## Testimonials: The Community in Support of BIRS

Mar 05 - Mar 10, 2017

I enjoyed the workshop a lot and it was an opportunity to develop in more details a collaboration with the team of M. Chertkov at LANL. In particular we are trying to use an idea that I have presented at the workshop, about how to handle efficiently chance-constraints for the OPF problem. Thus in principle we should start a formal research collaboration between LAAS-CNRS in Toulouse and LANL in New Mexico (USA).

LAAS-CNRS and Institute of Mathematics, LAAS-CNRS 7, Toulouse
Feb 26 - Mar 03, 2017

On one side, the facilities provided by BIRS and the Banff Center are excellent; living there is so easy and confortable that you can keep your mind occupied with the scientific problems and, at the same time, you forget you are working. This is an extremely rewarding experience that you bring to all of us and will not be forgotten at all. The information provided along the whole process is very clear and all is prepared to arrive at Banff and work efficiently. The lodging quality is excellent, as well as the food in the restaurant, and the leisure activities. I have been recently serving as deputy director of the CRM in Barcelona (www.crm.cat), so I can imagine the quantity of time and material resources you have to put to reach this level of efficiency. I must confess that, even though I am proud of the services of CRM to the community, I feel a "healthy envy" of the way BIRS runs. So, let me give my congratulations in this sense. On the other hand, I appreciate very much the job made by Susanne Ditlevsen, Priscilla Greenwood and Andre Longtin in organizing this workshop. They were able to put together a group of excellent persons, with common interests but non-coincident backgrounds, and with a sincere desire to understand each other's work. More personally speaking, I come from dynamical systems theory and I've been working mainly on deterministic treatment of brain dynamics with an increasing interest in statistics and stochastic processes. In this conference, I have felt how my research caught the attention of other participants as they kept asking me about many aspects related also to their research. At the end, I came back home with a long list of stimulating suggestions as well as a group of colleagues which whom I can eventually interact in the future. I wish I could say the same of every meeting I'm attending! Summing up, I think it has been one of the best meetings I have ever attended and I am very grateful to BIRS for this opportunity.

Mathematics, Universitat Politèchnica de Calatunya

The outstanding combination of focused research talks, long breaks, and meals with colleagues is an ideal combination for facilitating discussion and generating new research ideas. I can count about five different projects I conceived of while at the BIRS workshop last week. A very important aspect of these meetings is that they are small and focused, so my mind remains in the same ballpark of topics throughout the week. Everyone's research is well connected. The impact of stochasticity on synchronization and network dynamics is a central focus of my own research, so it was great to find colleagues to talk to about this from around the globe.

Assistant Professor
Feb 19 - Feb 24, 2017

This has been a great worshop. The limited participation has allowed the exchange of ideas among all participants, the program was very interesting and, although intense, it allowed time for discussion and collaborations. I thank both the organisers and the BIRS and the Banff Centre for allowing this conference in such a wonderful place.

Clara Grazian Nuffield Department of Medicine, University of Oxford

I appreciated a lot my stay at BIRS. The workshop was so intense that it will for sure have a significant impact on my research activities. Thank you for providing us such a nice place to work.

Jean-Michel Marin Universite de Montpellier
Feb 12 - Feb 17, 2017

This workshop enriched a lot my view of the field, from the more computational aspects (reconstruction of species trees and phylogenetic networks) to the more theoretical ones (BHV tree space, combinatorics of tree-child networks). But it especially allowed me to get in closer contact with colleagues interested in similar mathematical problems as I, triggering possibly new collaborations (with Charles Semple and Steve Evans on the one hand, with James Degnan and Noah Rosenberg, on the other hand).

Prof.
LPMA - Box 188, UPMC Univ Paris 06
Feb 05 - Feb 10, 2017

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.

Thomas Eckl Department of Mathematical Sciences, University of Liverpool

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.

Associate Professor in Geometry
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.

Julien Keller I2M, Aix-Marseille-University

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!

Professor
Pure Mathematics, University of Waterloo
Jan 29 - Feb 03, 2017

The workshop was absolutely interesting to me. It gave an update of the works in the field and some ideas for future work. I really enjoy the nice environment and the chance to talk to lots of people.

Scientific Computing, Florida State University

This was one of the best workshops that I have ever attended. And I do not say this lightly. The technical content was good, the atmosphere was great, the BANFF facilities were impeccable, and I have discovered the joy of loosing your phone for two days. Not only I enjoyed the talks and the evening discussions, but I also found time to get some work done at night. In summary, it was a memorable stay. I hope there will be more conferences and workshops organized at BIRS.

Aeronautics and stronautics, Stanford University
Jan 22 - Jan 27, 2017

This workshop brought together mathematicians and theoretical physicists in a very stimulating setting. In particular, I was able to discuss my proposed research on Double Field Theory Cosmology" and obtain excellent encouragement and feedback from participants.

Physics Department, McGill

It was a nice chance to get some new ideas and perspectives from discussions. Of course new collaborations were planned during this workshop. Also it was a nice opportunity to get information about a job vacancies or status.

Kanghoon Lee Institute for Basic Science

The workshop in the stunning setting of the BIRS was a great success! The tradition of roughly annual meetings of the members of the community of our field was upheld by many interesting talks and discussions. Important open questions and future directions of research were identified and collaborations solidified. I presented some of my recent results and had the chance to discuss them with the leading experts in our field. I was also able to continue long standing collaborations and used the workshop to network with other members of our community. It is nice to get to know collaborators and fellow researchers better not only on a professional but also personal level. The intimate nature of the workshop in an amazing environment was the perfect setting to achieve this.

Felix Rudolph Dr.
Arnold Sommerfeld Center for Theoretical Physic, LMU Munich

This was an excellent workshop, with a well-chosen group of participants, and well thought-out schedule of talks. The topics were quite wide-ranging from cosmology at one end to more formal differential geometry at the other. While there were many very useful discussions, for my own research two areas stood out: first was the general discussion of the nature of doubled geometries, something which was a central theme of the workshop, and where very useful insights came from many different participants. The other was much more specific: how to understand the moduli space of integrable generalised structures, and here it was very helpful to interact with mathematicians at the workshop. In particular, I had some very useful conversations on the general picture of L-infinity algebras in deformation theory. This will have important implications for up-coming papers.

Daniel Waldram Professor
Department of Physics, Imperial College London
Jan 15 - Jan 20, 2017

Theoretical aspects of my research have been greatly enhanced by this workshop. It was very very stimulating, and opened a whole new area of networks that I would otherwise not have. In particular, I am now able to understand and contribute to an area of oceanography related to Lagrangian coherent structures. This area has much overlap with areas in maths and physics, such as dynamical systems, statistical physics, and geometry. There will certainly be new papers to arise from this work, and hopefully many years of fruitful collaborations and interactions that would not be available sans BIRS. I am stoked!

research scientist
Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory, National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration

The BIRS workshop has had a strong impact on my current research. I was able to present my scientific results to colleagues I would like not have reached otherwise. Conversely, they have stimulated new thoughts and gave my fresh insights. I have started a new collaboration, and I am optimistic that some upcoming results will have originated during this workshop.

Zentrum Mathematik - M3, Technische Universität München
Dec 04 - Dec 09, 2016

During workshop "Analytic Versus Combinatorial in Free Probability", I had really many discussions with other participants, and got new ideas from other participants. Some interesting comments of other participants were helpful for my research. I think I also contributed to other participants' research. Some new collaborations were started, which would not have been without the workshop.

Hokkaido University

The workshop I attended allowed me to move forward in existing collaborations and projects but also gave me the opportunity to meet the best specialists in the field (as a newcomer, I had met only the European ones before), make new contacts and start discussing with them new collaborations. I had heard in France of BIRS as one of the world best conference venues in mathematics, I can confirm now this is indeed the case!

Mathematics, Université de Nice Sophia-Antipolis
Nov 27 - Dec 02, 2016

The workshop was a fantastic experience. The setting is enough to enthuse all participants. I met my collaborators from all around the world, and generated some new prospects for collaboration as well. The facilities at BIRS are one of the best! I also need to mention the amazing views and opportunities to explore the outdoors after and in-between the workshop. Overall, it was a very enriching experience. Thank you, BIRS!

Culham Centre for Fusion Energy, UK

This is one of the best uses of funding for research! It is a unique proposition to gather so many experts (and budding researchers) in the same place, without distraction, for an extended period of time.

Professor
Nov 20 - Nov 25, 2016

My participation in the BIRS workshop has been a wonderful professional development opportunity. I had the opportunity to meet new contacts working in complementary fields and have begun plans for a multi-country collaborative research proposal submission related to antimicrobial resistance and stewardship. Several of my students and postdocs attended and their participation has expanded their networks and allowed them to interact with scientists in a manner which is not typical when graduate students encounter more senior scientists in their field at a regular meeting. The fresh insight I gained will have a significant impact on my research in the coming year.

Department of Population Medicine, University of Guelph
Nov 13 - Nov 18, 2016

I was able to make substantial progress on some long standing problems because I was able to spend time with my collaborators in a setting that is conducive to mathematical research.

Kay Magaard Mathematics, University Birmingham

This was a very inspiring workshop with well-prepared talks. I liked in particular the wide range of topics discussed. This allowed me to learn about new developments in subjects outside my immediate field of research.

Fachbereich Mathematik, Technische Universität Kaiserslautern

BIRS provides a wonderful mix of beauty and scientific stimulation.

Computer Science, The University of Auckland

The workshop was excellent. I really enjoyed the diversity in the research areas of the conference. The workshop was especially important for me as I had extended time to discuss a large joint project with my coauthor Donna Testerman.

Gary Seitz Emiritus Professor
mathematics, University of Oregon

I very much enjoyed the workshop and the lectures. I also got to work intensely with Prof. Aschbacher on a new project, as well as to continue my collaboration with Prof. Magaard on a joint project. Both of these projects are related to some of the main themes of the workshop.

Mathematics, University of Arizona

The BIRS workshop Permutation Groups was a productive and enjoyable meeting, which brought together researchers from model theory, permutation group theory, and locally compact group theory. My research primarily considers locally compact groups, and this meeting introduced me model-theoretic and number-theoretic sources of locally compact groups. The meeting also afforded ample time to discuss ongoing projects with collaborators. Overall, it was a great experience, and I look forward to my next opportunity to attend a BIRS meeting!

Riley Visiting Assistant Professor
Department of Mathematical Sciences, Binghamton University
Nov 06 - Nov 11, 2016

It was a very enjoyable meeting, with a number of interesting presentations and potential for collaborations. With Abbas and Yuval, we have already solved one problem: Given an arbitrary graph, the push/pull rumour spreading model has a discrete time and continuous time versions. We can show that on a graph of sie n, the continuous time version is at most n^{1/3} faster than the discrete time version, which is best possible. This should be written soon. I have also been discussing other questions with Ewa (on avoidance coupling) Yuval and Elisabetta (diameter of SPA models), and have hope for some new results there.

Mathematics, University of British Columbia

The workshop was definitely a highlight of the year - stimulating talks, interactions and open problems, keeping me at the forefront of the field, new contacts and one new collaboration.

School of Mathematics, The University of Bristol

The workshop was really great. I have learnt some new results and also spent a lot of time collaborating with other researchers.

Western Michigan University

This was a fantastic workshop, and I got to know more closely a few major figures in my community. Especially the informal gatherings during meals were very beneficial in communicating with other participants, and I made a few very good contacts.

Computer Science, University of British Columbia

I am very happy about my visit at BIRS last week, because I feel very inspired by it. I got to know new people to collaborate with and many new questions/problems for my research. I am also very grateful to the organizers. It was very well and smoothly organized. I hope that there will be further opportunities for me to come to Banff in the future!

Markus Schepers Mathematical Institute, Utrecht University
Oct 30 - Nov 04, 2016

The workshop "Theoretical and computational aspects of nonlinear surface waves" was of very high quality and the discussions were fruitful. These discussions led to a new derivation and possibly the discovery of an exact solution. The afternoon walks on Wednesday and Friday were useful in getting to know people better and for understanding more mathematics. BIRS is ideally located to induce free thinking. Finally, it was a pleasure to be a sideline participant, as a mathematician, in the Adventure Filmmaker's workshop.

School of Mathematics, University of Leeds

The website is inviting, nice, efficient and useful for the communitation of the information and material for the Workshop.

Professor
Mathematics/Mechanics Section, University of Oslo

Very well organized workshop. Interesting talks. I developed new ideas and worked with several of my collaborators.

Jean-Marc Van-den-Broeck Mathematics, University College London
Oct 23 - Oct 28, 2016

It was generally useful for me to meet people in the analytic combinatorics area, and see their technique and results. More directly, from the conference I am led to work of Pemantle and Wilson which I'm optimistic will provide tools to finish a proof of an old open problem I've been stalled on for years.

Mathematics, University of Maryland

The workshop brought me new problems, new collaborations, and new techniques. I also had the opportunity to advertise the job positions open in my team.

math team, Bell Labs France, Nokia

The workshop helped me to meet with some colleagues and it turned out that we are working on closely related questions. A research collaboration has been initiated and within the frame of this collaboration I have an invitation to Taiwan in the following weeks. I wish your organization a long and prospering future.

School of Mathematics and Statistics, Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology

This was a stunning event in the most beautiful area imaginable. I don't travel much, so it was a chance to see several people again after a long interruption.

Helmut Prodinger Prof
Mathematics, Stellenbosch University
Oct 16 - Oct 21, 2016

It has been great to meet with many of the active researchers in the area, and the workshop helped me (and hopefully also other participants) to see which interesting topics and methods are currently being explored. We collected a number of intriguing open problems and made a good progress on resolving some of them.

Computer Science Institute, Charles University

The trip was very fruitful for me. I learned new ideas and new topics and started a couple of new collaborations. The organizers are great.

Mathematics, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Based on work completed at BIRS I have started a new paper with a new collaborator. I hope to continue working together.

School of Mathematical Sciences, Monash University
Oct 09 - Oct 14, 2016

The BIRS workshop was an outstanding opportunity to make new connections and renew old friendships with colleagues who are leaders in my field. The time spent together in meals, in the workshop itself, and relaxing in the lounge helped forge our community of scholars. As a mid-career academic, these connections will be critical for my career and for creating new research opportunities for my students.

Alisa Clyne Drexel University

Excellent workshop, great science, and wonderful discussions. A lot of new connections that will be very helpful to our continued research, as well as new collaborations started at BIRS.

Mathematics, University of British Columbia

The beautiful setting and excellent facilities created an appealing environment and contributed to a highly successful meeting.

Yu-Li Wang Carnegie Mellon University
Sep 25 - Sep 30, 2016

The experience of participating in such an international conference will be important for young researchers in the job market. It is not only a great honor but also allows young people to get to know senior people. I learned a lot of new rapidly developing subjects. I will combine them with my current research.

Assistant Professor
Mathematics, Kyoto University

The BIRS complex is a wonderful place for professional mathematics meetings. Of course the surroundings are breathtaking with the backdrop of the beautiful mountains. More importantly, the facilities are top notch, and the conference staff attended to all our or requests. I look forward to returning to BIRS again in the future. It is a special place.

Department of Mathematics, Emory University
Sep 23 - Sep 25, 2016

This meeting, while short, was very good. In particular, it provided an extremely timely occasion to meet with Noah Forman of Oxford and exchange ideas concerning some long standing problems.

Mathematics, University of British Columbia

The Retreat for Young Researchers in Stochastics at BIRS was well organized. It provided a valuable opportunity to present my research and an occasion to learn recent and exciting results on a variety of topics.

PIMS postdoctoral fellow in Stochastics
Department of Mathematics, University of British Columbia

The BIRS Retreat for Young Researchers in Stochastics was a very enjoyable and valuable weekend. I had the opportunity to present my research and had interesting discussions about it. I also had the chance to meet new researchers and reconnect with people I have met before. I hope this retreat becomes a tradition for years to come, as it is clearly very valuable for the community.

Postdoctoral Researcher
Theory Group, Microsoft Research

The BIRS Retreat for Young Researchers in Stochastics provided a wonderful opportunity for postdocs and graduate students in probability, from universities in Saskatchewan, Alberta, British Columbia, and Washington, to meet, to share ideas, to present their research, and to get to know one another. This is a valuable exercise in community building, as well as a chance for participants to learn the latest results from a wide spectrum of topics related to stochastics.

Professor
Department of Mathematics, University of British Columbia

BIRS is a great place to meet great researchers, including the young ones, to create new projects and new contacts. The last retreat for Young Researchers in Stochastics supported this idea one more time.

Mathematics and Statistics, University of Calgary
Sep 18 - Sep 23, 2016

A few years from now, the workshop will likely be considered a milestone in the theory of integrodifference equations. Analysts, modellers and ecologists all exchanging ideas, problems, questions. A great deal of mutual understanding and appreciation emerged and many new ideas were born.

Mathematics and Statistics, University of Ottawa
Sep 02 - Sep 04, 2016

All is wonderful!

Xiaojian Xu Mathematics and Statistics, Brock University
Aug 28 - Sep 02, 2016

The workshop was very well organized, covering a broad range of fundamental and applied topics dealing with nano-scale phenomena. The stimulating discussion and interactions between researches were facilitated by means of well-structured study groups. The program was quite intense, and allowed one to gain valuable insight into many inter-related methodologies across a number of disciplines, from classical statistical physics to quantum solid matter physics. I would like to thank the organizers, and particularly Prof. Roderick Melnik for the efforts in bringing together a very diverse collective of researchers from different fields of study.

Dr
Chemical Engineering, Imperial College London
Aug 19 - Aug 21, 2016

We would like to thank you and BIRS for the superb venue and for the organization that made our workshop so successful. It provided an opportunity to have a wide range of research scientists discuss a vision for developing open source simulation and inversion software that can accelerate research progress and increase communication and collaboration among computational geoscientists. It is clear that many researchers are attempting to change their views about protectionism of software and intellectual property but the mechanisms by which this is achieved in practice are not established. This workshop provided an opportunity to discuss a potential framework that would break down these barriers and allow scientists from different disciplines in geoscience, such as seismology, potential fields, electromagnetics and hydrogeology, and working with different computer languages, to communicate on computational matters and to work on problems of mutual interest. There was great enthusiasm for the development of the framework and the seeds have thus been planted.

Professor
Earth Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences, University of British Columbia
Aug 07 - Aug 12, 2016

The workshop was an excellent, and unique, opportunity to meet colleagues from academia, industry, the commercial sector, etc. and to work with them closely on the exciting possibility of 'internationalising' our efforts in the area of multiphase flows. The venue for the workshop in BIRS was absolutely ideal in providing the perfect vehicle to make significant progress towards this goal: it fostered close, and frequent interactions between the delegates, and a perfect environment for fruitful discussions; also, everything at BIRS works like clockwork, which helps a great deal! This is now the third workshop at BIRS that I have been involved with, and it has become my go-to place for holding workshops when I want to be assured of a positive outcome. I can recommend it to colleagues enthusiastically, and without any hesitation.

Professor
Chemical Engineering, Imperial College London

Absolutely, a workshop to remember! I made many new contacts I wouldn't have had otherwise and new collaborations have been initiated thanks to BIRS workshop. Not to mention the sharing of the latest research findings in my discipline from many different groups of researchers from Canada and abroad in a very relaxing and beautiful environment. Overall, this BIRS workshop was one of my top-two best workshop/conference experience ever. Thanks to all BIRS staff members who made this experience so enjoyable.

David Vidal Research Associate
Chemical Engineering, PolyTec

A very well organized workshop in a unique place that offers all that workshop participants expect to have to foster the highest possible level of interaction. At a more personal level, this workshop offered me the opportunity to meet and discuss with people at length that I had not had a chance to meet before. This will certainly lead to new collaborations both with other academic groups and potentially with industry. The scientific quality of the talks was very high, with top-of-the-field results presented and fruitful discussions that will undoubtedly influence my current research. An idea that emerged over the workshop is the interest in several research groups to team up together (instead of being competitors) and with an industrial partner to address a major scientific issue related to an operational problem of the industrial partner. This is very promising. In conclusion, a high quality workshop that created many new research opportunities.

Mathematics, University of British Columbia
Jul 31 - Aug 05, 2016

In this workshop the best researchers on this area well gathered, and I get a very good idea of the edge research in this area.

Postdoctoral Fellow
Computer Science, University of British Columbia
Jul 24 - Jul 29, 2016

The workshop was very fruitful for my research

YoungJu Choie Professor
Mathematics, POSTECH

One week at BIRS gave me a year's worth of new ideas and projects to tackle. BIRS workshops are some of some of the most fruitful conferences I've ever attended, thanks to their camaraderie, beautiful atmosphere, and intense mathematical focus.

Mathematics, University of Minnesota
Jul 17 - Jul 22, 2016

I really liked the structure of the workshop and how the organizers grouped together talks having a common theme. The talks were very inspiring and a thorough overview of the field was provided. The workshop helped me to establish new research contacts as well as to renew the old ones. I also had very stimulating discussions with other participants. Overall my experience could not have been better and I am very grateful to the organizers and BIRS for this opportunity.

Anna Sakovich Associate Senior Lecturer
Mathematics, Uppsala University

The immediate availability of lectures was very helpful. I frequently replayed parts of lectures in the evening and when I missed a lecture, I was able to watch it over lunch break. At this BIRS program, I completed one collaborative project and started two new ones.

Mathematics Department, City University of New York
Jul 10 - Jul 15, 2016

The workshop was very interesting and the accommodation by BIRS and by the Banff Centre was excellent; everything went smoothly and friendly.

Professor
Department of Mathematics, Universita` di Pisa

The BIRS setting helped me to switch immediately into research mode.

