American Conference of Theoretical Chemistry

This blog got somewhat neglected in the last few days of the conference … so here goes!

One of the streets in Telluride, falling off into the mountains

On Wednesday morning Sam and I got up early to set up our posters, then hurried to catch up with the rest of the group on that morning’s hike, to Bridal Veil falls. It was a beautiful morning and a challenging upward trek, but one that was made quite a bit more interesting given our destination. You see, Bridal Veil falls serve as the home of Nikola Tesla‘s power plant, which is perched atop the falls in a rather precarious manner. Two waterfalls lead down from the powerplant, and if you look closely at the picture below, you can see powerlines extending down the mountain. We sadly ran out of time to get all the way to the top, but I suppose science calls!

Tesla's power plant, on top of Bridal Veil falls

After another afternoon of talks, Sam and I headed to Wednesday’s poster session, where we each presented a poster. In all the excitement, we forgot to take a picture of us with our posters, so here’s a picture of our posters from the morning when we put them up:

The two posters we presented at ACTC: Sam's is on the left, Anna's is on the right.

The two-hour poster session gave us plenty of time to talk to the other scientists who were interested in what we were doing. Many of them were surprised that we were undergrads — which we took both as a compliment and as a sign of how great Haverford is. I got a few really good suggestions about how I could improve my poster, which I’ll be sure to take to the Undergraduate Research Symposium that Haverford hosts in September. Some comments I received on how I can improve my explanation of my project and other details I need to cover will also be really useful when I begin writing all of this up in my thesis. Overall, it was a really good — and empowering — experience to present my results to other theoretical chemists and get their impressions of my project.

After the poster session, we ended up at the Last Dollar Salloon, a dive bar in Telluride which hosted a lot of conference attendees that night. One of the things I’ve really enjoyed at this conference is how friendly the other theoretical chemists are and how willing they are to talk to us, both about what they do and about our own interests. Throughout the conference, these more informal social events have been a really nice way to meet people and get their perspectives on their work and their institutions.

We slept in on Thursday morning and took care of some work before the talks started. The ones on Thursday afternoon were probably the most directly relevant to our own work, and they were pretty stimulating. It’s exciting to see how broad this field is and how much more is out there!

On Thursday night, ACTC hosted a party complete with lawn games — cornhole (which I was miserable at) and stilts. We went to Smugglers’ again and took another ride up in the gondola to look at the stars.

Friday morning brought some final talks, mostly focused around water. I really enjoyed a talk from Professor Valeria Molinero (University of Utah), who talked about modeling water by essentially creating a new element on the computer, with assigned properties somewhere between carbon and silicon. This element was able to accurately simulate how water behaved and bonded, keeping the predictive power of the simulations while significantly reducing computational time. Overall, I’d have to say the computational tricks theoretical chemists come up with are pretty clever. As some would say, “It’s a dirty business” … but one with enormous predictive power.

We drove back to Montrose, CO on Friday afternoon, and hopped on another puddle jumper plane back to Denver. After a few hours of hanging out in the Denver airport, we parted ways: Josh and Professor Subotnik back to Philadelphia, Sam to Berkeley, and me home to Minnesota. For me, at least, the last four weeks of summer will be spent digesting, planning, and thinking… what to do after college, and where?

Even though the conference didn’t start until 1 p.m. on Tuesday, we got up bright and early to attempt the first of our Telluride mountain hikes: four miles along Bear Creek trail, which was in the “easy” category. Bear Creek began in a rather rushed manner for us, as we hurried to catch up with the rest of the group (apparently, theoretical chemists don’t keep Havertime). The hike itself was pretty spectacular, albeit rather steep (but we should have expected that, mountains and all).

Anna Brockway, Sam Blau, and Prof. Josh Schrier on the Bear Creek Trail

At the top, we reached a pretty magnificent waterfall, which was refreshing after the walk. Along the way, we chatted with the other theoretical chemists in the group, meeting several professors, some graduate students, and the undergrads from Mount Holyoke, another undergraduate institution represented at ACTC this year.

The hiking group by the waterfall

Part of this trip for us is hearing about cool science, but another part is about getting a better sense of what to look for when we’re searching for graduate schools and trying to find a best fit, both in terms of projects and atmosphere. To that end, we’ve been on the lookout for people to talk to about their experiences. Among other things, this hike presented exactly that opportunity.

Hikers (including Sam Blau and Prof. Joe Subotnick) on a rock near the waterfall

Sam Blau, Prof. Josh Schrier, and Anna Brockway near the waterfall

Although Monday’s talks were mostly geared towards biochemistry, a subject neither Sam nor I are super familiar with, Tuesday’s focused more on physical chemistry simulations, on the subjects of both electronic structure and molecular dynamics. From Professor Graeme Henkelman (University of Texas-Austin), we heard about the process of designing nanoparticle catalysts for oxygen reduction by manipulating the materials on the inner core and surrounding shell of spherical particles. This kind of approach, putting two types of atoms together to simulate the behavior of a third, is something that appeals to my continuing interest in periodic trends and the general structure of the periodic table. Another talk that stuck out to me was given by Professor Mark Ratner (Northwestern) on electron and exciton motion by tunneling (a quantum mechanical phenomenon by which a particle can go through a barrier) through a molecule connecting two electrodes. This work is somewhat analogous to the system I’m studying now, atom tunneling through a porous graphene membrane. To that end, the considerations discussed by Professor Ratner provided an intriguing way of looking at my own problem.

