Participant Testimonials
The meeting is one of the best if not the best I have attended. I met some people I have known for many years but also met more people for the first time. The scientific program was excellent, and the workshop provided a very good opportunity to hear what people are thinking about in the area of microfluidics
The workshop at BIRS was wonderful - the setting was beautiful, the accommodations and food excellent, and the scientific environment most stimulating. I met several new people, as well as old friends, and learned a significant amount of new science during my week.
This was easily the most stimulating and fun meeting that I have attended in a long time. The location is spectacular and the format of the workshop (similar to a small Gordon conference, where all participants speak) very suitable. New and old/classic ideas were discussed in a relaxed but profound level. Several opportunities for collaborations, even within my own university. Very helpful staff, excellent food and facilities. Thank you.
The workshop was very good: impeccably organized, top-notch scientific level, a spectacular location, and wonderful food! I was very impressed by the standard of the presentations: all speakers seemed genuinely concerned to put over their work in a clear and interesting way. I made several new contacts, and got ideas for problems to work on.
Chemical and Biological Engineering, University of Wisconsin-Madison
I particularly enjoyed the conference at BIRS. From a professional point of view, the format at BIRS allows for much greater interaction between participants. As everyone stays in the dorm and eats in the cafeteria, it is difficult not to form contacts. As a new worker, these sorts of contacts are invaluable to me. Work I had done impinged on two of the topics of the conference, making several of the talks directly relevant to my research. In two of these cases, the work discussed had not been published and came from fields that I wouldn't normally read the literature from. In the problem of drop coarsening, I think there's a natural collaboration to explore. At the very least, there's a different application of work I did earlier - an exciting new direction. In a more general sense, the mix of disciplines meant that I heard talks from people I would not normally see. The mix of theory and experiment made the conference particularly fruitful. Many of the participants wouldn't normally speak at conference I would attend. The organization of the conference around the topic of microfluidics, rather than a technique made this sort of interaction more likely, but credit is due to the organizers for building a program that was so well integrated.
Applied Mathematics, Northwestern University
As a student who is close to finishing my doctorate, the BIRS workshop was a great venue for networking. I was able to meet and discuss my work with the top researchers in my field in a more informal setting at the absolutely gorgeous Banff Center. The workshop not only provided a showcase for the high-impact research being conducted in this field but also facilitated group discussion by providing ample unprogrammed time in the schedule. The BIRS workshop was a wonderful experience that I believe will have a long lasting impact on my research and my career.
This workshop is definitely the highest quality workshop I have attended in the past years. The organizers assembled a great list of participants in applied math and engineering to exchange cross-cutting ideas in the thin film and microfluidics areas.
Just a quick note to say what an excellent meeting the recent workshop small scale hydrodynamics was. The quality of the science was uniformly high and the scheduling, atmosphere and venue perfect. I'm delighted that BIRS is willing to host more "applied" meetings such as this and urge you to organise related meetings in similar themes in the future.