Full Professor
Mathematics, University of Koeln

The participation at BIRS had a very positive impact on my current research. It enabled me to discuss problems of common scientific interest with several top scientists in the field including Andrea Cianchi, Tobias Weth and more. The workshop had similar (and equally, maybe even more important) affect on my PhD student Lenka Slavikova. The workshop also started some new collaborations. The overall affect on my scientific work of the workshop is very positive. I am very grateful for the possibility to participate. Results of the discussions will appear in some of my next scientific papers.

Department of Mathematical Analysis, Faculty of Mathematics and Physics of the Charles University in Prague

BIRS is a perfect location for workshops, discussions and research. Thanks for giving us this opportunity and for your perfect organization.

Dipartimento di Matematica e Informatica , Università di Firenze

The workshop was a great source of inspiration, and it allowed me to continue - with new ideas - a joint work on a challenging research project in which we got stuck in recent years. Needless to say to anyone who already spent time at BIRS, the facility provided everything imaginable to establish perfect conditions for a successful research stay. I would like to thank the BIRS management and staff for creating and maintaining this unique research environment and for giving me the chance to benefit from it again.

Prof. Dr.
Department of Computer Science and Mathematics, University of Frankfurt
Jul 03 - Jul 08, 2016

STRATOS is a new initiative with members from all over the world (15 countries, 4 continents). The center, environment, people and the atmosphere at BIRS was just perfect for the first general meeting of STRATOS. We had a very enjoyable and productive week with severe progress of all topic groups and many panels. Participants expressed the strong wish having a similar meeting soon. THANK YOU VERY MUCH!

Center for Medical Biometry and Medical Informatics, Medical Center - University of Freiburg

It was a great time and a good opportunity to continue discussion with old colleagues and to start new discussion with new colleagues. At least three new papers are now planned together with other participants.

Professor
Center for Medical Biometry and Medical Informatics, Medical Center - University of Freiburg
Jun 26 - Jul 01, 2016

This outstanding workshop was very much timely. I got to hear about the cutting edge results and discuss maths with the leading experts in the field. The insights I gained during this activity will certainly guide me through many of my ongoing projects and will be the inspiration for many others.

Assoc. Prof.
Mathematics, Koc University of Istanbul

I thank BIRS and the organizers of the workshop for setting up an exciting program of talks and for providing a stimulating atmosphere for discussions. The location is spectacular and the practical side of the workshop was run in a very effective and smooth way. I enjoyed the week very much and went home with new thoughts to be pursued.

Mathematisches Institut Muenster

Very stimulating, good talks, much space for discussions.

Mathematisches Institut, Heidelberg University
Jun 19 - Jun 24, 2016

It's a bit early to tell what results will come out of this conference, but a number of the talks have raised questions I'd like to think about carefully. At the moment I'm concentrating on the ones from Fernando Muro's talk, I believe I may know the techniques to address one of his questions. The workshop certainly inspired me.

Centre for Mathematics and its Applications, Australian National University
Jun 12 - Jun 17, 2016

This was a valuable meeting and I thank BIRS for hosting it. The treatment of extreme events is of huge interest in the climate science community, driven by the idea that the most significant impacts of global warming will be found in the increased frequency or intensity of extremes. However, there has been relatively little engagement of the statistics research community in this enterprise. Meetings like this one help a great deal to further those interactions. From a personal research perspective, it was very useful to me to hear both from meteorologists about how they formulate and address the questions of weather extremes (e.g. the talks by Erich Fischer and Hayley Fowler on extreme precipitation) and from methodological statisticians, such as Raphael Huser and Brian Reich, about new approaches to spatial extremes. I had several opportunities for conversations with my research collaborator Michael Wehner and it is likely that within the next few months we will submit the following paper: R.L. Smith and M. Wehner, Influence of Climate Change on Extreme Weather Events. This paper has been in preparation for some time but was advanced by our discussions during the workshop. You have a wonderful system for taking videos automatically and broadcasting them almost immediately. I wish we could get something like that set up at SAMSI! I know the NSF team were impressed when they visited last year.

University of North Carolina Chapel Hill

This was a valuable meeting and I thank BIRS for hosting it. The treatment of extreme events is of huge interest in the climate science community, driven by the idea that the most significant impacts of global warming will be found in the increased frequency or intensity of extremes. However, there has been relatively little engagement of the statistics research community in this enterprise. Meetings like this one help a great deal to further those interactions. From a personal research perspective, it was very useful to me to hear both from meteorologists about how they formulate and address the questions of weather extremes (e.g. the talks by Erich Fischer and Hayley Fowler on extreme precipitation) and from methodological statisticians, such as Raphael Huser and Brian Reich, about new approaches to spatial extremes. I had several opportunities for conversations with my research collaborator Michael Wehner and it is likely that within the next few months we will submit the following paper: R.L. Smith and M. Wehner, Influence of Climate Change on Extreme Weather Events. This paper has been in preparation for some time but was advanced by our discussions during the workshop. I would like to make two broader comments about BIRS. First, you have a wonderful system for taking videos automatically and broadcasting them almost immediately. I wish we could get something like that set up at SAMSI! I know the NSF team were impressed when they visited last year.

University of North Carolina Chapel Hill
Jun 05 - Jun 10, 2016

BIRS is an excellent forum for discussion. My time there was well-spent; I made some great connections and heard some very interesting presentations.

Institut de Recherche Mathematique Avancee

The BIRS workshops are an excellent tool to make progress in research, to get access to new results and to exchange ideas and results with colleagues. It is also a perfect opportunity to establish new collaborations and to meet potential candidates for PhD or postdoc. Meeting former students or postdocs is also a great opportunity. The beautiful surrounding and the facilities are very positive to stimulate research.

Professor
Mechanics/Applied Mathematics, Aix Marseille Université
May 29 - Jun 03, 2016

This workshop has introduced me to a new field of research that is very much related to my current research interests. It is refreshing to see how the tools I am using can also be applied in other areas of science. In addition, I have met new colleagues with whom I will likely collaborate.

Department of Science, University of Alberta

I met many outstanding scholars at this BIRS workshop, and learned a lot from them. I also will have collaborations with some of them in the near future. Besides, the beautiful environment and excellent service helped our discussions very much as well. I sincerely thank BIRS for that.

Applied Mathematics, Feng Chia University

BIRS and BIRS-like worshops with their limited number of participants and given focused topics are more efficient than any mass scientific meeting. Moreover, administration staff is very thoughtful. Last, but not least, environment is more than adequate.

Marc Thiriet Université Pierre et Marie Curie (Paris VI -- Sorbonne Universités), team INRIA-UPMC-CNRS REO

Participation in the BIRS workshop impacts my current research, and this inspired me new research ideas.

Dr.
Applied Mathematics, National University of Kaohsiung

Mathematical molecular biophysics is emerging field. Molecular biology is the foundation for life science, which is becoming more and more quantitative than ever before. Mathematics has a great potential to advance the current understanding of molecular biophysics. This workshop is a timing effort in addressing important issues in mathematical molecular biophysics. Advanced mathematics, such differential geometry, variational PDEs, discrete mathematics, numerical analysis, stochastic analysis, was involved in the modeling and computation of biomolecular systems. The organizers did a wonderful job in putting everything together. The BIRS staff were extremely helpful as well. Participants are mostly world top experts in the field. I am quite sure that this workshop will have a long lasting impact in mathematical biophysics.

Mathematics, Michigan State University
May 22 - May 27, 2016

My time at BIRS was helpful to me in a number of ways: I was able to make great progress on a joint paper I'm working on with a colleague who attended the same conference; I was able to personally meet and talk with several mathematicians whose work I've been influenced by; I was given an idea for a future research project by a senior researcher who was interested in the results I described at BIRS; a discussion with a colleague made me aware of some simplifications that could be made to a paper I recently submitted (which I then revised and resubmitted); and lastly, not having any obligations besides attending lectures and eating meals, I was able to get a good bit of writing done.

Mathematics, Johns Hopkins University/University of Washington

BIRS provides an excellent setting for focused work. I came away with new ideas and better understanding of old ideas.

Mathematics, Ohio State University Newark
May 15 - May 20, 2016

The workshop last week was amazingly productive and inspiring! I just posted text on my blog about it: http://eladhari.blogspot.se/2016/05/computational-modelling-in-games-at.html I cannot thank you enough for making this possible! I have at least three papers in the pipe that will come out of this :)

Otter Play

The working group sessions during the workshop were wonderful. The atmosphere of The Banff Center contributed to a sense of escape and getting away, which creating a strong environment for collaborative exploration of new research ideas and directions. I left the workshop with multiple new project ideas, and deepened connections with other researchers in the field.

Professor
Computational Media, Univ. of California Santa Cruz
May 08 - May 13, 2016

My recent participation in a BIRS workshop has had a critical impact on my research. The topic of the workshop was relatively new to me, and the workshop provided a unique forum to disseminate my work, receive feedback from the best researchers in the field, meet these researchers, and obtain a unique perspective on the field.

Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya

It was a great occasion to exchange knowledge and learn what other people do. I met new people that I am thinking to collaborate with.

Anna Pandolfi A POROUS BRITTLE DAMAGE MATERIAL MODEL
Dipartimento di Ingegneria Civile ed Ambientale, Politecnico di Milano, Italy
May 01 - May 06, 2016

I do consider the logistic and hospitality of BIRS perfect. I do not think that you need to make any changes. I am grateful for a very good conference which gave me certainly new insights. It was important to me to renew contacts , say, with Jorg Winkelmann and I met for the first time Franc Forstneric whose work on Oka manifolds and h-principle is rather important for my research. I think that my contact with Rafael Andrist was quite helpful for his coming paper and for my own understanding of the subject. It is too early to speak about new results or projects but they are much more plausible now and not only with the three people I mentioned before (whose scientific interest is close to mine). I was rather impressed with some other talks. Say, I suspect that the talk of Alex Tumanov may be helpful for my study of exotic structures on Euclidean spaces. These personal contacts with top experts are crucial for serious research and I applaud to all four organizers for bringing so many good people together.

Professor
Mathematics, University of Miami

I became more familiar with the state of the art in several complex variables and I've got new ideas for my research. I'm thinking on a new research project and possible collaborations.

Alexander Rashkovskii professor
Mathematics and Natural Sciences, Stavanger University

I spend a very nice stay in Banff. The workshop was very interesting and the schedule quite reasonable. The accommodation as well as the food was perfect. This is a really nice place for exchanging ideas, learning what is going on on the filed of complex analysis and complex geometry. My stay was very pleasant and I learned so much about the state of the art on these fields. I would like to thank the organizers as well as the host institution BIRS for providing excellent conditions for research and exchanges. Moreover this is a great place from all point of views. Please keep going and good luck.

Ahmed Zeriahi Professor
Institut de Mathématiques de Toulouse, Universite Paul Sabatier (Toulouse)
Apr 24 - Apr 29, 2016

An extremely productive week in a very friendly and special environment. Thank you Maria, Kristine, Kathryn and Brenda for making this workshop possible. It certainly had a very positive impact on my research and motivation level.

Mathematics, Freie Universität Berlin

I truly enjoyed my week in Banff. As this was the Women in Topology II program, we have been working on projects in groups, and this week was very productive for my team. The workshop provided a great opportunity to meet people in the community, work and discuss in a relaxed environment, and form new collaborations. Thanks to the organizers for making this happen!

Dr.
MPIM Bonn

The week at BIRS for WIT2 was the most productive week I've had in a long time!

Vesna Stojanoska University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

I had an excellent week. In a group of new collaborators we were able to completely outline the proof of a rather nice theorem, one I had been hoping to prove for a while.

Ulrike Tillmann Mathematics, Oxford University

I very much enjoyed this workshop. Our team had a productive week, making good progress on various aspects of our project. The workshop also provided an excellent opportunity to meet women in topology.

Professor
School of Mathematics and Statistics, University of Sheffield
Apr 15 - Apr 17, 2016

This workshop gave me a really good opportunity to connect with other number theorists in Alberta! There is nobody at my university in the same research area as I am, so I find workshops like this extremely valuable.

Assistant Professor
King's University
Apr 03 - Apr 08, 2016

The workshop I attended did a great job at bringing together people from different fields, united in their desire to understand certain asymptotic algebraic structures arising from problems in algebraic geometry, topology, and even statistics. It helped me tremendously to hear how people from other areas think and speak about these structures. Their language and point of view is in several aspects more efficient than what my co-authors and I were doing so far, while on the other hand, I believe that our problems provide good testing ground for theory to be developed further in the near future.

Mathematics and Computer Science, TU Eindhoven

The opinion of many participants about the meeting was excellent. From my point of view there are three main reasons for this: 1. The facilities provided by the Banff Station and BIRS are of very high quality, 2. the organizers put together several communities of algebraists/geometers around an interesting subject. 3. the specialists in such subject make the effort to explain us, no specialists, the meaning, origin and main results of the problem. I hope that as a by product of the conference will start several new scientific collaborations. Thank you very much for the job that you are doing at BIRS

Algebra i Geometria, University of Barcelona Spain

This was one of the best workshops I have participated in. The goal (so I imagine) was to introduce researchers interested in algebraic geometry/commutative algebra to recent spectacular developments in homological stability and twisted commutative algebras. In this the workshop has been were very successful, and I except with profit to both communities.

Mathematics, University of Utah
Apr 01 - Apr 03, 2016

I thoroughly enjoyed the opportunity to work with many different mathematicians from any different organizations. There were many insights and ideas shared. I really appreciated ideas that showed math in many contexts such as building, making, creating, exploring. Seeing number as an amount and in a three dimensionality as magnitude was a new understanding. As well, the website shared by the Alberta Regional Consortium: http://learning.arpdc.ab.ca/course/view.php?id=351 will be extremely helpful to teachers to understand the curriculum, to understand common vocabulary with definitions and to have resources to help teach it. As well, having a section for parents is very helpful to give them ideas for what to do at home with their children. Tying all the activities, vocabulary, and resources to the Alberta Math Curriculum is also very helpful. Thank you for this opportunity and it would be wonderful to get together again to further our discussions and further our knowledge.

Kathy Hall teacher
James Short Memorial School, Calgary Board of Education

Participation in this workshop helped me to identify strong connections between the mathematics curriculum and approaches such as Maker Space and Design Thinking. These connections are usually not explicit in the curriculum and, with the help of participating teachers, we found some emphasis on the very notion of number that should be addressed explicitly in the early years to develop a more complete notion of number. Numbers are used for many purposes and with diverse meanings. The current curriculum stresses the meaning of number as quantity (e.g. number of objects in a set). However, other meanings for number related to magnitudes are scarcely addressed in the early years (K to 4). Examples of these meaning are length, height, volume, and time. While for experts (adults) these differences are barely noticed, it might be very confusing to switch from one meaning to other for learners. These meanings of number related to magnitudes are actually useful for making or creating real artifacts, representing a strong connection to Computational Thinking, Design Thinking, and Maker Spaces. The discussion with teachers during the workshop served to identify explicitly learning outcomes where the notion of number as magnitude could be stressed. For instance, when learning to count, students can engage in actions such as walking to count the number of steps in a path. This action is very different than pointing with the finger to count objects in a set -- number is length in the former case and quantity in the later.

Werklund School of Education, University of Calgary
Mar 27 - Apr 01, 2016

This workshop was the initial gathering for this particular community of researchers, and the impact of it will extend far beyond the wonderful week at BIRS. As you can see from the report, the groups are continuing to work on projects begun at BIRS, and publications likely will result. Over half of the participants were early-career mathematicians. Everyone participated in group discussions, everyone contributed to the group efforts, everyone learned a lot. Many young women can feel intimidated attending conferences; many are not even invited, as they are not on the radar screen yet. Workshops like WINART are invaluable to careers and to connecting junior researchers to senior mathematicians in the field. I applaud BIRS for being so open to hosting them.

Georgia Benkart Mathematics, University of Wisconsin-Madison

I spent a wonderful week at BIRS, the ambiance was perfect for work, and the work done there as well as the talks will contribute a lot to my research. I have started a project with my team, which I wish will lead to new results. This meetings has been my first contact with the"Women in noncommutative algebra and representation theory" network, which will be helpful for myself and for my students.

Prof. Dr.

This was an overwhelmingly positive experience. It is the first time I am part of an organized research team of this nature, and it worked very well. I believe that this meeting and some planned follow up meetings will have a big impact in my field, and particularly on the careers of the junior researchers involved. I expect that my research team will write a paper that was begun at this meeting at BIRS, a collaboration that otherwise would not have happened.

Mathematics, Texas A&M University
Mar 20 - Mar 25, 2016

This BIRS workshop stimulated a lot of ideas. To begin with, I was able to make progress on a collaboration with Steven Sivek regarding interactions between contact geometry and the fundamental group. I started new collaborations with Hedden involving 1) a project to use my (with Vela-Vick, Vertesi) BRAID version of the transverse invariant in knot Floer homology to prove that the rank of HFK reduced gives a bound on the fractional Dehn twist coefficients of braid representatives of a given knot. In particular, we believe that rkHFK_red(K,a) bounds the FDTCs of braid representatives of K with sl=2a-1, and 2) a project to compute the Heegaard Floer homology of the union of two manifolds with torus boundaries by computing a cube of resolutions complex where all the higher polygon counting takes place on the torus (and therefore ought to be computable).

Assistant Professor
Mathematics, Boston College

This workshop definitely helped me to continue my research with Baptiste Chantraine on positive contact isotopies. It also revealed me interesting questions around foliation theory and I was able to exchange a lot with Rachel Roberts and Will Kazez on these.

Vincent Colin Laboratoire de mathématiques Jean Leray, Université de Nantes
Mar 13 - Mar 18, 2016

The time at BIRS was perfect. The organization of the workshop was excellent, the collaboration that was generated in my research group was exciting to me and hopefully will ultimately lead to a publication, the talks were really good, the scientific atmosphere in general was wonderful, and the location and facilities are really stimulating. The rooms and dining area were great too! On a side note, on some evenings I was able to meet with collaborators of an existing project to try to push that to completion, and on other evenings I was able to meet with a couple of other collaborators on a new project. Both of these were directly related to Lefschetz properties, but were not part of the formal groups formed for the workshop. This activity also would not have been possible without this workshop. On a different side note, a recent paper of mine is closely related to that of one of the other participants, and this opportunity to talk to him was very useful to hash out our different points of view on the topic. So sincere thanks again for providing us the opportunity to hold this workshop, which I consider to have been a huge success from all possible points of view. And I second your thank you to the organizers that you mentioned, who did a great job from start to finish.

Mathematics, University of Notre Dame

We had a very useful WorkShop with lots of interesting lectures about Lefschetz and Lefschetz related materials that have helped me to put more things into perspective. The WorkGroup I participated in (Akihito Wachi, Chris McDaniel, and occasionally some others) made real progress, and I am indeed grateful for permission, granted at the last moment, to remain overnight from Friday to Saturday. We really made some serious progress Friday afternoon!

Professor Emeritus
Mathematisches Institut, University of Göttingen
Mar 11 - Mar 13, 2016

BIRS provides unique opportunities to interact with a wide variety of researchers and immerse into thought-provoking discussions. Such intense research environment is usually not possible at other larger conferences or at more specialized and narrower meetings. It is my second time at BIRS, and my last BIRS meeting has resulted in two new collaborations and a few joint papers together. I expect that the current BIRS workshop will also have a similar longstanding impact on my research agenda.

Yulia Gel Professor
Mathematical Sciences, University of Texas at Dallas
Mar 06 - Mar 11, 2016

Excellent program, with talks on the cutting-edge developments in mirror symmetry, derived categories and algebraic geometry. The organisational side was excellent, many thanks to Matthew, Colin and David for all the efforts they've put into this. For me personally the program had the added benefit of giving me and Rina Anno, my co-author, an opportunity to work together in person on our current project.

Dr
School of Mathematics, Cardiff University
Feb 28 - Mar 04, 2016

Wonderful location, great services, extremely well balanced scientific program. It was great to meet so many active researchers in the field in a very inspiring environment.

Physics & Astronomy, University of Alabama

The workshop was indeed excellent and I found BIRS to be a perfect place for this activity! (I was especially impressed by how flaw-less the audio-visual installation worked and how simple it is to handle, I wish we had the same one in our Institute!)

The BIRS workshop was a great experience. It provided an intimate setting and a great atmosphere for people to get to know one another and discuss their research in depth. I was able to get to know new people from fields I am not familiar with and learned a great deal from them. I also had opportunities to meet a few people who have been working on similar topics as myself. The exchanges with them were also very beneficial and generated quite a few new ideas.

Hong Liu Professor
Physics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

The excellent facilities at BIRS, the inspiring surroundings and the capable organization of this workshop have yet again made my visit to Banff a scientifically productive time filled with enriching presentations by and discussion with other participants.

Julian Sonner Professor
DPT, University of Geneva
Feb 21 - Feb 26, 2016

I found this to be a very useful workshop, with a well-chosen list of speakers. For me, it was a good chance to re-connect with some of the topological side of 4-manifolds, which always informs my work but hasn't always been front-burner for me. I also appreciated that the organizers invited 3 of my collaborators, which helped me make serious progress on 3 distinct projects.

Mathematics, Brandeis University
Feb 14 - Feb 19, 2016

The workshop brought together a perfect group from across Europe and North America, and took my understanding of a current project to a new level. Since no fewer than three of my current collaborators were also present, the benefits were redoubled! The informal and unpressured environment and the spectacular location lifted the week far beyond the mundane.

Professor
Mathematics and Statistics, University of Sheffield

I must say that the BIRS conference on EDAG did positively and substantially inspire me. This is precisely the kind of activity which I think is helpful to a mathematical field. I am thankful to BIRS for their flexibility in organizing such events on cutting edge fields which may not yet be established enough to have specialized meetings elsewhere. Thank you!