Tuesday night boasted the first poster session, which Sam and I got to observe (we’re presenting our posters on Wednesday night). A lot of the posters concerned fairly specific systems, but we found a few that related to our work. True to his investigative nature, Sam also spent the bulk of the poster session quizzing graduate students about their programs and institutions. If there’s anything that we’re getting out of this trip so far, it’s that there’s a lot to consider when thinking about grad school!

Walking home at night, we noticed the sky was a lot clearer than the previous nights. To capitalize on this discovery, we took the gondola up to the top of the mountain around 11 p.m. to look at the stars. Away from the streetlights of Telluride (and miles from any major city), the sight was spectacular. The stars were complemented by several shooting stars and flashes of lightning off in the distance. We made it back down the mountain before the gondola quit running for the night, ready for bed after a full day.

The first day of ACTC focused heavily on the biological aspects of theoretical chemistry, especially protein folding and protein-ligand binding affinities. Richard Friesner gave a particularly interesting talk exploring the methodology of drug discovery and the use of a tool he designed called WaterMap. WaterMap examines the thermodynamic properties of clusters of water molecules and classifies them according to their stability with respect to bulk solution. With such a map, pharmaceutical researchers can design compounds to knock out unstable waters upon binding while minimizing interactions with stable water clusters.

An example where this would have been extremely helpful is in the design of Factor 10a, an anticoagulant. Factor 10a binds in two main cavities, and WaterMap reveals that each cavity has one very unstable water. Unfortunately, WaterMap was not used during the design of this drug. Thus, for fifteen years it was unknown that all of the different compounds being tested successfully displaced one of the unstable waters while the other water was untouched. It wasn’t until 1999, twenty years after the research began that an accidentally placed benzene with a para Cl successfully knocked out the second water and lead to a successful drug.

In order to get to Telluride, CO from Philadelphia, you have to first fly to Denver. Then, you have several options. The drive to Telluride from Denver is about 6 hours. Alternatively, you can take a “puddle jumper” plane to Telluride’s own airport, which is rumored to be the highest-elevated airport in the country. A perhaps unintended consequence of this is that on hot days, the air in the mountains is even less dense than usual, and therefore can’t support as much weight. This means that if you’re unlucky enough to attempt to fly directly to Telluride on a hot day, you have about a 50% chance of being kicked off the plane to make it lighter. Your luggage, of course, goes on without you (at least, in the experience of one person we met). The three of us along with Josh’s friend, Professor Joe Subotnik from UPenn, decided to take a third route: from Denver, we took a small plane to Montrose, CO. An hour and a half’s drive later, we were in Telluride.

Telluride is a little town located way up in the mountains that seems to be a choice vacation home for skiers, mountain bikers, hikers, and generally those with a significant amount of money who want to get into nature for a while. Of course, Telluride also boasts posh homes and nice restaurants that these adventurers can return to at the end of the day (on a realtor’s sign, the cheapest home went for about $2.6 million). It’s also home to the Telluride Science Research Center (TSRC), a uniquely-located institution that spends a lot of time uniting theoretical chemists. This summer, TSRC is the host of ACTC.

The loading dock for the gondola at the top of the mountain.

Our first excursion into Telluride took us to the gondola, which runs to the top of one of the surrounding mountains for free until midnight every day. Of course, we had to check it out. On the way up, we caught a glimpse of Telluride’s (in)famous airport on a nearby cliff. “Cliff” is an appropriate word here, as the runway actually ends by dropping off a cliff. As we heard from another conference attendee later, when a plane takes off to leave Telluride Airport, it actually drops slightly over the edge of the cliff before stabilizing and flying away.

Did I mention the scenery is spectacular?

At the top of the gondola run, we were let out on a mountain that appears to be used for ski slopes in the winter, but now is a haven for mountain bikers. We walked around and took a group picture on a patch of groomed grass that we hypothesized was intended for weddings. Seriously, if you’re going to get married and have some money to spend, I can’t imagine a more thrilling and beautiful location.

Professor Joe Subotnik (UPenn), Professor Joshua Schrier, Anna Brockway, and Sam Blau at the top of the mountain.

The four of us ate at a Japanese restaurant in town along with Professor Tom Miller from Caltech, and, from our seats, witnessed one of Telluride’s annual events: our waiter told us it was part of the “nothing” festival, where about 30-40 people bike through the main street wearing pretty much… nothing. The turnout to watch was impressive, however. After dinner, the group headed to Smuggler’s, the favorite brew pub in Telluride, to finish out the night with Professor Steve Corcelli’s group, from Notre Dame.

Anna Brockway ’12 and Sam Blau ’12 are about to embark on their first-ever conference experience, to the American Conference of Theoretical Chemistry (ACTC) in Telluride, Colorado. Learn more >