As a typical midwestern kid, Kirk Habegger tried his hand at all kinds of sports. He grew up in Berne, IN—“A tiny town in the middle of a cornfield,” he says—where there was not much else to do. “I loved playing football, but I was much better at endurance sports like track and swimming,” he says. But Habegger was interested in science, too. “I took advanced biology my junior year of high school, and we covered the cellular respiration and the Krebs cycle, how glucose becomes energy,” he says. “That was the moment I realized that this was all connected.” Habegger wanted to understand how the food we eat becomes the energy that we use to walk, to play sports, to think, to live.
He enrolled at Indiana University Bloomington, eventually earning a doctorate in biochemistry and molecular biology from the Indiana University School of Medicine. During this time, he also took up a new sport, cycling, competing in the university’s annual Little 500 race. This hobby stuck, and you can often find Habegger with his wife and three boys on the local mountain bike trails.
Habegger is now an associate professor of medicine in the Division of Endocrinology, Diabetes, and Metabolism at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, where he runs the Habegger Laboratory. “We study a hormone called glucagon as sort of our home base, and how it regulates metabolic processes,” he says. “We’re also interested in how the brain integrates nutrient and hormonal cues to regulate energy balance and glucose and lipid homeostasis throughout the whole organism. Dysregulation of those processes also contributes to whether someone develops obesity or diabetes.”
Beyond research, Habegger also takes on the sometimes difficult task of communicating science. Through DiabetesBio, a podcast he hosts alongside Darleen Sandoval of the University of Colorado and Kevin Williams of UT Southwestern, Habegger gives authors a platform to present their work in a casual, approachable format. (To learn more about DiabetesBio or to listen to recent episodes, visit diabetesjournals.org/diabetes/pages/diabetesbio.)
“As scientists, we’re trained to be very careful to report only what we see. That’s important, but it’s also nice to hear people expand upon their research and describe the context, how their findings might fit into their field,” he says. “The formality of science can become almost robotic and can reduce the impact of the findings, so I try to create a relaxed setting where the people we’re interviewing will feel comfortable showing some of their personality.”
Habegger finds inspiration from the podcasts he listens to on his drive to work. Podcasts on exercise physiology, endocrinology, current events, and the history of rock music—especially jam bands and indie rock. Each episode is like a mini course in communication, and the communication of ideas is crucial for the progress of research.
“There’s this concept that great ideas hit you like a bolt of lightning. However, I think it’s much more subtle and often requires many conversations and iterations of one’s thoughts. There is no ‘aha’ moment, there’s no epiphany. That’s not how science works,” he says. “It’s when we sit around and talk to each other and are challenged to describe our findings and the mechanisms behind them. That’s been when the biggest ideas emerge, they seem to grow out of the ether of our conversations with one another.”
Science, after all, like sports, is a team effort.