Igor Kriz Mathematics, University of Michigan

The workshop was fantastic, just right number of people with just similar interests to create a very stimulating meeting. I enjoyed it very much.

University of Rochester
Feb 07 - Feb 12, 2016

Everyone greatly appreciated the fantastic facilities and excellent staff on the ground at BIRS. It was a pleasure to organise a conference with such wonderful resources and support.

Mathématiques et statistique, Université Laval

I would like to use this opportunity to thank you and the organizers of the Vertex Algebras and Quantum Groups workshop. I found the program exciting, the talks well-prepared, the opportunity to discuss research very rich. I returned to Los Angeles refreshed and full of ideas.

Fyodor Malikov mathematics, University of Southern California
Jan 31 - Feb 05, 2016

One of the best workshops I ever attended in the past 5 years.

Math & Stat, University of Alberta

The program was fantastic and the location was outstanding. Thanks for supporting such meetings.

Jan 24 - Jan 29, 2016

The workshop was a great opportunity to interact with people from the quantum chemistry community. A joint interdisciplinary paper was advanced significantly on the occasion, and will son be finished.

The participation in the BIRS workshop has big impact in my current research. Fresh insight and new challenges, new ideas and new collaborations, especially interdisciplinary ones arise. It was the best workshop I visited during last years. I would be very happy to participate to a future one!

Dr
Mathematics, ETH Zurich

I really enjoyed participating in this workshop, with high-level talks and long times for discussions. I have learnt a lot of interesting things. I have met people that I didn't know in person, and this will probably stimulate new collaborations. The Banff Center environment is also a very pleasant place.

Laboratoire SRSMC UMR CNRS 7565, Université de Lorraine
Jan 17 - Jan 22, 2016

The workshop was excellent and very useful to activate contacts and collaborations I wouldn't have had otherwise. I had the opportunity to discuss with different researchers working in my area of expertise and came back home with several new ideas and prospectives for future research. I also got important feedback on my most recent research and the environment and infrastructure were optimal.

Maria Lopez Fernandez Mathematics, University of Rome 1
Jan 10 - Jan 15, 2016

My thanks for a week with a wonderful group of writers, poets, playwrights, biographers, mathematicians, and scientists; our discussions suggested multiple ways of approaching our writing tasks, the work we heard was at a very high level, and my own poetry manuscript benefitted greatly from comments both general and specific. A big thank you to the organizers and participants, and to BIRS for its sponsorship.

Professor emeritus
Waisman Center & Dept. of Communicative Disorders, University of Wisconsin
Jan 10 - Jan 15, 2016

The Early Career Investigators Meeting on Quantitative Problems in Human Genetics and Health was incredibly useful. It allowed us to have detailed discussions on problems and opportunities at the edge of current research in genetics and genomics. The opportunity to discuss these issues in depth with a group of world-renowned experts is incredibly rare for junior investigators. In particular I found the meeting spurred interaction and understanding between people working in genetics and functional genomics, disciplines which have much to learn from each other but unfortunately less cross-talk than there should be. Upon returning home I already started a collaboration with one of the other participants that arose from our discussions there. Thank you for providing this crucial opportunity.

Scientist/Assistant Professor
Princess Margaret Cancer Centre/University of Toronto

This was absolutely THE BEST conference I have ever attended. I believe that was a sentiment shared by many other attendees. Having a venue to assemble like minded scientists at the same career stage really allowed us to freely exchange ideas about the state of quantitative human genetics research. In fact, it was such a productive week that we are anxious to do this again.

UCSF
Dec 06 - Dec 11, 2015

The workshop focused on contemporary and important topics in the field of computational neuroscience, with a focus on sensory coding. There were many wonderful speakers and the interactions (formal and informal) were well worth the trip.

Assistant Professor
Statistical Sciences and Operations Research, Virginia Commonwealth University

The workshop was inspiring. I flew home with my head full of new ideas.

Neuroscience, Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies
Nov 29 - Dec 04, 2015

As a researcher in the area of approximation algorithms, but a non-expert in parameterized complexity, this workshop was a real eye-opener for me. It allowed me to seriously contemplate for the first time the goals, achievements and open problems people look into in parameterized complexity. On a more technical note, I came out with the impression that approximation algorithms are a very new direction in parameterized complexity. Given its explosion as an algorithmic field for the past two decades, it seems to me that it is also going to be a huge area in parameterized complexity as well, and an area that I and my students would definitely like to explore in our research. Also, I would like to thank the organizers for arranging for some extremely interesting talks in approximation algorithms (not directly parameterized complexity-related), which is my core research interest, and for organizing such a high-level, fruitful, and intellectually stimulating workshop, and for bringing together so many members of the community.

George Karakostas Computing & Software, McMaster University

The workshop brought together researchers in two related fields, enabling me not only to learn more about the other area in the talks, but also to make new contacts (and renew old ones) that I wouldn't have had otherwise. Although it is too early to tell, there are several new potential collaborations originating from discussions that took place during the workshop.

Associate Professor
David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science, University of Waterloo

I think this was an excellent workshop. FPT+approximation is still a not-so-well-established area and it was nice to have a group of high-calibre researchers in both areas. With the knowledge I learnt during the workshop, I have started to work on FPT-approximation with one of my graduate students.

Computer Science Department, Montana State University
Nov 22 - Nov 27, 2015

BIRS was the perfect venue for the inaugural International Mathematics Outreach Meeting. Delegates came from all over the world to work in beautiful surrounds, and a great deal was achieved. Thank you.

Schools Program Manager, Choose Maths Program Director
Australian Mathematical Sciences Institute
Nov 15 - Nov 20, 2015

I find that this workshop will have great impact on the research of all the participants. I believe that all of us will take benefit of the direct exchange with colleagues that work in the same area o closely related fields. It was a great opportunity to have an idea of the current state of our area. New trends and results were shown during the workshop. Besides, I had the possibility of generating some possible new collaborations during BIRS workshop. It was a great experience!

Ana Bianco Instituto de Calculo, Universidad Nacional de Buenos Aires

The workshop was one of the best meetings I attended in the last years - both from the contents and from the environment.

Peter Filzmoser Vienna University of Technology

The workshop has been useful to know new colleagues and to identify new and interesting research fields.

This is the third time I visit BIRS, and once more my visit was a very pleasant and productive experience. The small number of participants made it easier to interchange ideas and criticisms. In all, I found the meeting very stimulating.

Ricardo Maronna Prof.
Mathematics, University of La Plata
Nov 08 - Nov 13, 2015

This workshop proportioned to me the possibility to meet colleagues from different areas as Ramsey theory, topological dynamics and model theory. This is what I liked the most. The talks were in general very good, and well prepared. This is a sign, I think, of the interest the participants had. There were several open problems sessions, each one of them full of problems and possible projects. Some of my collaborators, postdocs, had the opportunity of meeting senior colleagues, and as a result of this, if I am not mistaken, they have got offers for short post-doctoral visits.

Instituto de Ciencias Matemáticas. CSIC

The meeting certainly did stimulate thought by making connections in a number of different ways. Potential post-doctoral scholars got a chance to meet us and explore work. Our graduate student was able to meet some of the leaders in CSP's and get a better sense of where his work fits in, and everyone left with potential new collaborations. A special number of Contributions to Discrete Mathematics, the journal for which I am managing editor, is being organized (Largely by Lionel and Claude), with a deadline of next July for submissions. Submissions will be refereed. And Lionel is working on a set of problems that came up during the meeting. All in all, I would think the meeting exemplified how the workshop structure of BIRS facilitates bringing researchers who were not in the exactly the same area together on interesting projects. One colleague commented to me that it was very good to have a number of young people giving cutting edge results, rather than a meeting dominated by the established old guard.

Robert Woodrow Mathematics and Statistics, University of Calgary
Nov 01 - Nov 06, 2015

For someone who loves mathematics and mountains deeply, BIRS is hard to beat. The high mountains are reminders that our scientific searches aim at both depth and highness, something very personal and at the same time communal. You chip away in solitude, but you walk up mountains with a group of friends. Our group participants represent four different angles of approach to geometric evolution equations related to integrable systems; we had not previously interacted as a group, so we used the time to discuss several problems and converge on a couple which look promising for longer term collaboration. On my end, I am now looking at three interrelated approaches to a question I have been interested in for some time. I found the structure of the workshop particularly useful and unlike most I have attended: few plenaries describing broadly the aim and research area of each group, and most emphasis on group interaction, discussion, and brainstorming. The rest was fresh air and glorious views. It was a bit hard to leave.

Mathematics, College of Charleston

The participation in the workshop will have a big impact on my research by creating new collaborations and networks. In particular, I hope that our preliminary work at BIRS will result in an interesting paper in the near future. The general talks were very inspiring and provided an overview of current research active areas in Differential Geometry. The workshop was very well organised and BIRS provides a very supportive environment - thanks!

Dr
Mathematics, University of Leicester

The workshop was excellent, and the small working groups offered a great opportunity to learn about material related to ---but not exactly in--- my area of research. In a different setting, I wouldn't have had an excuse to sit down and learn from the experts, but I hope that we've now found some interesting questions to explore collaboratively.

Lecturer
Mathematical Sciences Institute, Australian National University

This was a wonderful meeting. I felt very privileged to be in such beautiful place working in interesting problems. I was the leader of the group and I felt that I and other members benefitted very much from meeting researchers in areas that were very close but not immediately connected. We all brought up different points of view and we are now sharing a dropbox and working on a common problem. I hope those who felt isolated (and some did) are not any longer. We will have to wait and see where this leads us. Thank you!

Banff is my favorite place for conference. Lodging, meal are great, and at a great place. This conference is especially great that I met many people I don't know before and we formed some projects and working on it afterwards.

Mathematics, University of California at Santa Barbara
Oct 25 - Oct 30, 2015

It was a wonderful experience, in all professional aspects. I became aware of new findings and trends in my research area, discussed them with the finest scientists all over the world, everything in a gorgeous place with superb facilities. It was indeed a remarkable experience.

PUC-Rio Brazil

My experience at the BIRS workshop impacted my research and my research projects. I had the opportunity to confront with experts from all over the world and discuss problems related to the topics I am working on.

Lorenzo Fusi Mathematics and Informatics, University of Florence

Wonderful and rich experience.

Ioan Ionescu Professor
LSPM, Universite Paris 13

Thank you very much for the hospitality. The workshop was very interesting and stimulating. Moreover the Banff Center is amazing!!!

Second University of Naples

The meeting gathered together pretty much all of the world leaders in the field of viscoplastic fluids and as well as providing a state-of-the-art progress report on the latest developments in the field, allowed time in the afternoons for "free form" unstructured discussions about promising research directions and open problems. In summary, it was an outstanding meeting in an excellent location with impeccable organisation and (as usual) wonderful food! What more could you ask from a scientific meeting?

Stephen Wilson Department of Mathematics and Statistics, University of Strathclyde
Oct 18 - Oct 23, 2015

Small in size but big in quality. A great place to work and gather, truly inspiring.

Olivier Ali Dr.
Biophysics, ENS Lyon

The workshop organized by Anja Geitmann and KC Huang was extraordinary. My work extends into most of the topic matter that was presented and I have a completely new conception and direction for my work. I thought the organizers did a particularly good job selecting individuals and sub-topics for the group to work with over the 4+ days. I think the staff at the BIRS facility for creating an excellent environment for this form of scientific workshop.

Sid Shaw Associate Professor
Biology, Indiana University
Oct 11 - Oct 16, 2015

Participating in the BIRS workshop allowed me to establish new scientific connections with renowned researchers in my field and to strengthen existing ones. It was a stimulating week, and I enjoyed having the time to discuss mathematics with other participants in groups.

Professor
Mathematics, University of Neuchatel

I enjoyed the workshop, the discussions with everyone present and in the most wonderful of environs.

Associate Professor
Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
Oct 04 - Oct 09, 2015

I must acknowledge that this was one of the most interesting workshops I participated since several years. I attended all by one talks (this is quite unusual for me… in general I skip around one fourth of the talks: I don't like to sit in the lecture hall and to do something else than listening to the speaker), and most of them were very interesting. I learned a lot and I would like to study more closely several topics… the problem will be to find time… Once again, I could noticed that organization in BIRS is simply perfect.

Mathematiques, Université de Strasbourg

This workshop was like a gust of fresh air to my research program. I left BIRS with several ideas and new research directions that I would like to pursue in the short term. It was perfect because I am on sabbatical and I have the time to devote to these projects.

Departement de mathematiques et de statistique, Université de Montrèal

I completely enjoyed this conference, which was the third one I attended at BIRS. I must admit that BIRS is a premier conference facility in the world where everything is very well thought through and organized. In fact, I appreciated all features and convenience of your center even more as an organizer. Since all logistical matters were already taken care of by BIRS staff, we could completely concentrate on the scientific side of the conference. The whole workshop went very smoothly, and we had a number of excellent exchanges by ideas and problems. I personally already have several follow up communications with participants, one of which will clearly result into a paper on a problem of Schur about square means of algebraic integers and related questions. We have also discussed a number of projects under development, and started new ones. Thank you very much for hosting our workshop, and for all support!

Mathematics, Oklahoma State University
Sep 27 - Oct 02, 2015

We had a great workshop in a fabulous place! Some new collaborative work has already started for me based on discussions at that workshop. Many thanks to the organizers Christiane, Ian, and Henryk. And thanks long life to BIRS!

Computer Science and Operations Research, Universite de Montreal

Thank you for the invitation to this great workshop. Everything was excellent. Of course I liked the whole atmosphere and some very interesting and intense discussions.

Prof.
Mathematisches Institut, Friedrich Schiller Universität Jena

The meeting was absolutely crucial in discussing, in person, a new idea to exploit recently sparsity results in improved error bounds for higher order Quasi Monte Carlo methods for infinite-dimensional integration. The setting and the infrastructure were superb; I regret not having had more time to spend there.

Mathematics, ETHZ
Sep 25 - Sep 27, 2015

The workshop gave me an excellent sense of important directions in which Canadian and international research in the statistical sciences is moving.

Professor

Fantastic site, fantastic venue for a workshop! The CANSSI retreat was very productive. I'm sure that, when we look back 5 years from now, we will agree that the time spent here had a major impact on CANSSI's development.

Statistics, University of Manitoba

As always, a wonderfully refreshing place to spend a few days. The location is beyond inspiring. And once again I was amazed at the number of busy leaders willing to make the long journey to provide their guidance and advice. It's all about the location!

Statistical Sciences, University of Toronto

Thanks also from me to Nancy, John and Mary for organizing this event, and BIRS for hosting it. The facilities are BIRS are great in every respect! Hope to be back again soon (next June to be precise). Best, Richard Smith (Director of SAMSI and Chair of the CANSSI Governing Board).

University of North Carolina Chapel Hill
Sep 20 - Sep 25, 2015

I had only a short stay in the workshop but I have met and made connections with new colleagues and gained new insights to my field.

Physics and ECE, Purdue University

Participation in this BIRS workshop impacted my current research a lot in the sense that it brings in the most exciting progress in the field I work on and provides fresh insight into my research. I made friends with many other researchers, generated new ideas and developed a new research project during the workshop.

Professor
Physics, Ohio State University
Sep 13 - Sep 18, 2015

This was a great conference, with excellent participants, excellent talks. Important hot topics were discussed during the talks, as well as the informal discussions. It was very useful for my own research projects. First of all, the feedback during and after my talk, and some more in depth discussions later with some of the participants. I did establish some new contacts. I also think that this was very positive for a postdoc of mine who attended the conference. I do think that it can positively influence her job prospects.

MATHGEOM CSAG, Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne

It is my great pleasure to tell you that as usual, I enjoyed my staying at BIRS very much. During the workshop I started a new project with my old coauthor Alexander Merkurjev related to the norm principle. We had a lot of discussions on this topic and hopefully it will lead us to proving the norm principle in full generality.

Math. Sciences, University of Alberta
Sep 06 - Sep 11, 2015

This conference attracted many famous specialists (some of them are first to meet for me) and outstanding colleagues, like ICM 45's invited speakers: Etingof, Andruskiewtsch, etc. Many talks were full of asking questions and making comments by audiences (Etingof was one of the most active), the researching atmosphere was quit active and excited and stimulated. During the conference I had many chances to talk with old freinds: Heckenberger, Andruskiewitsch, Majid, James, etc.; some people I seldom see, and some new colleagues, whose work I was familiar with, especially I met and talked with some new friends whose research interests are close to mine. This is quite nice. Some hot topics CFT, QFT, fusion categories, classification problems have lots of overlaps or interactions with representation theory of Hopf algebras, quantum groups and tensor categories. All of these actually satisfy my recent years' research interests. Actually I find that this is the exact group for my research field. In the coming years I have been invited to attend a couple of international conference organized by Andruskiewitsch in Argentina in Feb. of 2016, and a workshop organized by Anduskiewitsch, Heckenberger, Schneider and so on in Obwalfahr 2017,... It was exciting that this conference arranged round tables, in which, seniors together with juniors could discuss their research concerns with some open questions, etc. Luckily, in the last round table chaired by Andruskiewitsch, I got the last 20 minutes to talk as the last one of the freedom speakers and proposed two open questions. I like such an active workshop and like to get into familiar with many colleagues who this time hadn't talked too much. Please convey my regards and thanks to the organization committee... Hopefully I'll get more chances to attend the related conferences or workshops they will organize.

Naihong Hu Department of Mathematics, East China Normal University

The stay at BIRS was wonderful: I received the latest research ideas, and enjoyed the beautiful view.

Di-Ming Lu Mathematics, Zhejiang University

The workshop provided a forum for mathematicians in various stages of their career to interact and to learn from each other. I have learned a lot from the speakers as the participants of the workshop.

Mathematics, Louisiana State University

The workshop is very good. I have some new research project. And I have contacts with research. Thanks for organizers and workers in Banff Center.

School of mathematics, Shanghai University of Finance and Economics
Aug 30 - Sep 04, 2015

The BIRS workshop was very stimulating and of high quality, as usual. The environment is perfect for doing research and collaborate with colleagues. New collaborations or papers may originate from the workshop.

Matematica Aplicada 1, ICREA and Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya

The kindness offered to us by all the personal is very much appreciated and the good atmosphere that the center inspires is excellent. This time I had the opportunity of meeting many colleagues that I knew about their existence and work but I had never met personally before. I have learnt a lot in the field of elliptic equations in which I have worked only a little so far, as most part of my research in PDEs (either deterministic or stochastic) dealt with parabolic equations. For sure I am very grateful to Michel and Itai for having invited me to this workshop. I can only express now my gratitude for all the great work that BIRS is doing and that I am sure will keep doing in future.

Ecuaciones Diferenciales y An. Num., Universidad de Sevilla

Excellent hospitality, and great work conditions.

Institut Camille Jordan, Universite Claude-Bernard (Lyon I)
Aug 23 - Aug 28, 2015

The talks were very good. I learned of several significant advances at the workshop. The cozy atmosphere in BIRS lounge was very stimulating.

Mathematical Sciences, Carnegie Mellon University

The conference was a gathering of excellent mathematicians. Some talks were about outstanding results. It also was a very creative environment. It looks that we made some steps in our research project with my co-authors.

Mathematics, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

This conference is run at the highest possible level. The surrounding and the organization at BIRS are impeccable. Congratulation for a job done perfectly.

School of Computer Science and Engineering, Hebrew University

It was great to learn first-hand of some recent advances and break-throughs in extremal combinatorics. Also, I learned some new methods that may be useful in my research.

Mathematics, University of Warwick

I think the workshop was extremely useful for my current research. There was many very interesting result presented, large number of which I did not know before. I learn from the presentations some powerful new techniques and exciting problems. Also during the workshop I talked a lot with my collaborators D. Conlon and J. Fox and we made a good progress on our ongoing project on quasi-randomness properties of graphs

Department of Mathematics, ETH
Aug 16 - Aug 21, 2015

I found the workshop beneficial in several ways. Talks that were given at the workshop let me know about several research directions, and brought me up to date on directions I had been aware of. The problem session led to new ideas about open problems that would be good to think about. During the meeting I had the opportunity to resume research discussions with colleagues with whom I had discussed certain specific problems in the past. I also met mathematicians I had not met before (especially postdocs and grad students), and at least one discussion with one of them opened up a new possible research direction.

Professor
Mathematics, University of Pennsylvania
Aug 14 - Aug 16, 2015

I thought this was a really good meeting. I liked the weekend format with a smaller group. I think videoing each of the lectures is brilliant! That will make for a lasting resource. The new building is very comfortable for this event. As always, I enjoy staying the Banff Center.

Department of Mathematics, University of Washington

The meeting was indeed very helpful for me to attend. I learned useful things from the talks, but most notably I found one of the open questions that Lou Billera mentioned in the problem session very interesting, a question of understanding some rather fundamental looking symmetric functions that have arisen in his work. Both Lou and I were still in Banff all of Sunday afternoon, and we both took the same shuttle back to Calgary on Sunday evening, and this allowed us to spend several hours on Sunday afternoon and evening working together on his question, and we seem to have made substantial headway. We are continuing to email each other about his question and hope this will develop into a joint project. I also had quite helpful discussions with Sami Assaf and Vic Reiner, but definitely this possible project with Billera was the most valuable outcome of the meeting for me.

mathematics, North Carolina State University
Aug 09 - Aug 14, 2015

This conference was an all around strong and positive experience. The open afternoons gave time for informal discussions on topics whose relevance emerged earlier in the week, and a couple days of some intense hikes with colleges. Also, the workshop brought together many different aspects of the subject, which brought forth some insights that I, for one, will pursue in works to come.

