Summer Lecture Series
2020 Telluride Science Summer Lecture Series

The 2020 Telluride Science Summer Lecture Series ran weekdays from 10 am - 12 pm MDT for about 10 weeks beginning 6/3/2020.

Each day, two speakers from each previously planned 2020 TSRC Workshop presented talks geared to the greater TSRC community. After each 30-minute presentation, the speakers were available for a 20-minute Q&A session moderated by the workshop organizers.

This excellent opportunity allowed a broad audience to hear leading scientists present on frontier developments in their fields. Access to the Summer Lecture Series was included at no additional cost to virtual workshop participants. Without a workshop registration, access to the lecture series was available for a subscription price of $200. Student/post-doc access was available at a reduced price of $50.

Speaker Schedule

Monday, June 1, 2020: Many-Body Interactions: From Quantum Mechanics to Force Fields

10 am MDT: Judy Herzfeld, Brandeis University, "Cheap Electrons: Simulating Chemical Reactions with Semi-Classical Valence Electrons"

11 am MDT: David Sherrill, Georgia Tech, "AI in Drug Design"

Tuesday, June 2, 2020: YAP/TAZ and TEAD: At the Crossroads of Cancer

10 am MDT: Ann Marie Pendergast, Duke University, “TAZ/YAP signaling in Lung Cancer Brain Metastasis and the Response to Lung Injury”

11 am MDT: Brian Rubin, Cleveland Clinic, "From the Bench to the Bedside with Epithelioid Hemangioendothelioma: a Vascular Cancer Driven by Hippo Pathway Dysregulation"

Wednesday, June 3, 2020: Physical Genomics and Transcriptional Engineering

10 am MDT: Karen Reddy, Johns Hopkins University, "Measuring and Manipulating the 3D Genome"

11 am MDT: Vadim Backman, Northwestern University, “Understanding the ‘Operating System’ of the Genome: the Structure and Function of Chromatin Packing”

Thursday, June 4, 2020: Nonlinear Optics

10 am MDT: Sylvie Roke, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne, “A water window on membrane biochemistry”

11 am MDT: Alex Benderskii, University of Southern California, “Asymmetric Response of Interfacial Water to the Applied Electric Field”

Friday, June 5th, 2020: Quinary Interactions: Structure, Dynamics, Function

10 am MDT - 12 pm MDT: Three speakers will present followed by a joint panel discussion

Martin Gruebele, University of Illinois, "Quinary Interactions: Proteins, Viral Capsids, and Other Things that Assemble and Disassemble Inside Cells”

Margaret Johnson, Johns Hopkins University, "Exploiting 3D to 2D Localization to Control Protein Self-assembly”

Rigoberto Hernandez, Johns Hopkins University, “Nanoscale Models, Macroscale Impacts”

Monday, June 8, 2020: Active Matter

10 am MDT: Tom Solomon, Bucknell University, "Swimming Bacteria in Fluid Flows: Invariant Manifolds and One-way Barriers"

11 am MDT: Daniel Beller, University of California, Merced, "Active Liquid Crystals and their Topological Defect Loops"

Tuesday, June 9, 2020: Nuclear Pore Complexes and Smart Polymers

10 am MDT: Anton Zilman, University of Toronto, "Nuclear Pore Complex: Simple Physics of a Complex Biomachine"

11 am MDT: Tijana Talisman, City of Hope Comprehensive Cancer Center, "Applying Quantitative Single Molecule Localization Microscopy to Probe the Mechanism of Nucleocytoplasmic Transport"

Wednesday, June 10, 2020: #ShutdownAcademia #ShutdownSTEM

There will be no webinar today. We will pause our work here at TSRC and reschedule our lecturers that were set to present today. We're joining the academic world in a global effort that aims to “transition to a lifelong commitment of actions to eradicate anti-Black racism in academia and STEM.” #shutdownstem calls on all those working in #science #technology #engineering and #math to pause work on June 10th. As an alternative to “science as usual” this initiative encourages the scientific community to invest their time in researching & supporting causes that seek to dismantle systemic racism in #stem.

