What's up with me?

Wow, I guess it seems like I’ve been MIA for a while. My life has changed dramatically over the past couple of months. I’m happy to announce that I defended my thesis back in October, marking the completion of my Ph.D. work. The very next week, I started my career as a scientist at Amyris in Emeryville, CA (in the San Francisco/Oakland area). I am both proud and excited to be a part of this company. Amyris was originally founded by graduates of the Keasling lab (at Berkeley) working to produce amorphadiene and eventually artemisinic acid in E. coli and yeast. This work was funded largely by the Gates foundation and One World Health to produce the anti-malarial drug artemisinin. They were tremendously successful with this work and the process has been handed off to Sanofi-Aventis who will produce and distribute the drug worldwide as a non-profit venture. Most of the work at Amyris now is focused on the production of next generation biofuels. We’re also targeting a few other commodity chemicals based on the isoprenoid pathway.

My work there is essentially the same as what I was doing in grad school, just with a different metabolic pathway. This is good because I was able to jump right in and feel like I’ve been able to contribute a lot in the past 2 months. But I’ve also found myself keeping even longer hours than in grad school, especially with meetings and not being able to take off in the middle of the day and go to the gym. And I live within walking distance so it’s hard to stay away. But I really, really enjoy it and I work hard by choice.

Everyone asks, but of course, I still go to the gym no matter what. Training is pretty good although the gym(s) I go to are not nearly as good as the one in Pasadena. I usually go to Gold’s Gym in Oakland but it’s downtown so everything is pretty packed in. Anyway, I take care of business. However, I have decided to forego the NY Pro show (I think) and wait till Atlantic City in September. Hopefully I will have established myself a little bit more at work and may even have an RA (research assistant) so I won’t have to slave away in the lab. Right now, I just can’t see myself making time for all the cardio. Shoot, a normal day with 12 hours on my feet in the lab and then getting to the gym at 9-10pm at night wears me out enough! I’m also looking forward to my significant other and training partner (Branden Ray) moving out here…hopefully in the next month or so. We spent New Year’s (our 1 year anniversary) with his family in New Jersey and had a great time. I fell in love with his cousin’s son Jesai—he just turned 3! Awww. Oh, we also trained at some great gyms—Diamond Gym and of course Strong and Shapely!