David Ayala Mathematics, Montana State University

The workshop provided an ideal mix of junior and senior mathematicians from around the world. Further, the format (and beautiful location) allowed me to spend a lot of time working with collaborators, discussing with graduate students about their exciting new projects, and meeting new people with which to organize future activities.

Assistant Professor
Department of Mathematical Sciences, Montana State University
Aug 02 - Aug 07, 2015

This was the best meeting I’ve ever attended. The organizers did a fantastic job arranging the meeting. The facilities at the Banff Centre were absolutely superb. I hope to attend again!

Genetics, University of Pennsylvania

I honestly wish every conference/workshop I attended was like BIRS. With 40 people it becomes more socially awkward not to talk to someone, rather than to talk to them.

Stanford University

I thought it was great. Lots of cutting edge science and the informal forum established a great atmosphere for sharing thoughts.

Michael Snyder Professor and Chair
School of Medicine, Stanford University
Jul 26 - Jul 31, 2015

I found the workshop very inspiring, and started discussion with participants that I hope will lead to an improvement of a former work of mine.

Université Denis Diderot Paris 7

It was a great workshop and I enjoyed my time in Banff immensely. Thank for running such a fabulous center for mathematical activities.

Fraydon Rezakhanlou mathematics, University of California Berkeley
Jul 24 - Jul 26, 2015

It was very important to directly know two of the other organizers I had not met before: Vasile Palade and Randy Goebel. Their talk but also their side comments out of the formal schedule were essential for the prosecution of a common goal. A nice surprise was given by Mirko Cesarini, a fellow-countryman I didn't know before, who gave us a completely new insight on data, data cleansing, data mining. The reactions to my talk were also stimulating. Thank you very much for this opportunity.

Prof.
Mathematics, University of Bologna
Jul 12 - Jul 17, 2015

With these facilities and in these surroundings, it would be hard *not* to have new research ideas.

Patrick Fowler Prof
Chemistry, University of Sheffield, England

My visit to BIRS was very enjoyable, but most significantly, a few conversations I had there completely opened the floodgates in my research. Sometimes one works hard at a problem with little real progress, but since BIRS, the new results have been pouring in every day. It was the Combinatorial and Geometric Rigidity Workshop, and it was few off-the-cuff comments from Walter Whiteley, one of the organisers, that unblocked everything. I have been working in my field for thirty years, and frankly I thought I pretty much knew all that was necessary to know. But in the few weeks since Banff, every day has been a surprise. It's is as if everything I know about my subject has been thrown in the air and is now being reassembled in a totally new way.

Allan McRobie Engineering, Cambridge University

The workshop allowed many fruitful exchanges beyond presenting one's own work and hearing of advances made by others. I enjoyed discussions with new young researchers, who I had not met before, and I enjoyed gaining insights from experts on work that relates to my current interests. Certainly I have made new contacts that I would not have otherwise made. I was also able to discuss ongoing joint work with my collaborators and explore tentative inward visits to my home institution.

Professor
Mathematics and Statistics, University of Lancaster
Jul 05 - Jul 10, 2015

The environment was inspiring and I made some progress with a problem I am working on. I had some discussions with other attendees which increased my understanding of my research area (Quantum Shannon Theory). I also found out about some possible job opportunities.

Research Associate
DAMTP, University of Cambridge

I had a very pleasant workshop week with lots of inspiring talks.

Dr.
Institute for Logic, Language & Computation (ILLC), University of Amsterdam and CWI Amsterdam

The Beyond IID workshop in Banff was great to enhance my research. I formed new contacts and have new research projects under way related to the theme of the workshop. I expect these to lead to new research papers eventually.

Assistant Professor of Physics
Physics and Astronomy, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge

I enjoyed myself immensely at this workshop, which perhaps is not the most appropriate thing to say for an event of which I was one of the principal organizers, but everything went so smooth, the staff were so helpful, that it seemed almost effortless to arrange the scientific programme and organize the speakers. I would do it again, anytime!

Prof
Physics, Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona
Jun 21 - Jun 26, 2015

The workshop was really great and productive for me. I got the chance to speak with very good mathematicians in my research area and to develop some new ideas. In particular, I had the occasion to speak with Yuval Peres about the Poisson boundaries of lamplighter random walks on oriented trees, and this may result in a potential collaboration and an eventual research visit to Microsoft Research in Spring 2016. Needless to say that Banff is a wonderful place for research and for vacation. I am looking forward to the next meeting of this type in Banff. The organizers did a really good job in organizing this meeting!

Posdoctoral researcher
Department of Mathematics, Cornell University
Jun 14 - Jun 19, 2015

This workshop was an excellent focused week on Hybrid Imaging, putting together practioners and theoreticians of the field for their mutual benefit, and certainly mine. The talks were of excellent quality. I heard for the first time talks from leading actors that I had read before but never interacted with (Mark Anastasios and Alex Oraevsky in particular). The topic is by essence multidisciplinary and transversal to various areas of mathematics, from signal processing to PDE via harmonic analysis and numerical analysis. No mathematician can master an expert knowledge of all the fields involved, and it was crucial to hear direct from leading experts in each field about the state of the art in the various areas involved.

Yves Capdeboscq Prof
Mathematical Institute, University Of Oxford

I found the workshop exceptionally interesting and useful. Based on results I learned at the meeting and on results that I presented, I started a new collaboration with one of the participants, Gen Nakamura, and may have two other collaborations with two other participants. The venue for interaction is excellent. I particularly note the ability of participants to eat (delicious food) together and discuss the days presented results as well as get to know one another better. The environment is beautiful and through outside activities encourages even more discussion.

Mathematical Sciences, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

The preparation for my talk and giving the talk gave me a good opportunity to clarify and locate my research. By discussing with one of my collaborators, I found a new problem. Also, it was really by a chance from a someone's talk that I got an idea to start my new research which excites me a lot. So, this workshop was a very useful and important workshop for me.

Gen Nakamura Professor
Mathematics, Inha University

BIRS' workshop was very interesting and productive in terms of establishing future collaboration projects between developers of the optoacoustic imaging technology and mathematicians, who provide new algorithmic approaches.

Alexander Oraevsky R&D, TomoWave Laboratories
Jun 07 - Jun 12, 2015

This was an outstanding meeting that brought together two distinct groups of researchers studying RNA binding protein structure and function: structural biologists generating structural and dynamical models at atomic resolution and genomics experts creating detailed analyses of the locations of binding and function of RNA binding proteins across the genome and transcriptome. These two groups had much to share with each other and my view of this field and where our work might fit in was transformed by the experience. And the venue is truly inspiring as well!

Professor
Molecular, Cell & Developmental Biology, University of California, Santa Cruz

This definitively was a great meeting that benefited my research. I set up at least two collaborations and promoted my work, in addition to many new connections that I have established.

Jernej Murn Department of Cell Biology, Boston Children's Hospital / Harvard Medical School

This has been one of the best meetings I have been to, and a very good reminder of why I love doing science. The talks were excellent. Further, the focused format of the meeting, the excellent selection of the speakers and program design have contributed to create the right climate for a friendly but very in-depth discussion, with many ideas flying around. This has been a great meeting for me and I take much home.

Andres Ramos Structural and Molecular Biology, University College London

This was one of the best meetings I have ever attended. It is an excellent idea bringing together researchers from different methods and communities that do normally not meet in a small focussed workshop. The talks were excellent, with ample time for discussions that were stimulating and inspiring.

Helmholtz Zentrum München/ TU München
May 31 - Jun 05, 2015

I was very pleased to participate in this workshop in honor of the 60th birthday of Peter Glynn. I supervised Peter's undergraduate research thesis at Carleton in 1977-78 and have followed his career since then with great interest. The workshop was excellent. It was a good opportunity to meet with old friends Tom Kurtz and Onno Boxma and to have stimulating discussions with the other participants. Highlights of the workshop were the brilliant talks given by several of Peter's former Ph.D. students at Stanford and a stimulating problem session. Al-in-all it was one of the most enjoyable workshops that I have participated in. As usual the Banff setting was spectacular.

Donald Dawson School of Mathematics and Statistics, Carleton University

I have had a number of very interesting scientific conversations with colleagues. There are prospectives for two new collaborations. One joint paper was initially started earlier, but we got fresh ideas during the workshop that allows to finish the paper soon. I talked about job prospectives with two younger colleagues. There were several discussions on problems and prospectives of several journals in the area of applied probability and stochastic networks.

Sergey Foss Professor of Applied Probability
School of Mathematical and Computer Sciences, Heriot-Watt University

Mathematically, I was a bit of an outsider at this workshop, but it exposed me to a new area of research, and through meeting new people it is very likely to lead to new collaborations. Also, I raised an Open Problem on the first morning, and by Friday morning Jose Blanchet had come up with a solution, which was very impressive. Doing all of this in the middle of stunning scenery was a bonus!

Prof.
Mathematical Institute, Oxford University

From my own perspective, the workshop has helped me by: creating a new research collaboration with Prof Jim Dai; a participant solving an open problem I posed informally; helping me understand a number of recent important developments in our field (multilevel Monte Carlo, and perfect simulation variants thereof); exposing me to a range of open problems in the applied probability sphere. My thanks for the wonderful hospitality and organization at BIRS.

School of Operations Research and Information Engineering, Cornell University

The BIRS workshop provided me with a great opportunity to establish new contacts in academia. As a junior scholar, I find the experience rewarding in that my current research results were disseminated to several renowned scholars in our research community and received positive feedbacks. Hopefully this would turn to more fruitful research agenda in the future.

Xiaowei Zhang Assistant Professor
Industrial Engineering and Logistics Management, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology
May 24 - May 29, 2015

This was truly a fantastic workshop. It brought together a group of mathematicians and physicists to discuss a very timely topic: six-dimensional superconformal field theories and their compactifications. The participants were all eager to learn from each other, and also patient enough to listen.

Long-term member
School of Natural Sciences, Institute for Advanced Study

This was the best Physics / Math conference I remember - thanks to the organisers. BIRS is a fantastic place, excellently organised. Thank you very much!

Alexander Goncharov Mathematics, Yale University

This was the best Physics / Math conference I remember - thanks to the organisers. BIRS is a fantastic place, excellently organised. Thank you very much!

Alexander Goncharov Mathematics, Yale University

This was a fruitful conference. It makes a good connection between physicists and mathematicians. Many of talks are inspiring, and I had deep discussions with other participants. In particular, it was extremely nice for me to give my recent on-going research, and get many feedback from audiences.

Research Institute for Mathematical Sciences, Kyoto University

I've not been to anything this mindblowing for a long time. It really feels good to hear the best people report back from the cutting edge.

Paul Seidel Mathematics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
May 17 - May 22, 2015

During my scientific life I participated in about a hundred different workshops, seminars, meetings and symposiums. This was the best. Can you imagine? Nobody missed a single talk. The atmosphere and environment were ideal for work and pleasure.

Naum Gershenzon Wright State University

The BIRS setting of a quiet retreat with communal meals proved a great opportunity to get to know the leaders in the field. I was able to speak informally to many researchers whom I had previously known only through their published works. It seems likely that Gennagy El and I will begin a new collaboration precisely on the topic of the conference.

Professor of Applied Mathematics
Mathematics, University College London
May 10 - May 15, 2015

This was a very interesting meeting bringing together mathematics and astrophysics. Personally, I learned a lot about what is important in astrophysical applications.

Mathematics, Texas A&M University
May 03 - May 08, 2015

This was the third BIRS workshop I participated in, and it is surprising how effective and influential it has been again. Some of the talks were very inspiring, and I had many discussions with other participants, which directly gave new ideas for ongoing and future research projects.

Prof. Dr.
Department of Mathematics, Ghent University

It was an excellent conference. Apart from the interesting and useful talks, I had an almost uninterrupted sequence of interactions with various participants. I'll try to list a few of the significant ones. 1. Barbara Baumeister, Michael Giudici and I had several long meetings to re-start a research project aiming to complete the classification of finite primitive groups containing a regular subgroup. 2. Nick Gill gave a wonderful lecture on puzzle groups. There are four people working on the current aspects of this problem: Nick and I were able to update each other on recent developments as he had been working with Neil Gillespie in Bristol while I was working with Jason Semeraro in Perth. 3. I made some progress with Martin Liebeck on a huge project to classify factorisations G=AB of almost simple groups G with intersection A\cap B cyclic or dihedral. 4. A team of researchers in Perth (including Michael Giudici and I) have been working on the classification of vertex-primitive, arc-transitive quintic graphs. A case where we needed outside advice was dealing with the finite exceptional Lie type groups E_8(q). We needed to know if/when these had maximal subgroups A_5 or S_5, and in these cases to know the number of conjugacy classes and whether two conjugates intersected in a group of index 5. David Craven is the world expert on this and as a punch-line to his lecture during the conference he announced the answer to our question. He will produce a draft of the argument needed for the proof, and we are in contact with him to decide whether he wishes to have this as part of his larger project - or to join as an author on the graphs paper.

School of Mathematics and Statistics (M019), The University of Western Australia

The workshop was wonderful, I had several conversations with Pierre-Emmanuel Caprace which may lead to new results on Moufang sets. I also had useful conversations with Tom De-Medts. Finally I had several interesting interactions with Laci Pyber which may have a continuation. In general it was very interesting to listen to the various talks.

Yoav Segev Professor
Mathematics, Ben Gurion University

This workshop was a very useful opportunity to interact with fellow collaborators on my research project (Lyons, Stroth, Parker, Capdeboscq, Köhl, Shpectorov), as well as to listen to many interesting talks not directly related to my current research.

Ronald Mark Solomon Department of Mathematics, The Ohio State University

Last week was one of the most productive weeks scientifically speaking which I have ever had at a meeting. Let me summarize my activities: 1. Tim Burness and I were able to work through corrections on a very long manuscript which will soon appear as an AMS Memoir; 2. Tim Burness and I worked on a joint research project, which has some overlap with a project of Chris Parker, Kay Magaard and David Craven, who were also at the meeting and so we were all three able to discuss our different methods and where the project stands; 3. Martin Liebeck and Gary Seitz and I have an on-going collaboration and we met to discuss the state of the project and make plans for our next week of work in June; 4. Kay Magaard and I also have a long-term project which we intend to take up again this autumn and we briefly discussed this; and 5. Gunter Malle and Radha kessar and I will be running a semester programme at the Bernoulli Center in Lausanne in 2016 and we needed some time together for discussing lists of participants and organization. I am sure all of these projects advanced because of the time i spent in Banff. In addition, the quality of the talks was excellent and as one expects, I was updated on the current trends in my field. Many thanks.

Mathematics, Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne
Apr 26 - May 01, 2015

This workshop in BIRS has been a unique and inspiring experience. And I think it had both to do with the quality of the science discussed there and with the environment in which the discussions took place. The BIRS team really created a great atmosphere for work and thought. I really want to express you my gratitude for this wonderful week of exciting scientific exchanges.

Hugo Bellenger Department of Coupled Ocean-Atmosphere-Land Processes Research, Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science & Technology

This is one of the best workshops I have attended over the last 25 years! It has the right balance and diversity of the expertise among the participants. The combination of presentations and breakout discussion groups allows for in-depth discussions on tropical convection and multiscale interaction, and how best to observe and predict them. I have established a few new collaborations with other participants on stochastic modeling, whom I won't have meet otherwise. The relaxing atmosphere at the Banff Center certainly contributed to the productive week we had. Thank you!

Professor
RSMAS, University of Miami

The workshop was a valuable experience for our research activities on the MJO. It provided opportunities to learn about the latest work going on internationally and to make contacts with new scientists.

I have now been to three BIRS workshops and every one of them has been a very rewarding experience both scientifically and personally. The Banff Centre itself is a very inspiring venue, and each workshop has been superbly organized by BIRS. The combination of excellent talks and the discussion sessions comprising the most recent workshop fulfilled their intent of breaking new ground, and I thank the organizers, Boualem Khouider, Andy Majda and Chidong Zhang for the opportunity to join in this highly productive meeting.

Physical Sciences Division, Earth System Research Laboratory, National Atmospheric and Oceanic Administration

Participation in the BIRS workshop has substantial impact on my current research. We got fresh ideas and new insights from the group discussion of various working groups. I also got to know and came in contact with some experts in the field and their work which will be much helpful for my future research. There is significant possibility of new papers originating from the interactions that we have during the workshop. The workshop will indeed help me in better designing my research work and which in a way will help in my research career.

Parthasarathi Mukhopadhyay Indian Inst. Trop. Meteoro.

The workshop at BIRS was a great experience and a great time. The meeting was well organized with a combination of presentations, breakout discussion groups and some time off for informal discussions. I had the opportunity to learn about very significant recent work on my research topic and to have valuable discussions with field experts. This was a very productive week but felt like fun thanks to the relaxing atmosphere created by both the organizing team and the Banff center. Thank you for this opportunity.

Courant Institute NYU

This is my third time participating in BIRS workshops and the second time helping organize them. Each time it was better than before. The worry-free accommodation, dinning service, and meeting facilities, plus the unbeatable ambience, make BIRS my most favorite meeting location. This time our workshop was designed to bring together people working on similar problems from different angles: observations, numerical modeling, and theories. Constant interactions in and out of the meeting rooms - in the dining hall and evening club, and on the hiking trails, through the week provided much more chances for the participants to know each other and to engage in deep conversations than at regular conferences where people run between parallel sessions. The workshop gave me ideas of how my current research should be improved and help me find potential new collaborators. I would not hesitate to participate in or help organize BIRS workshops in the future. And I highly recommend BIRS to anyone who has never had a chance to experience its wonderful conference facilities.

Professor
MPO, University of Miami
Apr 24 - Apr 26, 2015

The Ted Lewis Math Fair Conference presenters shared valuable information about their experiences in hosting a math fair with the students at their own schools. I am excited to use the puzzles and the tips that I have learned in planning and executing a math fair with my elementary students next year! It was especially helpful to see a breakdown of the months by one presenter and all that is necessary in order to pull it all together. Thank you! The Banff center is a beautiful campus in the middle of nature and only a short distance from downtown Banff. We were well taken care of and the food at the breakfast buffet was absolutely delicious!

Jaclyn Bedard Monsignor William Irwin Elementary, teacher Edmonton Catholic

Typically, the workshops at BIRS are concerned with mathematical research, so deep and specialized is the research that a mathematician who is not familiar with the area being investigated would be hard pressed to understand what was happening. The math fair workshops are quite different. A few of the attendees are research mathematicians, but many are K-12 teachers, and many have only had a few undergrad math courses. It would be unusual (even disastrous) for the mathematicians to present anything about their own research. The workshop is successful if it persuades K-12 teachers to incorporate math based puzzles and games into their teaching. The annual BIRS Math Fair workshop is a fantastic way for us to spread information about Math Fairs to grade-school teachers.

Sean Graves Mathematical and Statistical Sciences, University of Alberta

My work at the BIRS workshop has given me some new ideas and thoughts on how I might change and structure my work for the coming school year. It offered new insights and some great ideas for new projects. I haven't always loved math. It was a struggle for me when I was young, but I enjoy findings ways to challenge my students and to help find ways for them to fall in love with math. I've already done some work with my kids this year and it's been awesome to see them tackle some of the problems we talked about. I can't wait to roll out a whole year of thinking differently!

Sarah Simmons Teacher-Olympic Heights School, Calgary Board of Education
Apr 19 - Apr 24, 2015

It was a great WS; I learned a lot and had stimulating conversations with other researchers. I am happy to have attended. The organization was perfect and the Banff Centre is a great place.

Prof,
Computer Science, Carleton University

I am quite familiar with Dagstuhl (having been organizer of several seminars there), and it was great to see its Canadian sister. It is interesting to see it embedded in more global center for Arts and Culture and in a National Park. The organizers did a great job, the seminar was inspiring as expected and new contacts were made. I was also intrigued by the infrastructure for recording.

Computer Science, KU Leuven

I was very pleased with this workshop, I am convinced it will have a huge impact on my research moving forward. The workshop fits well with my research directions.I was aware of the key works in the area, but I was happy to see the quality and breadth of recent research. That was invaluable. I learned some new ideas that I would like to take into my work.I was also very excited by the advances in terms of applications. I also had the opportunity to see how researchers are networking and how the community is evolving, including both strengths and weaknesses. I especially thank BIRS for supporting a relaxed atmosphere conductive to lively discussion.

Dep of Computer Science, Universidade do Porto
Apr 12 - Apr 17, 2015

It has been a great conference in a great place. At the conference some collaborators of mine were present so that we could make progress on ongoing projects, also I had the chance to meet new people from different countries it would have been difficult to meet otherwise and exchange with them new insights on our research. All of this has been very inspiring and fruitful for my research.

Dr.
Mathematics, ETH
Apr 10 - Apr 12, 2015

The sixth installment of the NWFAS series was an again an excellent opportunity for me (and others) to learn what's going on in functional analysis at other universities in Western Canada. But more importantly, it was a forum for junior researchers to present their work to a wider audience. One of my PhD students gave a presentation on his research that impressed me (and not only me) both in style and substance. That meeting certainly helped him.

Professor
Mathematical and Statistical Sciences, University of Alberta

The meeting was great and I have enjoyed all the talks, in particular, the talk on matrix pseudo-spectrum analysis. As a result, I am starting a collaboration with Michael Lamoureux on cyclic non-stationary frequency filtering. The conference organization was great.

Mathematics, Physics and Engineering, Mount Royal College
Apr 05 - Apr 10, 2015

The program was quite helpful, especially on account of the eclectic nature of the talks. I did get one good idea and I made very good progress on a joint project with C. Pearcy. Overall, an excellent week.

Hari Bercovici Mathematics, Indiana University

Great conference! I definitely look forward to attending another one in this or an adjacent area of specialty.