Thursday, June 11, 2020: Phase Separation in Biology and Disease

10 am MDT: Richard Kriwacki, St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, “Evolving Perspectives on the Role of Phase Separation in Nucleolar Structure and Function”

11 am MDT: Shasha Chong, University of California, Berkeley, "Illuminating the Dark Proteome that Regulates Gene Transcription by Live-cell Single-molecule Imaging"

Friday, June 12, 2020: Interfacial Molecular and Electronic Structure and Dynamics

10 am MDT: Carlos Baiz, University of Texas at Austin, "Dynamics at Heterogeneous Interfaces: Ultrafast Spectroscopy of Soap"

11 am MDT: Julianne Gibbs, The University of Alberta, "Deconvoluting the Stern Layer from the Diffuse Layer at Aqueous Interfaces with Nonlinear Optical Spectroscopy"

Monday, June 15, 2020: Spectroscopy & Dynamics on Multiple Potential Surfaces

10 am MDT: Chris Johnson, Stony Brook University, “From Molecules to Clouds: How do Atmospheric Particles Form from Thin Air?”

Tuesday, June 16, 2020: Molecular Chemistry in Electrochemical Energy Storage

10 am MDT: Matthew T. McDowell, Georgia Tech, “Watching Batteries Work: Understanding Reaction Mechanisms in Next-Generation Battery Materials”

11 am MDT: Kimberly See, Caltech, "Going Beyond Conventional Charge Storage Mechanisms: Multielectron Redox Processes for High Capacity Cathodes"

Wednesday, June 17, 2020: Ab-initio Design and Control of Quantum Materials

10 am MDT: Jeremy Levy, University of Pittsburgh, "1D Quantum Simulation with LaAlO3/SrTiO3 Nanostructures"

11 am MDT: Prineha Narang, Harvard University, "Predicting Dynamics and Decoherence in Quantum Systems"

Thursday, June 18, 2020: Challenges in Large-Scale Biomolecular Simulations

10 am MDT: Jeremy C. Smith, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, "How to Quickly Find a Cure for COVID-19"

11 am MDT: Rommie Amaro, University of California, San Diego, "Computational Microscopy of SARS-CoV-2"

Friday, June 19, 2020: Advances of Multidimensional Vibrational Spectroscopy in Water, Biology and Materials Science 

10 am MDT: Lu Wang, Rutgers University, "Modeling the Vibrational Spectra of Nucleic Acids"

11 am MDT: Wei Xiong, University of California, San Diego, “Intermolecular Vibrational Energy Transfer Enabled by Strong Coupling – A COVID-19 Resolution for Molecules”

Monday, June 22, 2020: New Experimental and Theoretical Developments in High Entropy Materials

10 am MDT: Irene Beyerlein, University of California, Santa Barbara, "Dislocation Dynamics in Refractory Multi-Principal Element Alloys"

11 am MDT: Stefano Curtarolo, Duke University, "Data, Disorder and Materials"

Tuesday, June 23, 2020: Enhanced Functionalities in 4 and 5d Transition Metal Compounds from Large Spin‐Orbit Coupling

10 am MDT: Valery Kiryukhin, Rutgers University, "Imaging Antiferromagneric Domains"

11 am MDT: Sobhit Singh, Rutgers University, "Theoretical Proposals for Realization of Weyltronics in MoTe2"

Wednesday, June 24, 2020: Single Molecule Workshop: Theory Meets Experiment

10 am MDT: Matthew Comstock, Michigan State University, “Watching human telomerase in action with high resolution tweezers and fluorescence”

11 am MDT: Sabrina Leslie, McGill University, "Single-molecule Insights for Drug Discovery and Development: the Next Level of Resolution

Thursday, June 25, 2020: Complexity in the Chemistry and Physics of Lipid Membranes

10 am MDT: John Katsaras, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, "Deuterium, Neutrons and Biological Membranes"

11 am MDT: Anne Kenworthy, University of Virginia, "Building Functional Membrane Nanodomains"

Friday, June 26, 2020: Challenges in RNA Structural Modeling and Design

10 am MDT - 12 pm MDT: Joint panel discussion on RNA and COVID-19

Tamar Schlick, New York University, "Covid-19 and RNA Modeling Challenges"

