10 Jun Telluride Science: “Good Vibrations,” 6/16!
This coming week the 2026 Telluride Science Town Talks series continues with “Good Vibrations: Water, Proteins & Molecular Motions that Make Biology Possible.” The event features Dr. Matthias Heyden and takes place Tuesday, June 16. Doors 6 p.m.; talk, 6:30- 7:30 p.m..”
Town Talks are FREE and open to the public.
Visit telluridescience.org to learn more about Telluride Science and the capital campaign to transform the historic Telluride Depot into the Telluride Science & Innovation Center. The venue is the permanent home for Telluride Science and a global hub of inspired knowledge exchange and development where great minds get to solve great challenges.
The 2026 Telluride Science Town Talks series is presented by Alpine Bank with additional support from the Telluride Mountain Village Owner’s Association.
Go here for more about Telluride Science.
Go here for more on Town Talks.
It is something to drink when thirsty.
It is the essence of rain, rivers, oceans, and lakes.
We swim, surf, and sail in it.
We cook with, wash with, and clean with it.
It morphs into different forms: Ice, snow, steam.
It is a force of nature and a chameleon, ever-evolving and taking on many different shapes and forms.
It is water. A substance so familiar, so imbedded in our lives, that we almost never notice it, yet water is the reason everything alive exists.
Water is both ordinary and extraordinary at the same time. The more closely scientists look at it, the stranger and more remarkable water becomes.
As the writer Lawrence Henderson put it over a century ago: “Water looks almost as if it were designed for life. Modern science is still trying to fully understand why.”
This question is scheduled to be explored in depth by Dr. Matthias Heyden on Tuesday, June 16, when he speaks at a Telluride Science Town Talk titled “Good Vibrations – Water, Proteins, and the Molecular Motions that Make Biology Possible.” The event takes place at the Telluride Conference Center in Mountain Village, 6:30 – 7:30 p.m.
Dr. Heyden will demonstrate that water is far more than the aforementioned refreshing drink. Its unique molecular properties make life possible. By forming a dynamic network of weak chemical bonds, water acts as both a selective solvent and a kind of molecular lubricant, driving the assembly of cells and keeping the tiny protein machines inside them flexible and in constant motion. Understanding the role water plays in the generation of these vibrations is one of the great frontiers of modern science, with real-world implications for greener industrial chemistry and smarter, safer drug design.
In our day-to-day lives, water impacts our health and environment. Every pill you take — from ibuprofen for a headache to cough syrup for a common cold — works the way it does because of water, and causes side effects for the same reason. Understanding water more thoroughly could lead to drugs that will target only the specific proteins they are meant to affect. Within the environment, deeper knowledge of water could help us find alternatives to toxic chemical solvents used in manufacturing, reducing the amount of pollution, chemical waste, and energy consumption impacting the world around us.
We’ve been drinking a mystery our entire lives, it’s time to understand it.
Matthias Heyden, more:
Matthias Heyden, courtesy Telluride Science.
Dr. Matthias Heyden studied biochemistry in Germany and moved several times between Europe and the United States before joining Arizona State University in 2017.
Although his training began in experimental biochemistry, his research gradually shifted from spectroscopy into computer simulations of molecules, bringing together biology, physics, and computer science.
Dr. Matthias’ research group uses molecular simulations to understand how biomolecules interact and move — from diffusing through solution to changing shape, adapting to new binding partners, and catalyzing chemical reactions.
A central focus of Dr. Matthias’s team’s work is understanding the molecular origins of bio-molecular dynamics and how water enables the motions that make life possible.
Ava Yaley, more:
Ava Yaley
Ava Yaley is a rising second-year student at the University of Georgia studying Journalism and Marketing.
On campus, she is involved in Women in Media, Women in Business, Club Women’s Ice Hockey, and the Delta Gamma Sorority.
Originally from Littleton, Colorado, Ava graduated from Chatfield Senior High School in 2025.
She hopes to pursue a career in brand journalism.
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