Mathematics, East Carolina University

The workshop was an outstanding opportunity to interact with the world's leading experts on the subject. My collaborator (Kelly Bickel) and I worked out the results for a new manuscript during the workshop. I took the chance to ask several authors first hand about their work. The talks were outstanding! I learned about several new results that will be of interest for my future research.

Assistant Professor
Mathematics, Baylor University

I first went to BIRS in 2011. It was a wonderful conference, and I have spent much of my time since then working on non-commutative function theory, which I learned about from Victor Vinnikov at BIRS. My second visit was last week. Another great experience, and I expect to spend a lot of time working on mathematics that I learned on this trip.

Mathematics, Washington University in Saint Louis
Mar 29 - Apr 03, 2015

The organization of the workshop was great. I would also like to thank the organizers once again. I found the workshop stimulating. There are three reasons for that. I got the opportunity to speak about my research and to get opinion about it from many experts in the close area. Since the area is not exactly the same, they helped me with a different insight, suggested me which points in my research are interesting from their viewpoint. I am grateful for that. Secondly, I learned new things during the lessons of the workshop, which give me now better insight. Some of them were close to my research and I can apply them in my current work. Others helped me to get a wider picture about current interests. I met many experts that are close to my area of research, got insight into their areas, talked to them, established new contacts. I heard that the problems I deal with are sometimes similar to the problems of others, which is encouraging for me and tells me that my research makes sense. As a young scientist (I defended my thesis just a year and a half ago), I find this very important and stimulating. I was happy to be given an opportunity and to have been well accepted. Workshops with small number of participants allow people to communicate. Therefore I am very grateful for the opportunity to come and participate.

Maja Resman University of Zagreb, Faculty of electrical engineering and computing
Mar 22 - Mar 27, 2015

I think it was a wonderful and very well organized workshop. I had the opportunity to start new collaborations. The conditions at Banff Center are amazing!

University of Lisbon

I enjoyed very much participating in the workshop "Laplacians and Heat Kernels: Theory and Applications". I liked the quality and diversity of the talks, and of course the opportunity to meet and interact with old and new colleagues. The facilities of BIRS and the Banff centre are extraordinary.

Physics, Pointificia Universidad Catolica de Chile

This was one of the most interesting conferences I have attended in years, and I believe it might bring some profound insights to my research. I was also able to make contacts with great people and seed new collaborations.

Prof
Faculty of Informatics, University of Lugano

This workshop led to several new collaborations, and taught me a large amount about new perspectives on heat kernels. And Banff is a pretty nice background to learn in as well.

Applied Math, Yale University

I guess it is a little too early to say which aspects of my own research will get out of this workshop . I certainly enjoyed the workshop a lot, even though I am probably somewhat more of an insider. In particular, the part concerning the applications of analysis techniques for studying large dimensional data and getting concrete applications. In one instance, I got from a lecture a suggestion of a question that I could try to solve in the future.

Mathematiques, Universite Paris XI, France

This was an exciting week in an amazing place. All communications were excellent and of very high level, and the setting allowed for exchanges and interaction between the participants. BIRS is without any doubt one the best locations I know to hold such a meeting, the staff efficiency is outstanding. Overall, it was a highly productive, fruitful and stimulating experience.

Directeur de recherche CNRS
Physique de la Matière Condensée, Ecole Polytechnique; France

Always a pleasure to be at Banff. I heard for the first time the talks by Mayboroda, Filoche, David and Jerison on eigenfunction concentration, that was quite inspiring, I will probably give a survey lecture on this a few times in the next few months. I also started a new paper with Pedro Antunes from Lisboa at the conference, not sure how long it will take.

Mathematics and Statistics, McGill University

Great center, wonderful workshop, I wish I can visit more.

Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

It was indeed a successful workshop, and during the week another participant and I (Bartek Siudeja) proved a couple of interesting theorems. We will acknowledge the support from BIRS when we write up this research. Thank you for the work you do, keeping this magnificent institution running!

Mathematics, University of Illinois

I found last weeks workshop at BIRS very stimulating: the range of topics was quite broad, and the talks were on the whole of good quality. It also allowed me to work with some colleagues notably Antoine Henrot. However, I also had some interesting discussions with several other participants. The facilities at BIRS are first class, and the surrounding scenery spectacular. This was my second time at BIRS, the first visit was in 2004. I very much hope it wont be my last !

Mathematics, University of Bristol
Mar 15 - Mar 20, 2015

The BIRS workshop was very stimulating for my research related to various hyperbolicity questions. I started a project with two of my regular collaborators and also started working with another workshop participant who I don't see very often at conferences.

Dr.
Mathematics, Stony Brook University

First, I want to express my sincere appreciation to the organizers for such a wonderful workshop. My expectation of attending this workshop to learn the theory on the main theme of this workshop, that is, distribution of rational and holomorphic curves in algebraic varieties. Since there seems to be mysterious connection to what I have been focusing on lately. It turns out that the achievement of the workshop was beyond my expectation. The expertise of the speaker and organizers substantially raise my knowledge bar. My discussion with them was extremely fruitful and exciting. Hopefully, it will be new projects emerging in the end. Due to the importance of this subject and its unexpected connection to other subject of mathematics, I hope more activity and workshop on Nevenlina theory and Diophantine geometry will happen more often. Finally, I want to thank the organizers again for inviting me to this exciting workshop.

Xiaowei Wang Dr
math and computer sciences, rutgers university, newark
Mar 01 - Mar 06, 2015

The workshop had the optimum pace so that I could seriously appreciate each and every talk. The talks were also nicely bunched in broad themes. I got a very good understanding of the current state of the art in index coding, network coding, and various equivalence results in network information theory. The workshop has provided new impetus in our existing collaborations and has also lead to new collaboration on problems discussed during the workshop.

Department of Electrical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Bombay

The BIRS workshop was an excellent opportunity to share problems and ideas in my field of study. One of the open problems I was studying was partially solved in an open problem session during the workshop. At least two new research directions were raised during the workshop (after my presentation) which will be subject to future research and collaborations.

State University of New York at Buffalo

The BIRS workshop has provided me with new insights, allowed me to make new collaborations and new contacts. It successfully brought a group of people working in similar areas together, allowing us to exchange ideas and generate new insights.

This workshop was a great opportunity to examine the subtle differences between coding-theoretic and Shannon-theoretic approaches to modeling communication channels. I had a number of very helpful conversations and learned quite a bit about some new problems. In particular, I had some familiarity with index coding but the workshop really helped me dig in and understand these problems in a more holistic way. That kind of learning is nigh-impossible at our regular conferences -- this workshop was an ideal setting for this.

Assistant Professor
Electrical and Computer Engineering, Rutgers University
Feb 27 - Mar 01, 2015

BIRS is such a gem to host guests from out of country. The two weekend conferences that I co-organized at BIRS (Unsolved K-12 and Integer Sequences K-12) have been the top two professional experiences of my life. How influential they will be is still up in the air, but a core group is working to make sure there is a legacy. Today I tried out some of the integer sequences in Kindergarten through grade 6 and will be communicating their successes and failures to the other attendees as we hone in on the final selection of 13 Integer Sequences - one for each grade K-12. The Julia Robinson Mathematics Festival was scheduled for immediately after the conference. It was the ideal opportunity to bring this festival to Canada for the first time because I had so many awesome math educators on hand. This festival was a direct side effect of the BIRS weekend. It ended up as the top news story on the Calgary Board of Education web site. That endorsement was unexpected.

MathPickle

Participating in the Integer Sequences K-12 provided me with many interesting mathematical questions, new avenues for finding future problems, and ideas for introducing K-12 students and teachers to beautiful mathematics.

Executive Director
Riverbend Community Math Center

This workshop was very well organized by Gordon Hamilton and co. Some definite progress was made developing examples of integer sequences along with information to teachers about the fit with school curricula as well as background knowledge to support use of the examples and possibilities for extension. The goal is always to get more good mathematics out in front of school age children in an effort to get and keep them engaged.

Robert Woodrow Mathematics and Statistics, University of Calgary
Feb 22 - Feb 27, 2015

I was able to be there only for two days, but they were incredibly productive. I got very valuable feedback from the audience on my work in progress, I had conversations that helped me get unstuck on another project and I started a new collaboration.

physics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Indeed the meeting was great and full of interesting mathematics.

Boguslaw Zegarlinski Imperial College London
Feb 15 - Feb 20, 2015

The workshop was well organized and some talks on new numerical methods had impact on my current research.

Institute of Mathematical Science, Claremont Graduate University

This was a great workshop! It contained both theoretical and numerical aspects of mass transport and it was very stimulating. I met new people working on problems related to my research. In particular, I met Merigot, Tiberth, Carlier, and Levy doing great work on the numerical solution of the reflector problem. I believe some of their work can be extended to solve numerically the refractor problem that would permit lens design. Hopefully I will continue to be in touch with these people to do some work in this direction. I also was happy to hear from several people in the numerical group of Benamou and Brenier that they liked and used very much my book on the Monge Ampere equation! Several times after attending workshops I had the feeling I had wasted most of my time. It was not the case at all with this workshop, it was a great working week where I learned many things.

Mathematics, Temple University
Feb 13 - Feb 15, 2015

The conference was very useful in more than one way. In the week conference previous to this one (Monday to Friday) I joined a group working on the monodromy group. The discussion about this topic kept going during the weekend. I believe that at some point there will be a paper arising from this discussion. On the other hand, there were several talks by young researchers and students, showing the enthusiasm with which they work, which is always reassuring. More importantly, we all get aware of what topics are being studied by them either to collaborate, or at least not to compete with them.

Daniel Pellicer Centro de Ciencias Matematicas, Morelia, Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico
Feb 08 - Feb 13, 2015

The workshop was very useful for several reasons. On one hand there were some groups working on different topics; I joined the one working on monodromy group, and the discussion was fruitful. I guess that at some point there will be a paper in the topic discussed there. On the other hand, it is always good to be aware of the topics on which the colleagues are working currently. The talks were very illustrative in this regard. Particularly, after my talk there were some suggestions of papers to take on account in my ongoing research.

Daniel Pellicer Centro de Ciencias Matematicas, Morelia, Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico

It was very, very helpful and the BIRS set-up was great. In many ways, the best run conference center I've ever seen. And of course the scenery and the food are hors de categorie. This was my first time and I will be coming back, I am sure.

Thomas Tucker Colgate University, USA
Feb 01 - Feb 06, 2015

The BIRS workshop on Partial Differential Equations in Cancer Modelling was highly fruitful. It has led to two new potential collaborative projects for me. The morning talks and afternoon discussion times were both essential to make this happen.

Mathematics and Statistics, University of Sydney

I thoroughly enjoyed the meeting. It was an excellent program and we were looked after so well. As academia becomes a less and less attractive career choice, having such stimulating meetings in such a beautiful location becomes increasingly important.

Philip Maini Wolfson Centre for Mathematical Biology, University of Oxford
Jan 25 - Jan 30, 2015

The workshop was very interesting and well organized.

Mathematics, University Paris 8

I enjoyed the workshop very much.

Professor
Computer Science Department, Technion IIT

BIRS is an amazing place!

I'm really grateful to the BIRS Scientific Panel for approving this workshop. It was a tremendous opportunity to spend time with mathematicians and engineers, trying to understand better how theoretical and applied considerations intersect. Even though I was involved in writing the proposal, I still left the workshop much better informed about how sequences, codes and designs are being used in novel ways in practical applications, and how emerging applications are driving new theoretical research in these areas. The unseasonably warm weather and spectacular mountain setting of BIRS were bonuses! Thanks to the BIRS staff for taking care of so many details, leaving the participants free to concentrate on science.

Mathematics, Simon Fraser University

This workshop gave me a chance to speak with researchers whom I had not previously met, and many interesting questions were raised that may lead to new directions in research.

Assistant Professor
Mathematics, California State University, Northridge
Jan 18 - Jan 23, 2015

The seminars were important for new insights in the area. The workshop was the occasion for new contacts and ideas which will almost certainly lead to a new collaboration.

Anna Maria Cherubini Dr.
Department of Mathematics, University of Salento, Italy

Let me first of all say that I enjoyed every minute of the workshop. I feel that I not only have new scientific contacts but that I now have new personal friends. During the "open problem" - session, I raised a question and conjectured an answer, but it turned out that my question was answered in the negative - by two counter- examples in fact. One counter-example is based on an example which H Furstenberg constructed in a paper from 1961 in a slightly different context, and that this example, which was known to one or two of the participants of the workshop, could be used to construct a counterexample to my conjecture they also saw. The other counter-example was constructed by A Quas during the workshop. Both examples are of course of great value to me when trying to find necessary and sufficient conditions for unique invariant probability measures for random dynamical systems. The talks during the workshop were very illuminating and in my opinion of very high standard. They certainly gave me a lot of new insights. But what was of even more value to me was the new personal relations I got during the conference. I am sure these will lead to further scientific exchange. What I also think was very nice with this workshop was the balance in age, a fine mixture between young researchers, middle aged scientists and senior scientists. Let me finish by saying that I feel lucky to have been invited to this wonderful place and to a great workshop.

I like the style of this workshop, which balanced the talks and discussions very well. There are plenty time to discuss with experts on many different issues. Great job! Many thanks to the organizers!

Zeng Lian department of mathematical science, Loughborough University

The workshop did help my research, I learnt of overlaps and extensions of my work on statistical properties of random dynamical systems coming from the work of Charlene Kalle and collaborators. The talks on SDE also suggested new research directions for me. It was an excellent workshop.

Mathematics, University of Houston

The theme of this workshop overlaps with big part of my own research. Many of participants;s talks in this workshop provided very interesting new results and open problems/questions which promise to lead to new research projects. The meeting provided me with the opportunity to establish clear steps in a research project started with a previous collaborator. I am a research fellow. In this workshop I found about some very good open permanent job positions, which I will apply for.

Faculty of Mathematics, University of Vienna
Jan 16 - Jan 18, 2015

As a grade two teacher, this was an experience that has enlightened my program and given me a much deeper understanding of the math foundations students need. This week-end of math has helped me make connections to what I am doing in curriculum and I have a clearer direction to where I need to lead my class. This experience was truly an eye-opening experience that I was so honored to be invited to. The BIRS center was an ideal setting to light one's mathematical ideas!

Linda Arndt Teacher Pembina Hills

What a wonderful environment to spend time with people with mutual interests, pushing through some serious challenges but in a place where it's easy to interact away from day-to-day pressures.

Professor
Computer Science and Software Engineering, University of Canterbury
Jan 11 - Jan 16, 2015

This workshop was nicely organized and was full of interesting talks. The workshop allowed to share a great deal of new ideas with the leading researchers in the field of modern complex analysis and applications.

Professor
Materials Science & Engineering, Clemson University

I would like to express my gratitude to the organizers of the workshop: Linda Cummings, Stefan Llewellyn Smith, Paul Martin and Bartosz Protas, for very interesting and useful event they organized. It gave me a nice possibility to meet people I would not have met otherwise. It allowed me to start a new research project and gave insights in my current work.

Alexander Minakov dr
department of physics, Czech Technical University in Prague

The automated video capture is fantastic! Very impressive.

Mathematical Institute, University of Oxford

It was great to make new collaborations with persons I was only vaguely aware of before the BIRS meeting. Another excellent feature is the online videos of the lectures. I encouraged my PhD student to watch two or three of these, which he did and already followed up by contacting some of the speakers.

Applied Mathematics, Universiteit Stellenbosch
Dec 07 - Dec 12, 2014

Everything was perfect. I could enjoy the lectures and discussion with top level researchers in this area.

Masanori Asakura Associate Professor
Department of Mathematics, Hokkaido University

I was very happy to present my recent work at this conference. I met also new people and this could be of interest for my future research.

Directeur de recherches
Mathématiques, Institut Camille Jordan, Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1

This was a great opportunity for me to meet and discuss with several of my professional colleagues, all in one place. I was also happy to be given the opportunity to speak on some of my own recent work. The organizers did a great job and I thank them. I also have to say that this was my fourth visit to Banff (third to BIRS) and it was very enjoyable.

Mathematics, Ohio State University
Nov 30 - Dec 05, 2014

Every trip to BIRS has been a productive experience. The lecture room and facilities are world class, and all the amenities and meals are taken care of seamlessly and designed to foster interactions.

S. J. Miller Associate Professor of Mathematics
Department of Mathematics and Statistics, Williams College
Nov 23 - Nov 28, 2014

I came to BIRS for a five day workshop. It was an intense time, and I'm still processing all the information learned. I had a lot of interesting conversations and got started on several beautiful problems. The real impacts of the workshop will probably take months or years to show, but I can already say that I'm very happy I've attended. On the job front, meeting people is always helpful. In particular, I have had the opportunity to meet one person who could offer me a postdoc at a prestigious institution, but the outcome of my application is unclear as of now.

Department of Mathematics, Vanderbilt University
Nov 16 - Nov 21, 2014

This workshop was one of the best conferences I've been at; I have met many previous and current (and future) collaborators, and it was invaluable to talk to them all at the same place.

School of Mathematical Sciences, Monash University

John Dixon University of Alberta

This workshop had a significant impact on my ongoing research. I had various highly interesting discussions with colleagues that resulted in new ideas for research projects and, in the long run, will very likely result in new publications. The workshop also yielded an excellent opportunity for some younger researchers to present themselves and hence was very interesting also from this viewpoint. Furthermore, during the workshop there were not only various very well-presented and interesting lectures, but also several open discussions that resulted in new directions for the research of the overall research community in this field.

Professor
Mathematics, Technische Universität Braunschweig

This workshop featured leading researchers currently active in computational group theory concerned especially with matrix groups, over finite and infinite fields. The formal programme of talks was uniformly excellent. We learnt of several interesting new results with direct impact on our own research. Joint work was fruitfully undertaken.

Mathematics, National University of Ireland, Galway (Ireland)

The conference was very successful, and I am grateful to everyone who made it happen. One consequence of the conference has been that we have organised the translation of a major piece of software that some of us have been working on for twenty five years to be translated into a second language. This translation is very necessary, and requires the co-operation of the whole of our mathematical community; so the BIRS conference played a decisive role.

Charles Leedham-Green Queen Mary College London

I was able to gain insights and feedback from my colleagues that is only possible in a workshop such as this. My participation here has saved me months of research and catapulted several of my projects forward.

Kay Magaard Mathematics, University Birmingham

I enjoyed the workshop very much. I flew from Australia to Banff for just this week and it really has been worth while. On the one hand, the community was able to make substantial plans for the future and it was great to be involved in these. On the other hand I made some new research connections by discussing mathematical questions that arose from my talk with some of the people present. With one of these we immediately struck up a collaboration and worked all Friday afternoon while waiting for the bus. Thank you so much for inviting me and allowing me to take part in the workshop and for the wonderful atmosphere provided by BIRS. It is much appreciated.

Alice Niemeyer Centre for the Mathematics of Symmetry and Computation, The University of Western Australia

I truly appreciated being part of this excellent meeting. I learnt a lot from the talks, and also had time to talk with many colleagues. I felt honoured to give a talk on the Akos Seress day in memory of my close colleague Akos - it allowed me to present the contact of a major part of his research over the last 5 years of his life, culminating in his joint paper completed by Sukru Yalcinkaya and I, published just the week before the conference. Here is a short snapshot of some interactions: Discussions of revisions of a paper with my former student Brian Corr, now a new postdoc in Brazil – and discussions of how he could complete his work on recognizing classical d-dimensional groups represented in dimension up to d^2; Extensive discussions with Csaba Schneider on our forthcoming book on permutation groups; Planning a research project on involution-centralizer construction in classical groups with Colva Roney-Dougal. (She will visit me in Perth in January.); Trying again, with Alice Niemeyer and Tobias Rossmann, to prove that “collection to the left” in p-groups has exponentially complexity; and Discussion with Dane Flannery of progress with publishing a memorial issue of the Journal of the Australian Mathematical Society in memory of L. G. (Laci) Kovacs. Again, may I say how much I appreciate the hospitality of BIRS and the great facilities that promote these interactions.

School of Mathematics and Statistics (M019), The University of Western Australia

This was an outstanding workshop. Whilst there I made substantial progress on an on-going research project, initiated a new international research collaboration, submitted a grant proposal jointly with one of the other participants, and had preliminary discussions with another participant (with whom I’ve never worked before) about a further possible grant proposal.

Mathematics and Statistics, University of St Andrews

Once again my time there was productive. It saw the completion of a research project with Martin Kassabov (participant) surrounding a question raised some 50 years ago. It also gave critical feedback on the most important aspects of my student Josh Maglione's (participant) work which will help him focus his ideas in the last stage of his research. Finally, this time I felt the impact of the video taped lectures even while I was there. I was able to direct Gene Luks, and emeritus member of the same research community, to lectures on which he was able to provide distinct feedback despite being absent from the conference himself. I look forward to a future visit, if invited I would reflexively accept based on how productive my previous visits have been.

Nov 09 - Nov 14, 2014

This workshop was extremely helpful for me. I learned about lots of new results, corrected some misconceptions that I had about my own field, got good feedback about my research, and established at least one new collaboration. Also, the location is as good as it comes and the hospitality aspects were friendly and welcoming. I'd like to thank everyone involved, including the BIRS staff and the conference organizers. I hope I get invited again soon!

research affiliate
Basic Sciences, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center

Great place, great friends, lots of inspiration!