Samuela Pasquali, Laboratory of Theoretical Biology, University of Paris, "Modeling Energy Landscapes of Non-coding RNAs with Applications to G-quaduplexes and the Regulatory RNA 7SK"

Giulia Palermo, University of California, Riverside, "SARS-CoV-2 Detection Through Novel CRISPR-Cas Genome-Editing Systems"

Monday, June 29, 2020: Electronic and Magnetic Properties of Chiral Structures and Their Assemblies

10 am MDT: Vladimiro Mujica, Arizona State University, “The Chiral Induced Spin Selectivity- What it is and Proposed Mechanism”

11 am MDT: Ron Naaman, Weizmann Institute of Science, “The Chiral Induced Spin Selectivity- How it is Manifested in Life and how it can be Utilized”

Tuesday, June 30, 2020: Hydrophobicity: From Theory, to Simulation, to Experiment

10 am MDT: Paul Cremer, Pennsylvania State University, "Real-Time Continuous Sensing of SARS-CoV-2"

11 am MDT: Gul Zerze, Princeton University, "Liquid-Liquid Critical Point in Realistic Models of Water"

Wednesday, July 1, 2020: Molecular Rotors, Motors & Switches

10 am MDT: Alberto Credi, University of Bologna, “Artificial Molecular Machines: From Laboratory Curiosities to the Nobel Prize in Chemistry”

11 am MDT: Angelique Louie, University of California, Davis, “(Don’t) See the Light: Molecular Babel Fish for Optically Triggered Non-optical Imaging"

Thursday, July 2, 2020:

No Talks

Friday, July 3, 2020:

No Talks

Monday, July 6, 2020: International Conferences on Computational and Mathematical Medicine

10 am MDT: Jayajit Das, Nationwide Children's Hospital, "Quantitative Modeling of Lymphocyte Signaling and Activation"

11 am MDT: Paola Malerba, Nationwide Children's Hospital, “Sleep to Remember: Mechanisms Linking Sleep Oscillations to Memory Consolidation”

Tuesday, July 7, 2020: The Molecular Underpinnings of Astrophysics

10 am MDT: Marissa Weichman, Princeton University, "Spectroscopy, Optical Pumping, and Collisional Energy Transfer of Cold Buckminsterfullerene"

11 am MDT: David Neufeld, Johns Hopkins University, "Discovery of the Helium Hydride Cation (HeH+) in an Astrophysical Nebula"

Wednesday, July 8, 2020: Nucleic Acid Chemistry

10 am MDT: Kristin Koutmou, University of Michigan, "Molecular Level Consequences of mRNA Modification on Translation"

11 am MDT: Sheila David, University of California, Davis, "Dare to Repair: From DNA Chemistry to Cancer and Back Again"

Thursday, July 9, 2020: Proton Transfer in Biology

10 am MDT: Marilyn Gunner, The City College of New York, "Powering the Cell: Mechanisms of Proton Shuttling in Oxidative Respiration"

11 am MDT: Thomas Moore, Arizona State University, "Powering the Future: Proton Shuttling Captured in Artificial Photosynthesis"

Friday, July 10, 2020: Breaking and Making Bonds with Light

10 am MDT: Steven Lopez, Northeastern University, "In Silico Photodynamics Towards Energy-dense Materials"

11 am MDT: Amanda Morris, Virginia Tech, “Light-harvesting, Energy Transfer, and Catalysis in Metal-Organic Frameworks”

Monday, July 13, 2020: Activation of Small Molecules

10 am MDT: Jenny Yang, University of California, Irvine, "Bio-inspired Catalysis for Renewable Fuels"

11 am MDT: Paul Walton, University of York, UK, "Only Use O2 When it's Needed: How Copper-containing LPMOs Control Oxygen Activation"

Tuesday, July 14, 2020: Condensed Phase Dynamics

10 am MDT: Nandini Ananth, Cornell University, "Quantum Dynamics from Classical Trajectories"

11 am MDT: Garnet Chan, Caltech, "Quantum Simulation of Molecules and Materials on Quantum and Classical Computers"

Wednesday, July 15, 2020: Interfacial Chemistry and Charge Transfer for Energy Storage and Conversion

