependent...then I was thinking, what does it matter if they are dependent on each other? Hypothesis almost always fails and we have to go back to the drawing board. Maybe standard grant formulae are not as effective in practice.

Discovery of a brain circuitry that responds to magnetic field

Christmas Party

Thou shalt always make extra cookies when taking some for work

The Faraday Lecture

It's 2025. Anyone can look up on internet to know that "soccer" comes from "association football", which is a British word to differentiate soccer from "rugby football". Also US isn't the only place that uses the word "soccer". Come up with other ways to make fun of Americans. There are plenty.

We should choose allies not based on whether we agree on something, but on how well we can disagree with each other. Disagreements happen and will to continue to happen between any two people. What counts is whether there is a respectable mechanism to resolve these differences.

Y1K

I am now officially one of those PIs that are unapologetic about prioritizing festivities over boundaries

The word "December" in traditional Japanese is "Shiwasu", which literally means everyone is so busy trying to get their shit done before the end of the year so much so that even monks are running.

Christmas sushi

Came here to give 100 Likes. Happy Thanksgiving.

Happy Thanksgiving, you filthy animals

Can we talk about how COVID took the costco combo pizza from us.

I had a kind of a Monday where towards the end of day I was so certain that it was Friday that when at the very end of the day an undergraduate student that was interviewing my lab was leaving I uttered the phrase "have a good weekend"

My top three hobbies are watching soccer, skiing, and being compliant to annual trainings

The reason why I can't stand Liverpool is because of that time when Steven Gerard and his pals came back 0-3 from half-time to win the Champions League against AC Milan and I'm just bitter that nothing in life should be that perfect and that squeaky clean, can-do energy is so American and I hate it.

We had a chance to hear a master speaker present his research on osteocalcin. I think I will remember this seminar for a very very long time.

Today I biked in front of a house where 8 years ago I dropped Andrew off so he can hang out with a friend that moved in recently. The house was on market. The boy was a foster child. He and his older sister recently moved in with a couple that was in their late 60s.

Somewhat exhausted from attending the Kidney Week on the heels of attending the Obesity Week but I had a great time catching up with Nephrology colleagues

Precious Opurum and Stephen Decker were both selected for best presentation awards in their sections. Grateful for the American Society of Nephrology that are so welcoming to those like us that are new to the kidney field, providing mentorship and community to these early career scientists.