​2018 Telluride Mushroom Festival
Keynote ​Lectures

​Paul Stamets, speaker, author, mycologist, medical researcher and entrepreneur is considered an intellectual and industry leader in fungi: habitat, medicinal use, and production. Paul's philosophy is that "MycoDiversity is BioSecurity." He sees the ancient old growth forests of the Pacific Northwest as a resource of incalculable value, especially in terms of its fungal genome. A dedicated hiker and explorer, his passion is to preserve and protect as many ancestral strains of mushrooms as possible from these pristine woodlands. Stamets is the author of 6 books, discovered and named numerous new species of mushrooms and is the founder and owner of a brand of Fungi Perfecti, LLC (www.fungi.com) which Host Defense Mushroom product line.

​Tradd Cotter is an EPA Fellow, Author of Organic Mushroom Farming and Mycoremediation (Chelsea Green 2014), which is the best selling book on cultivation and experimenting with fungi. He's also the co-owner of Mushroom Mountain. Mushroom Mountain first began in 1996, as a concept for a farm of the future. It wasn’t until 2005 when Tradd Cotter and Olga Katic met and began to develop the beginnings of what would become the coolest, privately owned mushroom research facilities. From humble beginnings, housing their laboratory in their two bedroom apartment closet in Boynton Beach, Florida, Olga and Tradd moved their operation to the Upstate South Carolina to begin the expansion that would now become  a world class laboratory and research facility that occupies over 50,000 square feet of available space under roof for cultivation,  mycoremediation, and medicinal research projects and houses more  than 250 species of fungi, most of them native isolates from the Eastern United States.

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The mycological community was heartbroken on March 16, 2018 to learn of Gary Lincoff’s passing. He was the greatest mycologist of my lifetime, a great friend, and a great person. Gary was an American treasure. He was larger than life. Mycophiles and fans, upon seeing him for the first time in person, were nervous to approach—he was so famous. But he was the most welcoming, the most friendly, the most giving person I knew. That any of us knew. He gave absolutely all of his time to educating others. Every person in the mycological community in North America, and beyond, knew him. If you invoke the name “Gary,” everyone knows of whom you’re speaking. Gary was a Founder of the Telluride Mushroom Festival and has been the heart and soul of the largest mushroom festival in North America for nearly 40 years. It was Gary who convinced me to accept the Telluride Institute’s offer to become Executive Director of the Festival in 2015. Lincoff starred in Know Your Mushrooms, an acclaimed documentary film about mushrooms, the Telluride Mushroom Festival, and crazy mycophiles.