10 am MDT: Veronica Augustyn, NC State University, "Electrochemistry of Hydrated Metal Oxides: From Fundamental Understanding to High Power Energy Storage"

11 am MDT: Keith Stevenson, Skoltech, “Beyond Lithium Ion Batteries: Challenges and Opportunities”

Thursday, July 16, 2020: Electronic and Structural Dynamics in Hybrid Perovskites: Theory & Experiment

10 am MDT: Amanda Neukirch, Center for Nonlinear Studies, Los Alamos National Laboratory, "Catching the Sun and Beyond: The Development of Perovskites for Efficient Photovoltaic and Detector Applications"

11 am MDT: Andrew Rappe, University of Pennsylvania, "Bridging Computers and Experimental Bench: Making More Efficient and Mechanically Robust Perovskite Optoelectronic Devices”

Friday, July 17, 2020: Quantum Frontiers in Molecular Science

10 am MDT: Alexandra Olaya-Castro, University College London, ¨Vibronic Coherence and Synchronisation of Molecular Motions"

11 am MDT: Thomas Weinacht, Stony Brook University, ¨Time-Resolved Spectroscopy of Molecular Dynamics: Comparing Different Approaches"

Monday, July 20, 2020: XXVth International Symposium on the Jahn-Teller Effect

10 am MDT: Horst Koeppel, University of Heidelberg, "Multi-state Jahn-Teller Intersections: Nonadiabatic Dynamics and their Detection in Real Time"

11 am MDT: Spiridoula Matsika, Temple University, "Conical Intersections and Non Adiabatic Dynamics in Conjugated Molecules"

Tuesday, July 21, 2020: Multi-scale Quantum Mechanical Analysis of Condensed Phase Systems

10 am MDT: Nir Goldman, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, “Elucidating Prebiotic Chemistry Under Impact Conditions”

11 am MDT: Aurora Clark, Washington State University, "Structural and Dynamic Topology of Complex Solutions"

Wednesday, July 22, 2020: Accelerating Reaction Discovery

10 am MDT: Sarah Wengryniuk, Temple University, "Novel Umpolung Strategies Enabled by Hypervalent Iodine Reagents"

11 am MDT: Sidney Wilkerson-Hill, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, "Synthetic Strategies Inspired by Complex Natural Products"

Thursday, July 23, 2020: Information Engines at the Frontiers of Nanoscale Thermodynamics

10 am MDT: Jim Crutchfield, University of California, Davis, "Demonology: The Curious Role of Intelligence in Physics and Biology"

Friday, July 24, 2020: Iron at the Air-Sea Interface

10 am MDT: Nicholas Meskhidze, NC State University, "Atmospheric Sources of Iron to the Global Ocean and Possible Climate Effects"

11 am MDT: Hind A. Al-Abadleh, Wilfrid Laurier University, "Atmospheric Chemistry of Iron with Organics Relevant to Cloud Droplets and Wet Aerosols"

Monday, July 27, 2020: Optimizing Thermodynamic Systems

10 am MDT: Chris Essex, Western University, Cananda, "Slow Time"

11 am MDT: Ty Roach, Hawai'i Institute of Marine Biology, "Wholome Thermodynamic Feedback: The Role of Bacterial Biophysics in Ecological Processes"

Tuesday, July 28, 2020: Machine Learning and Informatics for Chemistry and Materials

10 am MDT: Olexandr Isayev, Carnegie Mellon University, “Supercharging Computational Chemistry with Machine Learning"

11 am MDT: Kipton Barros, Los Alamos National Laboratory, "Discovering Robust Inter-Atomic Potentials with Active Learning"

Wednesday, July 29, 2020: Frontiers in Metabolomics

10 am MDT: Clary Clish, Broad Institute, "Application of Metabolomics to Find Early Indicators of Disease in Human Cohorts"

11 am MDT: David Wishart, University of Alberta, "In Silico Metabolomics: Using Machine Learning to Identify the Dark Matter of the Metabolome"

Thursday, July 30, 2020: Developments in QM/MM and Embedding models for Photochemical and Electron Transfer Processes

10 am MDT: Ksenia Bravaya, Boston University, "Simulating Redox Potentials of Biomolecules: the Role of Environment Polarization"

