Participant Testimonials
The workshop "Newton-Okounkov Bodies, Test Configurations, and Diophantine Geometry" was extremely useful for me, as I met a number of people for the first time face-to-face with whom I was in contact for quite a time, and the discussions during the week could very well be the start of some specific research projects - that is still too early to confirm. Together with the lectures these discussion provided me with astonishing new insights which will certainly find their way in new papers pretty soon. But the workshop and in particular its choice of lecturers did even better than that: it provided me with the bigger picture on how Newton-Okounkov bodies are used in a variety of disciplines in Pure Mathematics that I was not aware of before. In particular I got in contact with a group of symplectic topologists and representation theorists in Cologne that could profit from my algebraic-geometric expertise.
This was an excellent workshop. Although broadly familiar with Newton-Okounkov bodies before attending, I am no expert; the workshop was a superb opportunity to learn about the fascinating work being done. In particular, several talks indicated very strong links exist with my own areas of research, and many useful conversations with the other participants leaves me optimistic that links between my research and the work on Newton-Okounkov bodies exist and can be developed. I left the workshop excited to continue studying Newton-Okounkov bodies.
School of Mathematical Sciences, University of Nottingham
As always, my stay in BIRS center has been very productive. It was a pleasure to be at the centre as it is an excellent place. From a mathematical point of view, it provided me an opportunity to learn new techniques and to improve slightly some of my results. The talks were great and enlightened the possibility of new developments for my field. I want to thank the organizers Alex Küronya, Michael Roth, Tomasz Szemberg for their work, they did a great job.
I just returned from a five-day workshop at BIRS, and it was fantastic. There is nowhere in the world that is better suited to encouraging mathematical research than BIRS. Last week, I met people I had never met before, but whose mathematics impressed me tremendously, both in the talks and in conversation during mealtimes and in the evenings. I was infused with an energy and excitement about mathematics, new projects to think about, and new mathematical contacts to work with. I also renewed old contacts and connections, and moved at least one old project further along. A complete success!
Pure Mathematics, University of Waterloo