Associate professor
Information Technology, Uppsala University
Nov 02 - Nov 07, 2014

My stay at BIRS helped me a lot with my own research program and I wish to thank the BIRS staff for providing such a great environment for the exchange of ideas and results. I have benefited a lot from the conference. The conference brought together a number of leading experts in geometric scattering theory, who presented their most recent results in the field. Such possibilities to get to know the recent developments in a field are of great importance for advancement of science. Of particular importance for me were the talks by P. Albin and D. Sher, who reported on their brand new results on analytic torsion for manifolds with fibred cusps, obtained in joint work with F. Rochon, who also attended the conference. This work is closely related to my own research interests and I had very fruitful discussions of related problems with the authors. Of great value for me was also the talk by Eugenie Hunsicker and the discussions with her, concerning spectral theory on manifolds with fibred boundary. Furthermore, I discussed problems of my current research project, concerning analytic torsion on locally symmetric spaces, with A. Vasy. One problem I was struggling with for some time is related to the stationary phase approximation of weighted orbital integrals occurring on geometric side of the Selberg trace formula. The discussion with A. Vasy was very successful and helped me to solve the problem. Finally, A. Strohmaier and I were inspired by some of the talks, especially the talk by E. Hunsicker, to start with a new joint project dealing with resonances for asymptotically Euclidean manifolds.

Werner Müller Institute of Mathematics, Universität Bonn
Oct 26 - Oct 31, 2014

The combination of the venue and the range an quality of the presentations on information theory applied to biological systems was a one-two stunning punch. Absolutely the best workshop I have ever attended in my 30 years of professional activity.

Professor of E&CE
E&CE, Rutgers University

It was a great workshop! For me, it was particularly great to meet one of the organizers, Toby Berger, a very important figure in rate distortion theory, which is directly relevant to my research. I would have loved to stay on for the weekend to further discuss with some of the other participants. There was an interesting variety at the conference, some people I’d never met before, but enjoyed speaking with.

Information and Computer Sciences, University of Hawaii

It has been a wonderful and very beneficial workshop for me. The chance to expose different ideas and research directions among experts who normally don't go to the same conferences was unique and highly valuable. The format of long talks (when requested) with ample of time for informal discussions; the beautiful location and perfect hospitality of the Banff center, and the careful choice of participants, made this meeting very successful. It was certainly worth the effort of the long trip from Jerusalem.

Professor
CSE & ELSC, Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Oct 19 - Oct 24, 2014

I thought the quality of the research was very high. This is a field where I used to be working; now I am more of an interested bystander. But at the workshop, I learned of a problem that I thought had been resolved and began thinking about it. Right now (a week later), I believe that I have a nice little publication, joint with two other participants at the workshop. I also made quite a bit of progress on a project with two of my other collaborators who were there, but that topic is a little off the main thrust of the workshop.

Ian Putnam Mathematics & Statistics, University of Victoria

I have had the chance to participate in great workshops and conferences in my field in recent years, but this workshop at BIRS stands out among them. Most of the speakers were young mathematicians and the majority were new to me (some are still PhD students). I was impressed by the quality of their work. I was delighted to see breakthroughs in my field and solutions to old problems (which I had tackled myself, but without success). The schedule of the workshop and the facilities offered by BIRS are congenial to discussions, giving the opportunity to know better these young participants and their work. I have started a research project with one of them. The workshop also gave me the opportunity to make some progress on another project with an experienced participant.

Mathematics, Universite d' Orleans
Oct 12 - Oct 17, 2014

Excellent workshop, idyllic surroundings. Feel recharged.

Professor
Electrical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Bombay

The workshop was well organized, gathering scholars from different disciplines, which opened new angles for me.

CERMICS, Ecole des Ponts ParisTech

The BIRS workshop was an outstanding experience. The opportunity to interact with and learn from the top researchers in the field, against the idyllic backdrop of the Canadian Rockies, was very memorable. I am very glad that places such as BIRS and the Banff Centre exist to facilitate the exchange and pursuit of knowledge.

Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Waterloo
Oct 05 - Oct 10, 2014

One main goal of our workshop was to bring the research communities of compressed sensing, frame theory, numerical linear algebra, and optimization together to join forces in order to solve key problems in the area of sparse data processing. Having such a diverse group of participants is always an experiment. But in our case it worked extremely well, and the inspiring atmosphere of BIRS and the Banff Center had a significant impact on this. Many participants told us afterwards how much they benefited from this workshop, even starting new collaborations across community boundaries. Also there was a general agreement among all to have similar meetings in the new future to continue bridging and strengthening the interactions between those four research areas.

Department of Mathematics, Technische Universität Berlin

BIRS offers a wonderful environment for meetings and research. I very much appreciate also the support of the people around - all works smoothly and creates a pleasant atmosphere. The workshop put together people from several disciplines. This is always a challenge with a potentially high gain. My general feeling is that science today is becoming too fragmented, which is, in my opinion, very true also for mathematics. Reaching a common understanding needs a persistent effort and patience, which is not entirely in line with the instant push for immediate results that we all experience. There were some people in the workshop whom I met for the first time. The idea of looking at sparsity from the very different perspectives is very useful, and I do hope for continuation of that mutual interchanges of views and approaches. I have benefited in particular from the talks and discussions on compressive sensing, but also some topics from optimization were enlightening. I had also a very nice personal experience - one of the participants turned out to be my student from the Emory University (he graduated in 1999 and went to Yale for his PhD, I returned back from Atlanta to Prague in 2000). He has clearly became an excellent professional (in another field than mine), and I has been most happy to observe that. I am sure that we will stay in contact. Thank you again for the support, I look forward to come to BIRS again.

Facuty of Mathematics and Physics, Department od Numerical Mathematics, Charles University in Prague

The workshop was fantastic, one of the best I have attended. The organisers’ vision was to have three related, but not the same, topics represented. Most participants were aware of two of the three topics, but not all three. The organisers also had three one hour reviews of each topic. This resulted in a meeting where one was updated on the most recent advances in their field, and had the opportunity to learn more about a new related field. A very good model! The organisers should be commended.

Mathematics, University of Oxford
Oct 03 - Oct 05, 2014

The workshop was excellent. A particular highlight was the three presentations from senior mathematicians: giving a research talk, university teaching and conducting research. Each of these presentations were insightful, interactive and intriguing. It was clear that the speakers genuinely wanted to provide honest and valuable advice. I appreciated their thoughtfulness. I also enjoyed the informal and candid atmosphere of the workshop, and meeting women mathematicians from across Canada, and learning from them.

Applied Mathematics, University of Waterloo

The workshop was wonderful! It was great to meet so many female mathematicians from across Canada. The senior participants shared invaluable wisdom and advice and BIRS provided an excellent atmosphere. I'm grateful I had the opportunity to participate!

Mathematics & Statistics, McMaster University

Our BIRS workshop was well-received, well-attended and extremely fruitful. From the feedback we received we have concluded that we must have frequent meetings of the same kind. BIRS was a fantastic site for us: all details of what a mathematician would need for a short workshop were thought of, and the manager was very helpful.

Mathematics and Statistics, Dahousie University
Sep 28 - Oct 03, 2014

It was very useful for me to meet people who were building further on research of mine and whom I hadn't met before. Further I met several very talented young people.

Dr.
Mathematisch Instituut, Universiteit Leiden

This was a workshop of high level with many interesting talks. The organization of the program was excellent. I had the possibility to give a survey about my recent results on effective bounds for the solutions of Diophantine equations over finitely generated domains. Several participants were interested in my results. I met some colleagues whom never had contacted before. During the workshop I got some new and interesting information related to my research work.

Kálmán Györy Professor
Dept of Algebra and Number Theory, University of Debrecen

I met a few mathematicians studying a different, yet related area. The conversations with them were very interesting. Now I decide to learn more and (hopefully) do research in that area.

UBC-PIMS Distinguished Postdoctoral Fellow
Mathematics, UBC and PIMS

I learned a lot, especially about new results on integral points, that I plan to use in my future research.

Mathematics, University of Rochester

It was wonderful to meet many of my colleagues again, many after quite a while. The meeting gave me new research questions to think about. It was also very useful to be able to immediately ask some of my hunches to the experts that were there. Renewed contacts led to an invitation to come give a talk at the place of one of the participants.

Mathematics, Utah Valley University
Sep 21 - Sep 26, 2014

The workshop was highly beneficial for my current research. I look forward to coming back.

Department of Mechanical Engineering & Applied Mechanics, University of Pennsylvania
Sep 21 - Sep 26, 2014

Our workshop was most fruitful for me, in many respects. I learned about new problems, partially we found already some solutions, and in any case the discussions and the talks were most inspiring for my future work. I learned about one particular problem for which I could write during the workshop an algorithm being two orders of magnitude faster than an existing one. Besides, the atmosphere, nature, food, accommodation, social contacts, everything was beyond any expectation. I enjoyed it very much.

Prof. Dr., head of Institute for Reliable Computing
Mathematics, Information Science and Electrical Engineering, Hamburg University of Technology
Sep 14 - Sep 19, 2014

It was a very inspiring conference, and one of the most productive ones I've been to. We obtained a new result, and I learned a lot from discussions and from the talks.

Mathematics, University of Warwick

It is one of the best workshops I have been in. I have learned a lot. This is a great platform for rookie researchers like me to to talk with the veterans and also present myself to the researchers in the field.

Center for Mathematical Sciences, University of Cambridge
Sep 07 - Sep 12, 2014

This was a fantastic conference that really showcased the progress made in mathematical cell biology over the last 3 years (since the last such BIRS workshop). Not only was there great science, but also the participants have become a kind of interdisciplinary community (of mathematicians, physicists, engineers, and biologists) who can communicate with one another about an array of complex and important problems in the cell biology field. We were a bit amazed by the onset of winter at Banff in September (lots of snow!) but the atmosphere and communications were top-notch. Several new collaborations were initiated, and many old collaborations strengthened due to this workshop.

Mathematics, University of British Columbia

The conference in BIRS was fantastic. New ideas for a project, continuing collaborations and meeting new people.

Kinneret Keren Physics Department, Technion University

The BIRS workshop Mathematics of the Cell: Integrating Genes Biochemistry and Mechanics was a very unique opportunity to meet leaders in cell biology who are utilizing the most advanced quantitative approaches model the cell. It was a wonderful experience to meet with the scientists, engineers and mathematicians in a true synthesis of ideas that has yielded such amazing advances in biology by collaborating across disciplines and generating an integrated and holistic understanding of the cell.

Brannon McCullough Biomedical Engineering, University of Minnesota

The BIRS meeting on Mathematics of the cell, was very good. I learned a lot and group seemed extremely collegiate and open minded towards each others' ideas. It is too early to say anything about collaborations of papers, yet, but it certainly provided a new spectrum of contacts for emerging questions in my laboratory.

Inke Nathke Cell and Developmental Biology, University of Dundee

BIRS provides a fantastic environment for cutting edge scientific discussions among the leaders in my field.

Dept. of Biomedical Engineering, University of Minnesota
Aug 24 - Aug 29, 2014

Very helpful. A new collaboration there led to this: http://arxiv.org/abs/1411.2404.

Assistant Professor
Computer Science, Harvard University

Definitely one of my best academic experiences, and very enjoyable personally too. Thanks to all the people involved in this great institution, and to you above all for allowing for his program to become reality.

computer science, Princeton University
Aug 17 - Aug 22, 2014

This is certainly one of the very the best conferences I have attended in a long time. Almost all talks were of very high quality and inspiring. There was a god combination of experimentalists, theoreticians and numerical people. On a personal level I came back home with several new ideas, and will probably keep in touch with several people I did not know before. We are actually thinking of putting together a follow-up in France in 2 years.

Georges-Henri Cottet U. Joseph Fourier

The BIRS workshop brought all the worlds experts together as well as good selection of up and coming researchers. There was a great mix of topics from the theoretical and modelling problems to the full complexity of the industrial setting. I greatly enjoyed the conference and believe many fruitful collaborations will result.

Jim McElwaine Professor
Earth Sciences, Durham University
Aug 10 - Aug 15, 2014

This was my first conference at BIRS and I have to say that it was one the most impressive conferences I have ever participated in. The organization was indeed perfect, food was perfect, hotel was perfect. Finally, the science was also of highest level.

Faculty of mathematics and Computer Science, Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń

This was a successful meeting allowing for a lot of interaction and exchange of ideas among the participants. I was fortunate to receive a lot of questions during my talk that will focus and expand my future research about extensions of hyperbolic actions and partially hyperbolic diffeomorphisms. During the meeting I worked with several current collaborators and I received important criticism and remarks about some of my recent preprints from top specialists in the field of dynamical systems. Many thanks to the workshop organizers and to the BIRS administration!!

Professor
Mathematics, West Chester University
Aug 08 - Aug 10, 2014

Many thanks for the opportunity and great facility. The workshop was well received and I heard all positive remarks. Indeed, it helped many participants to take their current research to next level. Each talk was interesting and ended with lively and frank discussion. As a matter of fact, a group of participants asked me if I can organize another one for their future research collaborations.

Mathematics, Brock University

As a software engineer from IT industry I was very pleased to meet so many highly qualified scientists and searchers at the workshop. It has definitely broadened our view about the specific discipline that incidentally aligns with the mission of our software product. The workshop was a unique opportunity for us to networking with people of similar interests.

James Li CEO & President
VisuMap Technologies Inc

I found that workshop arranged at BIRS on "The Perspectives on High-dimensional Data Analysis" very useful for my research. Almost all the papers that were presented there were of very high quality and were presented by some very well known researchers in this and related fields. Thanks to the organizers for doing a great job and putting some high quality papers in the program. I am definitely benefited in my research by participating in the workshop. Other arrangements like accommodation and meals were simply great. I definitely look forward to participating some similar and any other workshops in the Statistics.

Departmento Statistics and Actuarial Science, University of Waterloo
Jul 27 - Aug 01, 2014

I am really grateful for the excellent organization of BIRS. The facilities and friendly local staff really make everybody comfortable and get the most from the workshop. I found the videos recorded for each talk were very useful.

Associate Professor
Statistics, Simon Fraser University

BIRS' organizational help made running the workshop very easy. I don't think there was anything administrative that I needed to handle that was not directly related to the research program. And BIRS location and facilities, are, of course, beyond compare. I know from many comments that that sentiment is shared universally among the workshop participants. This workshop was particularly valuable in bringing together statisticians, applied mathematicians and biologists to discuss statistical problems in dynamical systems that have received little attention in any of these fields individually. It proved enormously useful to me, personally, as a way of making contact and understanding approaches from different fields and I have had that sentiment expressed to me by many of the other participants. I will outline this in a workshop report, but feel that, scientifically, the workshop served exactly BIRS' purpose. BIRS is one of the most outstanding and valuable mathematical institutions in North America and does its job extraordinarily well. I am immensely grateful to have had the opportunity to organize a meeting with you.

Psychology, McGill University

BIRS was fantastic!… As for the workshop, it was exceptional. Hooker and I are writing a book on dynamic systems for statisticians, and the organizers did an exceptional job of bring top people together from a wide selection of fields, including biologists and others using dynamical systems in their work but not themselves in math or stat. There are, as you of course know several debates going on about the role of these types of models, including whether stochastic systems are to be preferred to deterministic systems, the role of initial value systems and methodology in contexts were data are available across the whole interval, and etc. The workshop was an invaluable opportunity to listen carefully to all perspectives without taking sides. I learned a good deal, and gained a lot of perspective on these and other issues that will be invaluable in our book, and also will allow us to point in directions where dynamical systems can play an even more constructive role. Moreover, the weather couldn’t have been better, and the mood in the workshop was as upbeat and convivial as one could possible wish for. Many research connections were forged. We’ll be talking about this workshop years from now.

Psychology, McGill University

This was one of the best workshops/conferences I ever participated in, and there have been a lot. Forty colleagues from different fields centered around a common topic, perfect! I knew only three before personally, but I talked to everyone. Joint projects are on the way. Of course, the location is gorgeous!

Institute of Physics, University of Frieburg
Jul 25 - Jul 27, 2014

Great experience in a fantastic setting!

Professor
Pediatrics, University of Alberta
Jul 13 - Jul 18, 2014

Thank you for all your efforts in organizing the excellent workshop. I was very happy to be a part of it… The organization of the workshop was very smooth and the flexibility to move my own talk at the short notice was highly appreciated.

Toru Ohira Graduate School of Mathematics, Nagoya University

I would like to thank first of all Peter and the other members of the scientific committee for the organization of this excellent - and at least from my perspective also extremely successful - meeting. For me personally the workshop was an excellent survey on all current aspects of this interdisciplinary research topic provided by all the leading scientists of the area… The administration and organization of the meeting was extremely smooth, the accommodation was excellent, the food was excellent and the surroundings of the Banff Centre just overwhelming. Having a mathematical research centre of this style is important not only for the mathematical community to enhance research, but also to promote mathematics in increasingly complex topics (in this case neuroscience). I really enjoyed the meeting and I am sure the other participants did so as well.

Wilhelm Stannat Technical University Berlin
Jul 11 - Jul 13, 2014

The BIRS Workshop on "Algebraic Design Theory with Hadamard matrices: applications, current trends and future directions" has definitely influenced very positively in my research. It has given me the chance to meet most of the people working in the area, and I have maintained many interesting and constructive discussions in turn. Even more, some talks have inspired new insights for my future research.

Victor Alvarez Dr
Applied Mathematics 1, Universidad de Sevilla

The BIRS workshop was a great opportunity to learn the cutting-edge of research and get to know people working in the field. The quality of the talks were particularly high compared to conferences on the same topic I have attended. I hope that BIRS will host workshops in my research field coming years as well.

California Institute of Technology
Jun 29 - Jul 04, 2014

It was a fantastic meeting in all respects. It will certainly have a strong impact in my research directions in the next years. I also enjoyed the friendly atmosphere of the researchers in this field.

Mathematics, Imperial College London

This BIRS workshop was very interesting and usefull for my research activity. Of course it is still to early to evaluate the impact, but I had very fruitful discussions with colleagues there.

Institut Camille Jordan, University Claude Bernard

The workshop was very inspiring: many nice talks and a stimulating atmosphere.

Institute for Applied Mathematics, University of Bonn
Jun 22 - Jun 27, 2014

The BIRS worksop was perfect for me as it covered very recent topics in the field presented by top scientists and gave the opportunity for connections and ideas for new research projects. It's an invaluable opportunity for my work. I also think the format with longer talks than usual and long breaks is very good, giving more chance to understand the concepts presented and discuss them with the speakers after the talks.

Laurent Briollais Prosserman Centre for Health Research, Samuel Lunenfeld Research Inst.

I have been a net benefiter of the recent workshop. More specifically, I had a research problem or consulting problem that I did not know the corresponding literature. I presented my thoughts and received a lot of feedback from other participants. I am confident that I am now in much better position to address the statistical problem that arose from the applications. The workshop also helped me to keep up with the latest developments. Genomics are only a small portion of my research interest. I cannot afford to spend a lot of my time in all details. Thus, the platform of BIRS workshop is most cost effective of my time.

Statistics, University of British Columbia

The statistical genetics workshop at BIRS was fantastic, providing a relaxed atmosphere for scientific discussions, seeing long-time colleagues, and meeting members of our research community whose work I have read in journals. The discussions at the workshop supplied new ideas for my research, and opened opportunities for collaborations. A great experience that is hard to replicate in other scientific meetings.

Dan Schaid Professor
Health Sciences Research, Mayo Clinic
Jun 08 - Jun 13, 2014

The workshop was really valuable for me and other participants in gaining perspective on important problems/research directions in our field, and approaches to solving them. Five days together as a small group helped build strong new connections and deepen existing collaborations. Group problem solving worked surprisingly well. The BIRS location and conference support is fabulous. Thank you!

Professor
Computer Science, University of British Columbia

I very much enjoyed the BIRS workshop on programming with chemical reaction networks. First and foremost, I learnt a great deal from the other workshop participants, who often had quite different backgrounds to me and yet had very similar interests in terms of the problems they were attempting to solve. I came away with many new ideas and research directions to investigate. I also really enjoyed working on open problems in the field, and felt we made great progress in coming up with a better understanding of the problems to be solved, in understanding the work that had already been done in attempting to solve these problems, and also in making promising steps towards finding solutions ourselves. I will be following up on a number of strands that we started to explore in the workshop, and expect these to lead to new scientific discoveries in the field.

Microsoft Research
Jun 08 - Jun 13, 2014

I have not been to many meetings where there is such concentration on a given problem and I thought it worked well. There was plenty of time of discussion and speculation. I thought the centre was very well run and there were no problems. I also found the people who looked after the accommodation very helpful.

Mathematics Department, King's College
Jun 08 - Jun 13, 2014

The workshop was an excellent opportunity to meet people whose papers I had recently read, but who normally traveled in different orbits. Because our workshop devoted only little time to talks and more time to problem-solving sessions, I had the opportunity to pose to them some open questions from my research -- and it looks like we now have a solution in the works. New friends, new results. An excellent workshop in a beautiful location.

Computer Science, California Institute of Technology
Jun 01 - Jun 06, 2014

Almost all, perhaps even all, of those who attended the conference on the future of the trace formula agreed that it was one of the most fruitful conferences they had ever attended. Thank you to BIRS.

Professor Emeritus
University of British Columbia

The workshop on the future of trace formula was taking in place timely. The main theme was to find possible approaches from various aspects to understand the Langlands functoriality in general, and understand the Langlands' idea to obtain the Langlands functoriality beyond the endoscopy functorial transfers. I personally learned a lot from the lectures in the workshop, and hope the organizers and other people in the research field will think of such opportunities in near future.

School of Mathematics, University of Minnesota

I expect a new collaboration leading to a book to be written, that originated during the workshop.

Jean-Pierre Labesse Aix-Marseille Universite
May 25 - May 30, 2014

The organizers selected a very interesting and diverse group of mathematicians ranging from pure differential geometry to applied PDE.

Department of Mathematics,, University of Wisconsin (USA)

This was a high level workshop. It helps on having new ideas on research projects. Very interesting participation by very young researchers.

