Participant Testimonials

Jul 31 - Aug 05, 2011

The meeting was superb. Aside from the stimulating formal program, I was able to meet some colleagues whose work I was unaware of and found most exciting. I expect some of those interactions will lead to real collaborations. I intend to invite at least 2 of the participants to visit our center during the next year. It also gave me a chance to reinvigorate previous relationships.

Leslie Loew Center for Cell Analysis and Modeling, University of Connecticut Health Center

The workshop was a little outside my area of expertise, so I did not know exactly what to expect. It was fabulous! I came away inspired and enthused, with many new ideas and hopefully future collaborations. The group size was perfect, there was a lot of useful discussion and I particularly enjoyed that even disagreement was constructive. The organisers deserve an enormous amount of credit for bringing together this group and inspiring this atmosphere of collegiality.

Inke Nathke Cell and Developmental Biology, University of Dundee

Again, a terrific meeting in Banff. The BIRS is the best venue I have been to for a scientific meeting. The organizers put together an outstanding program.

David Odde Dept. of Biomedical Engineering, University of Minnesota

The organizers assembled an ideally balanced group of junior/senior, female/male and physical-mathematical/biological scientists for this stimulating meeting. Everything ran on time and allowed for lots of stimulating discussions.

Thomas D. Pollard Sterling Professor of MCDB
Molecular Cellular and Developmental Biology, Yale University

This meeting was a tremendous success and multiple participants told me this was perhaps the best scientific meeting they had ever attended. The facilities, support, participants and format of the workshop were obviously significant factors, and the fact that we had absolutely perfect weather all week certainly helped as well. Brenda was also a really great asset and helped in many aspects of the planning, organization and operation of the workshop. I expressed my personal thanks to her, but I wanted you to know how valuable she was in making this a success (I'm sure you knew that already). As for BIRS, this is a very unique scientific organization with no equal. We feel privileged to have been selected, and hope that the outcomes, collaborations, and breakthroughs resulting from this meeting will help ensure the success of BIRS in the future.

David Sept Biomedical Engineering, University of Michigan