I spend a lot of my spare time reading. The past few years I’ve been reading several texts about enzymes, especially their fundamental biophysics, mechanisms, quantum simulation, and design. I’m also doing some mushroom reading!

Enzymes, catalyst modeling, and catalyst design

My self-learning in the bio/chemical and enzyme literature guided me to these works:

• Richard Martin, 2017 - Electronic structure: basic theory and practical methods, 1st Ed.: To bring me up to date on modern quantum simulation methods, e.g. for transition state search and active site analysis.
• P. Frey & A. Hegeman, 2007 - Enzymatic Reaction Mechanisms: Ultimately, the best enzymes were made by nature. How do natural enzymes function? What can we learn from them?
• R. J. Silbey, R. A. Alberty, & M. G. Bawendi, 2004 - Physical Chemistry, 4th Ed.: Finishing up this tome from physical chemistry in undergrad–P chem was my favorite subject!
• D. F. Shriver, P. W. Atkins, & C. H. Langford, 1990 - Inorganic Chemistry: I didn’t get a chance to take inorganic chem in graduate school.

Mycology

These texts are my main mycological knowledge base, plus any papers I find relevant:

• Daniel Winkler, 2023 - Fruits of the forest: A field guide to Pacific Northwest edible mushrooms: A field guide.
• Noah Siegel & Christian Schwarz, 2024 - Mushrooms of Cascadia: A Comprehensive Guide to Fungi of the Pacific Northwest: A textbook-ier source text to give me solid footing in the literature.

General recommendations for my colleagues

• J. Zimring, 2019 - What science is and how it really works: I think every scientist should read this book. It’s simply the best-structured analysis of cognitive biases inherent to human existence, it separates science from non-science, and it’s made me a better scientist. I’m working my way around to a second reading soon.