Matematica Aplicada 1, ICREA and Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya
May 18 - May 23, 2014

An excellent week with plenty of opportunity to meet old friends and to make new ones. As an experimental scientist the process of learning to communicate effectively with mathematicians was challenging but certainly has the potential for great rewards. I have only been back a few weeks and there are already several promising collaborations that have sprung from conversations at Banff. I would like to thank all those involved in setting up the workshop - for their superb organization and for bringing together such an interesting group of people.

Dr
School of Materials, University of Manchester
May 11 - May 16, 2014

Questions posed after my talk made me realize that in practice it would be hard to estimate certain parameters in our model. This will lead us to include an analysis of how to determine the parameters, and it will improve the paper significantly.

Jakša Cvitanić Professor of Mathematical Finance
Division of Humanities and Social Sciences, California Institute of Technology

Important is the possibility to discuss with colleagues. Questions were posed and maybe future research can give answers. Having the opportunity to discuss is more important than presenting a paper.

Freddy Delbaen Mathematics, ETH Zurich + UNI Zurich

I greatly enjoyed the workshop in Banff. In my opinion this format is extremely valuable.

Department of Mathematics, University of Kiel
May 04 - May 09, 2014

I had a fantastic time at BIRS. I was able to spend valuable time with a few of my collaborators who are based at different institutions and present some of my recent work to an audience of experts in my field. The location is wonderful as well.

Mathematics, University of California, Berkeley

The workshop facilitated collaborations between many groups. Probabilists and people studying PDE theory from the point of view of statistical mechanics were able to talk, analysts were able to discuss simulations and experiments with applied mathematicians that motivate and/or support their work, and various collaborations took place that were both ongoing and spurred by questions or comments in talks.

Mathematics, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
Apr 27 - May 02, 2014

Through the BIRS workshop, I begin to understand the change point test more deeply, know the latest development in this field and meet some famous scholars. I thank the organizers.

Fuxiao Li University of Alberta

Best conference I've ever attended. I'm way senior, so no it didn't influence me careerwise, but I learned a lot. The conference did influence where I take my sabbatical :).

Professor
Mathematical Sciences, Clemson University (United States)

The workshop had excellent scientific quality. I met younger colleagues whom I did not know before and learned about new topics in non-linear time series analysis. The workshop showed the state of the art in the field of time series analysis. Some of the leaders in the field were present and reported about recent results.

Department of Mathematics, University of Copenhagen (Denmark)

I did get to make some new contacts and the work done by several of the presenters opened my eyes to new ideas and new possibilities. There does exist the possibility of new collaborations and mutual visits spawned by the workshop. The facilities and the venue were excellent and the arrangements superb.

Chair Professor
Department of System Engineering and Engineering Management, City University of Hong Kong
Apr 25 - Apr 27, 2014

As usual my lodge at BIRS was a great experience. The hospitality was professional.

University of Alberta

The workshop was on math education rather than math research, but it gave me a lot of great new ideas that I can use when I next use Math Fairs or present on Math Fairs to others. It also provided me with many great contacts which I could use or offer to others.

University of British Columbia Okanagan
Apr 20 - Apr 25, 2014

My visit to BIRS was simply wonderful: I had the opportunity to meet accomplished female mathematicians, who are inspiring and passionate; I learned about many possibilities I was not aware of for job opportunities; I heard about numerous conferences/workshops I was not aware of, that I might want to attend; the work environment was ideal. I cannot imagine a better setting to discover mathematics; In the short time of one week, our group made a lot of progress, and set ideas we could explore in the near future in order to submit in the proceedings a certain resolution of our problematic and I was able to explore a field different from my research focus, which was both refreshing and exciting. Thank you for hosting this amazing workshop!

Mathematics and Statistics Department, McGill University

The WIN workshops are among the most useful mathematics conferences in which I have ever participated, both in terms of fostering research collaborations and mentorship. This third edition has certainly lived up to such standards.

Associate Professor
Departement de mathematiques et de statistique, Université de Montréal

I was very impressed with the Banff campus—it is like a self-sustaining world. I think that residential workshops like the one I just attended at BIRS are the gold standard for mathematical gatherings: because everyone lives and dines together, mathematicians of all ranks naturally mingle professionally and socially in a way that would never be possible at a typical conference venue at a university or city auditorium. I also was very impressed by the WIN format of gathering for research collaborations on pre-designed problems with carefully chosen groups. We had a very successful week and are now working on a long-term collaborative project that I think will be quite successful. I will be thinking carefully about how to apply the WIN model again; certainly a large part of the success of the week was due to the pleasant environment at BIRS.

Mathematics, Hausdorff Center for Mathematics, Bonn

I had a wonderful time at last week's workshop, and I would like to thank you and BIRS for supporting the program. I am excited about the project that this workshop introduced me to, and my team and I will continue to work on it -- hopefully with considerable success. In fact, I'm currently very optimistic about this work and I am sincerely grateful for the opportunity to have participated in the program.

Math department, Georgia Institute of Technology
Apr 13 - Apr 18, 2014

I had an excellent scientific stay at BIRS. The talks were very stimulating and gave me a lot of new knowledge on fusion categories and techniques on classification of subfactors. The format of the workshop was really excellent because it gave the opportunity to discuss with other participants and ask questions to experts. I began a new collaboration with Dave Penneys and Noah Snyder (two of the organizers) about classification of Subfactors and rigidity theory. This collaboration will certainly ends up with a paper in a few months. By asking a question to Masaki Izumi, I got new insights regarding my current research on infinite depth subfactors. Furthermore, I had and interesting discussion with Makoto Yamashita and people that are more on the algebraic side of my current research.

Postdoc
Mathematics, Vanderbilt University

It was a good opportunity for me to concentrate on mathematics, and lectures and personal conversations with other researchers were really useful for my own research. I learned new facts during the workshop, and based on them I discovered some more by myself in the following week.

Masaki Izumi professor
Graduate School of Science, Kyoto University

This was a wonderful meeting where I met new people and learned new topics. Ample time for discussion was also very useful.

Professor
Mathematical Sciences, The University of Tokyo

The workshop is related to my recent research. I met many experts and learned a lot.

Vanderbilt University
Apr 06 - Apr 11, 2014

The workshop was fantastic. It broadened my mathematical view and deepened my understanding of the subject I am working on. More importantly, I got the chance to talk to the community.

Xiaowei Wang math and computer sciences, rutgers university, newark
Mar 30 - Apr 04, 2014

Certainly the participation to the BIRS workshop gives rise to new research projects for me and gave me some fresh insights. It is possible that this gives rise to a new paper and maybe some new collaboration.

Marc Coppens Katholieke Universiteit Leuven
Mar 23 - Mar 28, 2014

This was an extremely helpful workshop. There are several groups that use higher (i.e. parametrized) Morse theory techniques, but they don't talk to each other. This conference was the first real progress towards establishing relationships between the fields. It was a major success.

Max Planck Institute for Mathematics

Every time I visit BIRS, I come back with a new project, new collaborator, or new development in an old project - something that can't be said about many conferences.

Katrin Wehrheim UC Berkeley
Mar 16 - Mar 21, 2014

It was a wonderful experience to be at BIRS. The following developments would not have happened (at all or as quickly) without the visit to Banff: 1) I gave a talk on "p-permutation equivalences", a relatively new concept in the theory of blocks of finite group algebras. After the talk, Jürgen Müller and Susanne Danz approached me with the suggestion to write a computer program that would allow to compute and analyze p-permutation equivalences and more generally p-permutation modules. We met for about 3 hours, discussed possible algorithms, and have now an initial concept. Motivated by this quick progress we agreed to meet for a week in July to continue with the project. Computations of specific examples would be very enlightening, especially in order to settle or provide more evidence on uniqueness questions. 2) There is a logical hierarchy between different types of equivalences of blocks of finite groups. Discussions with Jeremy Rickard and Markus Linckelmann gave me new ideas how to construct p-permutation equivalences that do not come from the stronger notion of a splendid Rickard equivalence. Examples of this type are currently unknown. 3) In collaboration with Susanne Danz we continued to complete a paper that we started more than a year ago on the quasi-heredity of certain category algebras. "Skype" or similar media would have been far less efficient for this purpose.

Mathematics, University of California Santa Cruz

This meeting was a marvelous success and I enjoyed every minute of it. I guess much has been said about the comfort of the venue and the beauty of the surroundings. It might be added that the new auditorium is very intelligently conceived and that the recorded talks were very appreciated. For me the event was a unique opportunity to discuss the maths I am presently working on, having focused on this theme in the last three years. I particularly enjoyed the very interesting and carefully prepared session about the remaining problems in checking for simple groups of Lie type the inductive conditions available for certain global/local conjectures. In all it was a very fruitful meeting due to the presence of almost all experts of the field, plus a couple of other experts in neighboring subjects, like Ben Elias whose talk and enthusiasm I appreciated very much. It is also very positive that this meeting could invite many junior researchers (post doc and PhD students). I had a series of informal discussions with many participants. With Tiep I discussed the possibility of proving certain stabilizer statements in the case of finite symplectic groups from the existing literature he knows well. With Brunat, following Gramain's talk on their joint work, I discussed the possible applications of the representation theory of wreath products and the related Morita equivalences to the proof of more equivalences between blocks of Weyl groups or Hecke algebras of classical types. I had many discussions with Paul Fong about the relevance of the joint work with Broue and Srinivasan on Dade's conjecture in the case of unipotent blocks of finite reductive groups, especially in view of recent results by Spaeth producing a reduction theorem for that conjecture.

Marc Cabanes Universite Paris Diderot

I found the workshop at BIRS very inspiring. Besides many interesting talks on recent results and trends in global-local representation theory of finite groups, the meeting also provided ample opportunities for personal discussions with colleagues from all over the world. Here are some concrete research activities resulting from the workshop at BIRS: Inspired by Robert Boltje's (UC Santa Cruz, USA) talk on Tuesday, he, Jürgen Müller (University of Jena, Germany) and I started to discuss possible strategies for investigating $p$-permutation equivalences between blocks of finite groups computationally. During the problem session on Thursday afternoon we developed some concrete ideas, and we now plan to meet again this summer to pursue our joint project. Moreover, during the free afternoon on Wednesday, Robert Boltje and I had the chance to make significant progress on another joint project (on quasi-hereditary twisted category algebras), which we had started several months ago, but were not able to complete just via email or Skype correspondence.

Susanne Danz Department of Mathematics, University of Kaiserslautern

I found the workshop at BIRS very stimulating. Meeting all the renowned experts in the field was a very interesting and motivating experience. My research background is only tangential to the topic of the workshop, but I am eager to learn more about this topic and I will continue my research in this direction. (More precisely, I am working on classifications of objects which are vital for the local/global conjectures discussed in the workshop.) I also bought two books, written by participants of the workshop, and I will do more research in this field. The stay was wonderful! Thank you very much! I am looking forward to coming back in November!

Dr
School of Mathematical Sciences, Monash University

I enormously enjoyed my stay at BIRS; the workshop was very inspiring for me. Besides getting a great overview on current developments and meeting and discussing with people whom I haven't seen for a while, I found particularly useful the problem session/discussion, in which a variety of problems (from major directions to important obstacles of a mere technical nature) were explained and possible ways discussed on how to overcome them. This certainly provided some fresh insights for me which -- I hope -- may even lead to some new research projects and collaborations.

Lehrstuhl für Algebra, Universität Stuttgart

The conference was a great success; it was excellently prepared and managed by the organizers and the people at BIRS. Most of the talks reported on recent progress on conjectures by Alperin, Brauer, Broué and McKay. It was exciting to see that we are really coming closer to the solution of some of these longstanding open problems. There was also sufficient time for exchange and cooperation with the other participants. I personally profited, in particular, from discussions with M. Geline, M. Linckelmann and A. Turull on vertices of simple modules and characters. R. Kessar, M. Linckelmann and I are in the course of preparation of a manuscript on this topic which will hopefully be available in a few weeks or perhaps months. We are all very grateful to the BIRS for providing such excellent facilities for mathematics and hope to return some time in the future.

Mathematical Institute, University of Jena

[As a result of the workshop], I have started a new line of research with M. Linckelmann about characterizing nilpotent blocks, which is a possible continuation of one of my recent papers. Also, with my coorganizer P. H. Tiep, we have started a possible refinement of McKay in groups with nilpotent Hall subgroups. About my student C. Vallejo, she gave her first important international talk, and she already has an invitation to visit Kaiserlautern with Gunter Malle for some months to join his team working on the McKay conjecture. The talks were, in general, excellent. The discussion session on the route plan to prove the global/local conjectures was very useful for researchers, to know where we are exactly, and for younger researchers (and even senior ones) to join us in the plan of proving them.

Gabriel Navarro Professor
Algebra, University of Valencia

I want to thank the organizers once again for a very nice workshop and the opportunity to speak. It was very beneficial to be able to meet (or see again) many people in the field, both those who are well-known in the area and also fellow early-career mathematicians. Following my talk, there were some very good recommendations and discussions, for example with G. Malle, G. Navarro, and J. Taylor, which may help my progress on one of my current problems. I also had the opportunity to speak with G. Malle and P.H. Tiep about future directions for my research involving the inductive Alperin-McKay and BAWC conditions, as well as S. Koshitani about new ways to simplify some arguments in my earlier work on the inductive conditions, which will be quite helpful in my future research.

Mathematics, Michigan State University

The workshop on Global-Local Conjectures in Representation Theory of Finite Groups was very successful. The participants were a good mix of senior and junior mathematicians, and there were lectures by both. I had discussions with several participants. One lecture in particular by Olivier Dudas on work he was doing with Gunter Malle (an organizer) gave me insight into my research and leads I can pursue. Among new contacts I would specially mention Ben Elias, a young mathematician who is doing cutting edge research. On the final day Gunter Malle gave an overview of where the program on Global-Local Conjectures stands, which would be very useful for both people working in that area now and for those interested in starting to work in it.

Mathematics, University of Illinois at Chicago

I would like to thank BIRS for giving us this opportunity to hold the workshop at the excellent venue and in the highly stimulating environment of the Banff International Research Station! During my stay at BIRS, aside from organizational tasks and attending interesting lectures and brainstorming discussion session, I was able to start a new research project with my collaborator Gabriel Navarro, as well as continue our collaboration on ongoing projects that aim to resolve some basic questions on representations of finite groups. Together with Gunter Malle and Frank Luebeck (and in discussion with Jean-Baptiste Gramain and Olivier Brunat), I had started another new research project with the aim to answer a question of R. M. Guralnick concerning representations of finite quasisimple groups. I also had discussions with other participants, including Marc Cabanes, Gerhard Hiss, Klaus Lux, Bhama Srivasan, and Amanda Schaeffer Fry.

Department of Mathematics, University of Arizona

Although this was not the first time I was invited to BIRS, it was the first time I was able to come. I was very impressed by the organization, and how well the facilities were administrated. The scientific aspects of the conferences were likewise excellent. The topics of the conference had a clear focus on the proof of a number of global/local conjectures in the representation theory of finite groups. The participants are making important and related progress on these, and exchanging ideas and divvying the work to do next is essential. I was particularly interested in learning the current status of these conjectures, including some new ones. I am pleased that there is substantial progress on many of the simple versions of the conjectures. At the same time, there is still a lot of work to do on the more refined versions of them. While there, I enjoyed productive mathematical discussion on these and related topics with a number of researchers, including Michael Geline, David Gluck, and Burkhard Kuelshammer. These and other informal exchanges affected a number of papers on these conjectures that I am in the process of writing, and suggested new promising avenues of research. It was an excellent and productive experience all around.

Mathematics, University of Florida
Mar 09 - Mar 14, 2014

I wish to thank you and the organizers for this very interesting workshop. The main interest comes from the pleasure to receive the latest news about their current research from the top researchers directly. On a more personal level, my research made some progress in two directions. On one hand, one of the organizers informed me about the existence of a counterexample (in high dimension) to a conjecture on which we had started to work (proof of the dimension 1). On the other hand, with another participant, we initiated a new line of research. He presented me a new conjecture, which extend a result of mine, and we started to think about it. We already established an interesting particular case of it.

Laboratoire d'Analyse et de Mathématiques Appliquées, Université Paris-Est Marne-la-Vallée

The workshop was very productive, as always in Banff. I learned a lot of useful things and problems... Excellent job!

Alexander Koldobsky Mathematics, University of Missouri

I got many new ideas for future research and discussed connections between my work and other fields and problems.

Computer Science and Engineering, Ohio State University

The workshop on Geometric Tomography and Harmonic Analysis was a really impressive event that is directly relevant to my current research in convex and stochastic geometry. Most of the talks I found really inspiring, some of the talks will have direct impact on my recent research directions. The style of the workshop - its size, informality and schedule - was perfect, the atmosphere at the Banff Center was ideal.

Inst. f. Mathematics, University of Osnabrueck

The workshop was excellent. It left me with several questions and possible problems that I can see can be investigated. Also, a possible new collaboration did come about.

Department of Mathematics, Case Western Reserve University
Mar 02 - Mar 07, 2014

Great facilities, excellent research environment, which gave me the opportunity to start and/or continue several collaborations. Thanks a lot.

ENSAE

Great workshop. I've learnt so much that I left as a different person. Thank you so much.

Wirtschaftsuniversitat Wien, Austria

I truly enjoyed the last week tremendously! I put my impressions on my blog: http://xianblog.wordpress.com/2014/03/07/advances-in-scalable-bayesian-computation-day-4/

One of the best and most useful workshops I have attented so far!

Mathematical Sciences, Norwegian University of Science and Technology Trondheim

I was one of very few PhD students to attend this BIRS workshop, and I was a little apprehensive that I would not know enough to be able to meaningfully contribute. I found that I was more than adequately prepared for a number of talks (those most related to my research) and less than adequately prepared for some others. This helped solidify in my mind what were the "hot-topic" areas of my field, and introduced me to many avenues for future research. The collaborative spirit that pervaded the workshop allowed me to have meaningful conversations with world-renowned researchers in my field. A few months ago I was struggling through a particular paper in connection with my research. At the BIRS workshop, I sat at lunch with the lead author and asked him my questions in person! To get to meet and discuss these exciting ideas with the best and brightest was a real privilege that I will long remember. I think that the relationships I forged in Banff may yield fruitful collaborations and/or post-doc/employment opportunities in the future.

Doug VanDerwerken Duke University
Feb 23 - Feb 28, 2014

My participation will greatly impact my future research projects since this [email protected] gave me the opportunity to meet new potential collaborations and to elaborate new directions with my existing ones. We have already planned next meetings and cross-fertilization between theoretical aspects and applications. This nice endeavor is coming up! Great place, great workshop, fantastic atmosphere, strong opportunities for future collaborations with new people. The logistic is optimal, the local organization committee is excellent. The atmosphere is "My pleasure is to assist you."

Principal Investigator, Research Director
NeuroSpin, CEA

The BIRS workshop has an impact on my current research in order to have a fresh insight on some of my research projects.

Profesoor
School of Mathematics, Cardiff University UK

I have had contacts I would not have had otherwise, with people working on multifractal analysis. With my collaborators and students we are currently working on image retrieval as well as recognition of melanoma lesions. In both subjects we mean to apply multifractal analysis. The workshop has certainly had an influence on this decision. Thank you!

Doctor
Computing Department, FCEyN, University of Buenos Aires

I want to thank you for this great week at BIRS. It was a huge opportunity for me to make new contacts and research projects than I wouldn't have had otherwise. Also, now I'm aware of other workshops organized by people I met last week. Thanks again for your enormous work!

Cristian Scarola Departamento de Matemática, IMAS UBA-CONICET

The workshop was really great. The place is a wonderful place to work, with all the equipment (wifi, computers, meeting rooms...) It is a bit soon to know how it will impact my research, but at least one new collaboration might arise from the workshop, and maybe an other one. I also have new contacts I probably would not have had otherwise.

Beatrice Vedel LMBA, Université de Bretagne Sud

This was a great conference. The organizers have done a fabulous job. I find the talks to be a good mixture of theory and Applications. The participants have diverse background, rating from math to physics to engineering. This is very helpful for many of us to learn things form one another. The food and scenery can't be beat, too ;)

Mathematics, Michigan State University
Feb 16 - Feb 21, 2014

One of the main benefit of this workshop is to mix people from different communities, working on a common subject. It allows to have a good overview of the state of the art on the subject while sharing some ideas, some problems, some solutions... I think the workshop will open new directions in my research, from the most fundamental aspect to the validations of the methods I have proposed to model the contact. I also think that it was a good opportunity to share our experience on different simulation platforms. We had the opportunity to show the results obtained with our open-source framework SOFA and discuss them with people that are involved with other platforms (siconos, chronos, ...), with different application focus. I think the idea of providing benchmarks for assessing the quality of these platforms is very important. It was PERFECT! (special thanks to the chef... the food was excellent!) Do not change anything!

PhD
Shacra Team, INRIA Lille

This workshop is of utmost importance to support a small extremely cross disciplinary community such as ours. It allows us to exchange research experience and knowledge across diverse fields such as computer science, mathematics, physics and engineering. On a personal level I extracted important knowledge about how our research field is maturing and developing. An important observation is that many independent research groups are seeking a methodology for validation. Hence without this workshop such efforts may not have been unified. With this workshop everybody has joined efforts in collecting data for creating benchmarks -- an important step for our field.

Computer Science, University of Copenhagen

Thanks for letting us have this great workshop! It had never learned so much about contact mechanics in such a short amount of time. More importantly, mixing people from different academic communities (math, robotics, graphics) provided a unique opportunity to meet so many interesting people and discuss ideas and possible collaborations. This allowed me to start discussions about at least two exciting new collaborations. I sincerely hope that this will take place again.

