rainbows over Telluride, singles (left panel) and doubles (right panel)

Between 29 Jul and 1 August 2013, I attended a meeting in the beautiful town of Telluride, Colorado, which is nestled in the Rocky Mountains at an elevation of 8,750 ft (2667 m). The meeting was held at the “Telluride Science Research Centre“, and was focussed on “The Role of Dynamics in Enzyme Catalyzed Reactions”.

My presentation built off a paper I wrote with some Bristol colleagues. The meeting was extremely interactive: each speaker was scheduled for 60 mins – but for most talks, there was at least as much discussion and interruption as there was presentation! For several of the attendees, I had some level of familiarity with their published work – e.g., Sunny Xie (Harvard), Amnon Kohen (Iowa), Jiali Gao (Minnesota), Judith Klinman (Berkeley), Sharon Hammes-Schiffer (Illinois), and Peter Wright (Scripps) – a pretty qualified set of folks… and they certainly grilled me! It was good fun. I also met some scientists I hadn’t know before – e.g., Pratul Agarwal, Chris Cheatum, Feng Gai, Brian Dyer, and Bob Callender – all of whom were great. The full meeting participant list is available here.

The night before my talk, I was sitting in a cafe putting the final touches on my presentation… and a massive bear nearly walked into the cafe! I reckon he smelled food left over on some plates that hadn’t yet been cleared away! Luckily, the cafe patrons slammed the door shut in time so he couldn’t get it. Good thing too: I was zoned out wearing my noise-canceling headphones, and I was sitting right next to the door he tried to walk through!