11 am MDT: Yihan Shao, The University of Oklahoma, "Energy Densities in the Linear-Response and Real-Time Time-Dependent Density Functional Theory Calculations"

Friday, July 31, 2020: Biomolecular Interactions in the Cellular Environments

10 am MDT: Bethany Buck-Koehntop, University of Utah, "Zinc Finger DNA Methylation Readers: Epigenetic Regulators of Transcription"

11 am MDT: Scott Showalter, Penn State University, “Disordered Proteins in Control: Regulating Transcription in Eukaryotes”

Monday, August 3, 2020: Epithelial Physiology and Cell Biology

10 am MDT: Arohan (Ro) Subramanya, University of Pittsburgh, “Control of Cell Volume via Phase Separation”

11 am MDT: My Helms, University of Utah, “Alveolar Epithelial Fluid Transport in High Oxygen-Induced Lung Injury; Updates on Glutathione Disulfide Regulation of Lung ENaC”

Tuesday, August 4, 2020:

No Talks

Wednesday, August 5, 2020: Platinum Group Metal-free Electrocatalysts: Small Molecules Activation and Conversion

10 am MDT: Paul Kenis, University of Illinois, "CO2 Reduction Technologies and Their Impact"

11 am MDT: Plamen Atanassov, University of California, Irvine, "The Importance of Hydrogen in Transportation and Mobility"

Thursday, August 6, 2020: Chromatin Structure and Dynamics

10 am MDT: Yamini Dalal, National Institutes of Health, "Bungee Jumping into Chromosomes: Mapping Elasticity of Fragile Sites in the Human Genome"

11 am MDT: Lucy Bai, Pennsylvania State University, "Chemically Induced Chromosomal Interaction (CICI): A New Tool to Study Chromosome Dynamics and Its Biological Roles"

Friday, August 7, 2020: Ions in Solution: Biology, Energy, and Environment

10 am MDT: Katie Maerzke, Los Alamos National Laboratory, "First Principles Simulations of CuCl in High Temperature Water Vapor"

11 am MDT: Susan Rempe, Sandia National Laboratories, “How to Capture Carbon Inexpensively”

Monday, August 10, 2020: Organic Bioelectronics: Tackling the Mixed Conduction Challenge

10 am MDT: George Malliaras, University of Cambridge, UK, "Are Conducting Polymer Electrodes Capacitive or Faradaic?”

11 am MDT: Luisa Torsi, University of Bari, Italy, "Single Molecule Marker Detection with a Large Transistor"

Tuesday, August 11, 2020: Energy Landscapes: Structure, Dynamics and Exploration Algorithms

The three speakers will share the 2 hour lecture period from 10 am MDT to 12 pm MDT.

Christian Schön, Max Planck Institute, "The Fascinating World of Energy Landscapes - Concepts and Applications"

David Leitner, University of Nevada, “Fluctuations and Reaction Dynamics on Biomolecule Energy Landscapes”

Aurora Clark, Washington State University, "Descriptors of Energy Landscapes using Topological Data Analysis"

Wednesday, August 12, 2020: Spatio-Temporal Dynamics of Excitons: Bridging the Gap Between Quantum Mechanics and Applications

10 am MDT: Carlos Silva, Georgia Tech, "Exciton Polarons in Hybrid Organic-Inorganic Semiconductors“

11 am MDT: Dorthe Eisele, The City College of New York, "Robust Frenkel Excitons Despite Extreme Heat Stress: Stable Supramolecular Nanocomposites via Tunable, Cage-like Scaffold Design"

Thursday, August 13, 2020: Coarse-Grained Modeling of Structure and Dynamics of Biomacromolecules

10 am MDT: George Rose, Johns Hopkins University, “Protein Folding: Seeing is Deceiving”

11 am MDT: Banu Ozkan, Arizona State University, "Protein Function and Dynamics Through the Lens of Evolution"

Friday, August 14, 2020: Plasticity in Biological Organization

10 am MDT: Liam Holt, New York University, "Condensation of LINE-1 Retrotransposons (Which are Responsible for Half of your Genome)"

11 am MDT: Lucia Strader, Duke University, "ARF Transcription Factors: Protein Condensation as a Regulator of Gene Transcription"

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