Mariah Costa ♨️

Academic love language: “I saw a paper about that, let me send it to you”

“Brush your teeth with your left hand! Play brain games to increase plasticity and stave off the affects of aging!” Doing a PhD is solving an ever increasingly difficult puzzle. Every day is a brain game

They say learning a new language helps your brain. My native tongue is MATLAB so I better get a few IQ points for learning Python

Super neat way to look at trends in science. Talk about big data!

“One could not be a successful scientist without realizing that, in contrast to the popular conception supported by newspapers and mothers of scientists, a goodly number of scientists are not only narrow-minded and dull, but also just stupid.” -James Watson, The Double Helix

I’m reading The Double Helix - a memoir about discovering the structure of DNA I recommend the read - Watson’s observations about life as a scientist in the 1940s are funny and feel so similar to my life as modern grad student I’m going to try to tweet excerpts I enjoy

My friend and coworker, Abdullah Bdaiwi, just published his work on analytical B1-inhomogeneity corrections in 2D-spiral hyperpolarized Xe MRI! Will be a precursor for many more projects down the line. Check it out here: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/mr…

I asked ChatGPT for gift suggestions for a “25 year old woman physicist” and it suggested: - high quality lab equipment like a centrifuge - a subscription to a scientific journal - a telescope Yeah sure, AI is going to replace us 😂

I attended a wonderful conference this week. I’m fully convinced: if we allowed science deniers to attend just one rigorous scientific conference, they would have a change of heart. I’m talking naive, boomer parent type science deniers, not nefarious political types

My lab is preparing slides for a conference. Can’t wait to do my power move, catching all the non-colorblind friendly figures

Today I showed our new post bac a few techniques for mouse studies that were very simple to me. He said “wow, I can’t wait to tell my mom about that.” It’s all about perspective. It’s nice to be reminded that what I do is pretty freaking cool

Our department is featuring our lab in their newsletter so we had a little photoshoot Naturally, the photographer insisted we “pretend to do something sciency” in a few

I’m super late on this but I just wanted to shoutout Dr. Laura Walkup for winning her first R01 award on her FIRST try. You inspire me all the time, Laura. Thanks for being my mentor ❤️ @LLWalkup

Did you just join #AcademicTwitter ? Congratulations! 👏🏿 Did tou know there are 385,000 other academics here? 🤯 Here's 7 academic accounts to follow 👌

Had a great time at #ISMRM22 :) Shoutout to the #XeMRI team at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital!

We must work very hard to normalise showing raw data, ugly data, noisy data in papers, talks, & grants. Right now it's terrifying showing data that isn't "pretty" because reviewers will focus on that to the detriment of the story. Let us represent biology in its full messy glory.

“If it was easy, it would have been done already” always makes me feel better after a failure

Doing a PhD in biology is like that bit in Harry Potter where you get to choose your pets, but rather than owl, cat, or toad, it’s C. elegans, Drosophila, or mice

Nothing like finding a 30 page paper brilliantly conquering your research idea to turn your brain off for the day. Maybe a green beer will help

"Knowing" with Nicolas Cage is a terrible movie, but it's worth watching for the scene where he flashes his MIT badge like he's an FBI agent and it just reads: "ACADEMIC"

Nobody told me so much of academia is playing word Jenga with abstract word limits