Institut Fourier Grenoble (France)

I found it extremely informative and interesting and it gave me a number of new things to think about, and kick started a few new projects. Specifically: 1. Interaction with Jeff Trinkle and Ying Lu on using the PATH solver for nonlinear versions of the friction contact problem arising from real data. Ideas sparked about how to use MPEC in conjunction with these models. Clearly this was influenced by the talks given by Ferris and Lu at the meeting. 2. Interaction with Vincent Acary on an iterative solution technique for the friction cone problem. Motivated by talks by Acary, Pang and Anitescu. 3. Further interaction with Negrut and his students (at Wisconsin)! Ideas on how to collaborate to use conic solvers (interior point versions) on their data sets. 4. New thoughts related to the use of logic programming and complementarity. Thinking about ideas on how to formalize this, and when it would work well. Lots of other things might come from the meeting, but these are clearly things that are foremost on my mind after the talks and discussions at Banff.

Computer Sciences, University of Wisconsin

The workshop was extremely helpful in understanding what are the state-of-art in computational contact mechanics, providing a forum for researchers from different background (Math, OR, ME, CS, Geo-Science, etc.) working on the similar problems to discuss and exchange ideas, and shared recent work. Wow! What a collection of brilliant minds with different perspectives working on similar problems in one place! CONGRATS to the organizers' excellent planning and organization! I've certainly met several new researchers from other disciplines, as well as those within my own community. I'm also looking for postdoc, though I did not find any suitable candidates at the workshop, I did spread the words. The new contacts I made should be very valuable in my future endeavors in expanding my current research projects into other related topics and ideas that I've in mind. I've found new energy and new directions in a relatively short time there. The workshop was absolutely fabulous and planted new seeds for future projects! THANKS! The local arrangement, rooms, and meals were excellent! This is a wonderful facility and I very much appreciate the opportunity to be able to take advantage of the workshop and the facility.

Parker Distinguished Professor
Computer Science, University of North Carolina

The BIRS workshop on computational contact mechanics was one of the best workshops that I've attended. I was able to network with the top researchers in this field and discover the state-of-the-art in terms of modeling contact. For example, studying the formation of rivers by modeling particles flowing in a fluid and speeding up the solution of the algorithms using advanced optimization techniques. BIRS created a relaxing and conducive atmosphere for learning and collaborating. I learned from, presented to, and conversed with THE top researchers in my field. Needless to say, I walked away from BIRS with an incredible list of contacts. The workshop provided an impetus for a larger collaboration effort across the field. This effort will eventually help standardize the methods of testing and validation for the entire discipline. The BIRS facility was amazing and the staff were absolutely wonderful.

Research Assistant
Mechanical Engineering, University of Wisconsin - Madison

The BIRS workshop on Contact Mechanics brought together researchers from a variety of fields including mathematics, robotics, computer graphics, and geology to discuss the state of the art in contact simulation and analysis, as well as to discuss open problems. In my robotics research, many of the most challenging problems are deeply tied to the difficulty of analyzing contact mechanics. This workshop brought me together with some of the best researchers in contact modeling, whose approaches have deep connections to my formal analysis of robotic stability. Not only did I make some invaluable contacts for future research, and my future job prospects as a current graduate student, but some of the discussions at the workshop have produced immediate results in my algorithm development. While the workshop finished just weeks ago, and I have not yet written any new papers, I have no doubt that some of these ideas will lead to future publications and research.

Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, MIT

This is my fifth Banff meeting (Muscles x 2 + non-holonomic mechanics + balance + contact =5). I am always happy to come back because: I like small meetings. The setting is lovely and inspiring. The accommodations are great (well, too great), e.g., Good vegan food, Nice rooms, Basketball, etc. The meeting logistics are well done: Good meeting rooms. Good support staff. Good lounge room for evening discussions. Good internet. About this meeting in particular. It introduced me to many people with whom I have overlapping interests but whose work I did not know. In particular, through the talks and evening discussions I have finally got a sense of the issues of concern to those who do large scale simulations with contact. I also learned about the capabilities of the packages and as a result of this meeting I am more or less committed to collaborations with two of the groups at this meeting. Because of the time for discussions at this meeting, both groups were able to describe their computation abilities well enough so I could get a sense if they would likely be of use for my lab. On the flip side, the meeting gave me an opportunity to share some of the more physical things that I think about with a community that can make use of those insights.

professor
Mechanical engineering., Cornell University

The workshop has been fantastic. Having a focused theme, but with people from a variety of backgrounds (engineering, robotics, computer science, mathematics) has been especially valuable. I, myself, have taken away two ideas that have the potential to become publications. They will need continued development away from the workshop, but they would not have started without it. One of these involves a new collaboration for me. I already knew some of the participants, but many (actually most) were new to me or I knew only by reputation or papers. Some participants "prodded" intellectually, and have forced me to re-think some things I had taken for granted, or had not taken as seriously beforehand. I am going to be doing some calculations to see if my assumptions are as well-founded as I thought. Thanks for the workshop. It has been very invigorating.

Professor
Mathematics, University of Iowa

I thoroughly enjoyed the workshop last week. It was one of the best meetings I have been to in recent memory, due to both the technical strength of the participants/material and the fantastic venue. It absolutely broadened my perspective by introducing aspects of the field that I had not been exposed to previously. Thank you for your support!

MIT

The workshop was amazingly successful. We got a number of email thank you notes like the one below: "Organizers,This is the best meeting I have ever attended. As a graduate student, I attended international conferences in which communication was largely stratified (professors mostly spoke with professors, and students with students). Due to the intimate size of the meeting, the shared meals and housing at BIRS, and the egalitarian attitudes of the participants; I felt much greater connection to the other participants. I would emphasize the importance of the meals and informal social gatherings, at which technical discussion continued. During this meeting, I was exposed to a number of open source physics solvers that I would like to investigate for connections with our open source robotics software packages (I compiled Chrono Engine, Sofa, and Siconos on my laptop this past week). I'm also looking forward to developing a set of benchmark contact problems in order to compare the different methods that we use."

Professor
Computer Science, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

The workshop was fantastic. I was introduced to the people behind the work I know so well, as well as what they're currently working on. The talks and interactions I had during the week certainly have helped me in better understanding the ideas and concepts of my field, and I feel as though my own work benefited greatly from the insight and input of the other attendees. As a result of the workshop, I believe that we will as a group pursue a database of benchmark problems for multibody dynamics that will prove invaluable to the progress of our field.

Computer Science, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
Feb 09 - Feb 14, 2014

The participation in the BIRS workshop on "big data" benefited my research in several ways. First of all, I was able to present my own work to a group of researchers working in different areas in statistics and learn from their comments and suggestions made from different angles. These expertise broadened my sight and gave me more insight into my research problem. Some of the things that I learned in this workshop, though not directly, are helping with my current project. Second, the topic of this workshop, "big data", was something that I was not very familiar with before attending this workshop. Through this workshop, by involving in the talks and discussions, I learned about the problems, current development, and future unsolved challenges in this field. I now think this area is very important while requiring more attention and research. Third, this one-week workshop created a very friendly environment that people can closely interact and focus on research without much disruption. I personally got to many of the experts in this field and learn from both their talks and informal discussions. Some of these people I would not have met if it were not in a small and concentrated workshop like this one. I am really grateful for the workshop organizers and local staff at BIRS who made all these possible to me.

Xiaoyi Min Postdoctoral Associate
Biostatistics, Yale University

This is one of greatest workshops I attended so far. It gave fresh information on the research status of Big Data Analysis and activated some new research projects (or collaborations) related to Big Data Analysis. In particular, I have got contacts with some front players in this new emerging field and have learnt several new software about Big Data Analysis. I start rethinking my current research projects by exploring the utility of Big Data Analysis. I am working on statistical genetics and neuroimaging. I have seen from this workshop that the two fields start integrating each other. Some exciting discovers will appear next few years.

Jian Zhang Professor
School of Mathematics, Statistics and Actuarial Science, University of Kent

I believe that the talks in the conference are high quality. I have found that I can continue to do something along the same directions. Nice organization. BIRS is super.

Professor
Biostatistics and BRIC, Univerity of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Feb 02 - Feb 07, 2014

My participation had remarkable impact on my research and I had stimulating discussions about problems I currently working on or thinking about with some of the experts in the field or related fields. There are also prospect of some collaboration on future papers with some of the workshop participants.

Kiumars Kaveh Assistant Prof.
Mathematics, University of Pittsburgh

I participated in a so-called half workshop, but the partner conference was very close to our own subject. In particular, the participants of both workshop new each other well. This made it possible to create some interaction between both workshops, including joint talks. I liked this idea a lot. It gave us the opportunity to look at related subjects, too. The atmosphere at Banff was really nice and stimulating. I was glad that I was able to visit this place again.

Institut fuer Mathematik, Freie Universitat Berlin

I very much appreciated my participation in the BIRS workshop. It has been a great opportunity to meet experts in a field which is very close to my current research interests, especially mathematicians from the US, Canada or Russia, which seldom visit my home country. The talks by Kiumars Kaveh, Valentina Kiritchenko, Nicolas Perrin, and Evgeny Smirnov were especially interesting for me, as well as subsequent discussions on their recent results. I also had stimulating discussions with Jochen Kuttler about my latest work, and I established new contacts with several junior mathematicians including Izzet Coskun, Chris Manon, Henrik Seppänen. The workshop had a very significant impact in the development of the theory of Newton-Okounkov bodies, a currently very active topic with experts scattered in many countries. It also had (at a smaller scale) consequences on my own research, by showing which lines of investigation would be of interest in this theory.

Dr.
Institut Fourier, Université de Grenoble
Feb 02 - Feb 07, 2014

It was a very intense and POSITIVE week. The conference was very interesting, the participants were all very motivated, the conference room and all facilities were very comfortable and and everything needed was there. The location was incredible, I hiked a little bit whenever I had time, I just regret I did not have more time to relax in this incredible place. My deepest thanks to the organizers and to BIRS and Banff Centre staff.

Dipartimento di Matematica, University of Padova

Some of the talks were very inspiring, and they will certainly have an impact on my current and future research. During the conference I started some new research projects with people at the conference. I wouldn't have started these joint research projects otherwise. The scientific organization and the BIRS accommodation and organization were truly great. The BIRS hospitality and organization were simply perfect.

Giuseppe Pareschi Professor
Mathematics, Universita di Roma, Tor Vergata

My participation in the BIRS workshop did impact my current research on toric vector bundles. Specifically, time spend with my collaborators at BIRS lead to new discoveries and results. Feedback from our presentations also lead to new insights. Although it is too soon to be sure, some conversations from the workshop may develop into new research projects and new collaborations.

Mathematics & Statistics, Queen's University

The workshop was a great moment to discuss research with people in my field. Me and my coauthors have had good feedback and ideas. It was also a good occasion to meet people that I would have hardly met in person and discuss math in an intensive way. In particular the location is great and it stimulates a lot the scientific activity.

Jan 26 - Jan 31, 2014

First I have to congratulate all the BIRS, from the very concept of having an excellent place to work, to share experiences and knowledge, to the logistic facilities that allow people with same objectives to gather in a productive way. The staff to support the work is also perfect. It looked to me almost unreal that we can actually have such a place. For me the workshop was truly profitable in a wonderful atmosphere. I have met people from different places yet with same ideals and I could share the professional experiences of Mathematicians contributing to Mathematics Education. The number of people with specific profile attending the workshop was also a key ingredient to the success, but of course the effort of the organizers (Sol Friedberg, Ed Barbeau, Bill McCallum, Patricio Felmer and Jose Antonio de La Peña) was determinat. I express here my gratitude and appreciation to BIRS for this wonderful experience.

Department of Mathematics, Universidade Federal de São Carlos

I must say that it has been a wonderful experience I won't forget. I want to thank the generosity of all participants. They shared their ideas, their initiatives, their experiences and at the same time they were eager to know about what is happening in other places of America. Attending the workshop showed me that it is of the highest importance involving in mathematics education issues. This meeting let me learn many things, gave me ideas and also, let me think about cooperation with mathematicians from America interested in mathematics education. Finally, I want to thank BIRS for providing such a marvelous enviroment.

Antonio Cafure Instituto del Desarrollo Humano, Universidad Nacional de General Sarmiento

I found this conference very stimulating and informative, learning the latest about the state of math education in the Americas and the efforts of mathematicians to improve this education. Our conversations also included serious discussion of ways to share resources and help each other in working in this area. I am optimistic that the workshop will have a long-term effect upon international cooperation among mathematicians in the Americas concerned with math education.

James P. McIntyre Professor of Mathematics
Department of Mathematics, Boston College

It was a fascinating and inspiring workshop. Of course, since the topic was math education, it did not help my research program in any direct way. However, as a professor at a university where half of our math undergraduates want to be high school teachers and one of our graduate M.A. programs is specifically for in-service teachers, it was certainly highly relevant to my professional life. It was my first exposure to math education in Latin America, and in some ways they are better organized than we are. It was also noteworthy that the majority of the people there were active innovators in teacher education (I don't count myself as one of them) and simultaneously active mathematics researchers. Thanks as always to BIRS for the great organization and facilities and financial support (especially since we can't use NSERC funds for this meeting).

Department of Mathematics & Statistics, York University

The Pan-American Workshop on Mathematicians and School Mathematics Education was fantastic in bringing together a geographically and mathematically diverse group of individuals. In my specific case dealing with mathematics education as a tool of international development, the conference was a catalyst for a project to create a conference for finding donors for development projects and to coordinate a visit from participants from Paraguay and Chile to the Caribbean. These kinds of connections were facilitated by a conference as focused and international as this one. In a more unexpected way, the discussion topics outside of the panels and lectures provided a wonderful sharing of ideas such as how to increase the representation of women in mathematics and mechanisms for international cooperation. The logistical support and hospitality was excellent.

Associate Professor
Mathematics, California State University, Fullerton
Jan 19 - Jan 24, 2014

The workshop was very good. It helps me in my current researches allowing new collaborations with researchers from the SAT community. It gives me new insights and new ideas for my current research domain.

Universite d'Artois

I find this particular kind of workshop very important and interesting. It purposely invited researchers from two disparate but quite related disciplines. It was very informative and stimulating to hear about the research conducted by our peers. Many thanks, once again, to BIRS, for allowing this special workshop to take place and a special thank you to the workshop organizers!

Computer Science, Technion

The workshop was an exciting and optimal mix of researchers from theory and practise. During the workshop I met with a number of previous, current, and what I hope will be future collaborators. One collaboration during the workshop led already to a paper, submitted to SAT'14. The workshop was definitely an excellent opportunity to get in contact with many researchers from the more applied side, whom I did not know before well.

School of Computing, University of Leeds

The workshop was really inspiring in many regards, particularly it really helped bringing together the proof complexity and SAT solving community. It even lead to a nice joined paper with two other participants, which without the workshop would not have happened.

Johannes Kepler University

The talks at the workshop were very useful, offering deeper insights than would be possible at a conference. I embarked on possibly two new projects, while concerning my own projects I was able to start possible collaborations with at least three different groups. So I consider the workshop as very successful. On my own behalf, and on behalf of the two research communities involved.

Computer Science, Swansea University

My participation to this BIRS workshop had a very tangible outcome: while discussing with other participants, we discovered that we worked separately on a similar subject so we decided to team up to submit a paper to the next SAT conference (SAT14). I met during the workshop some people that I usually do not see or meet during conferences. It gave me another point of view of our research topic. I would say that the organization is close to perfect. I got a great time during the workshop, and felt home during the week. I could hardly believe that such a great place could exist. I am looking forward my next opportunity to attend a workshop in Banff.

Computer Science, Universite d'Artois

The workshop was very useful in bringing together the complexity theorists with the practitioners to benefit future research in both domains. The organizers did an excellent job in putting together an agenda that enabled in-depth discussion on topics across the theory and practice spectrum. The discussions have sparked some new research ideas that I am exploring. In addition to meeting people who I had known of, but not met before, I met a few potential postdocs during the workshop that I will be in touch with.

Department of Electrical Engineering, Princeton University

The workshop was a rewarding experience. Well-planned and offering the possibility for interaction with many colleagues. BIRS is ideal for these kind of events.

UCD CASL & IST/INESC-ID

That was quite an interesting experience. The research I am doing is highly theoretical (mathematical), and the workshop was a healthy mixture of practically-inclined complexity theorists and theoretically-inclined people from the SAT solving community. I was really impressed by the fact that understanding of the enormous challenges faced by this interdisciplinary area is quite similar, at least in some prominent circles within both communities, and I will try to get some students interested.

Alexander Razborov Computer Science, University of Chicago

This was an extremely successful workshop that brought together two groups that typically do not interact. I believe it has created a dynamic that will foster future collaboration between members of the two groups. We should repeat this. The informal setting at BIRS and the extensive "face time" throughout the week (talks, open discussion evening sessions, meals, hike, etc.) made it easy for participants to engage in unexpected conversations. I certainly left with a new idea and am pursuing it with two other participants!

Professor
EECS/CSE, University of Michigan

This was a great workshop, where theorists and practictioners of Satisfiability solving got to meet each other, and explain their most recent results and open problems to each other. It was the most successful "bridging" workshop that I've attended so far. I've learned a lot about the practice of Satisfiability solving, and have found a number of interesting and well-motivated theoretical problems to keep me occupied in the near future!

School of Informatics, University of Edinburgh

From my point of view the workshop was very successful. It brought together people from two communities -the theoreticians and the more practical researchers- working in the area of satisfiability and the result was that we all were pushed out of our comfort zone and were exposed to many results and methods we were not familiar with. This for sure will influence my research in the future. The logistics, facilities and hospitality were all excellent.

Institute for Theoretical Computer Science, University of Ulm

I found the workshop most stimulating, and I was able to re-establish some old contacts with the SAT-solving community. In particular, I had some fruitful interactions with my old friend John Franco that may lead to some new research on the complexity of resolution. I've had to put this research on the back burner for now, but hope to come back to it soon. The combination of people from both the theoretical and practical side of the SAT community was an excellent aspect of the workshop.

Computer Science, University of Toronto

The workshop I attended, Theoretical Foundations of Applied SAT Solving, exposed me in depth to material that I only knew about peripherally, and led to several new insights and new research ideas. I met and talked to several new people in some depth about their research. The facilities and staff at BIRS were the best I ever experienced at a professional meeting.

Allen Van Gelder Professor
Computer Science, SOE-3, University of California Santa Cruz
Jan 12 - Jan 17, 2014

This was a very impressive workshop that was directly relevant to my current research into the structure of string theory. I was particularly interested in the talks about the (2,0) supersymmetric string theory, which brought me up to date in a subject that would otherwise be difficult to come to grips with. The style of the workshop - its size, informality and schedule - together with the atmosphere at the Banff Center were ideal.

Michael Green Professor
DAMTP, Cambridge University

It was indeed an enormous pleasure for all of us to organise and participate in this workshop. We were able to attract outstanding speakers and this helped ensure the scientific quality of the meeting. This is my second time at Banff and, as before, I'm amazed at the efficient way in which BIRS functions (not to mention the recent addition of a superb, almost magical, video-recording facility!).

Indian Institute of Science Education and Research

The workshop was just fantastic in every possible way!

Bengt Nilsson Chalmers University of Technology

I was very happy to learn various new works on aspects of M-theory and related topics. To raise one example, I was able to grasp the idea of using 5D SYM theory to describe 6D (2,0) theory, its problem associated with the UV property of 5d SYM theory, the idea that the instanton modes may cire the problem. I was also able to meet and work directly with Stefano Kovacs who is on the other side of the earth (I am working in Japan and he is working in Ireland). This worked as a big stimulus to our project on the matrix model of M-theory. Stefano had gave a talk on a work with me, and I hope some participants get interested in the direction we have studied in the work.

Okayama Institute for Quantum Physics

The participation in the workshop was extremally useful for me. During the talks and discussions I have got many new ideas and also answers to questions and issues I encountered with in the course of working on certain projects. Unexpected relations between a priori different topics have been revealed which may stimulate new projects and collaborations.

Dmitri Sorokin Professor
Dec 15 - Dec 20, 2013

I had started a collaboration with one of the organizers, Ailana Fraser three years ago. But since we have not had contacts except for a brief one at Stanford in 2011, our collaboration came to a standstill. However, during this period of the workshop we were able to find time to discuss deeply about our project, and fortunately we succeeded in making a considerable progress! We are planning to continue the collaboration through Skype. I found a talk by Philippe Castillon very interesting, and so I will try to read his paper carefully and check if his result will be helpful for my research which is relevant with his.

Professor
Mathematics, KIAS

The workshop was great. The selection of the topics and of the participant have been done in such a way that all people could communicate and discuss with all the others. I personally started to collaborate with two people I had never personally met before.

Albert-Ludwigs-Universitaet Freiburg

It has been a great experience: great talks, inspiring and stimulating atmosphere and wonderful place.

Dr.
Mathematics, ETH
Dec 08 - Dec 13, 2013

This is a very exciting workshop. I got updates and new ideas that are extremely valuable to several of my current research projects. I also discussed possible collaborations with several participants of this workshop.

Mathematics, UNC-Chapel Hill

This was an extremely productive conference, I was able to hear about many of the latest research areas of my field.

Assistant Professor
Courant Institute, New York University
Dec 01 - Dec 06, 2013

The BIRS workshop will have a significant impact in my research: several interesting ideas and insights were discussed and raised during the workshop that I intend to explore in the years to come. Moreover, we formed a working group during the workshop to discuss a particular subject in the area, and the result of this working group already led to a paper submission to an international workshop. As usual in this kind of events, I met new researchers in the area, some of whom I intend to collaborate in the future.

Departamento de Informática, Universidade do Minho

For me the main result of this conference was getting a chance to go through the formalisms that were being used by other practitioners in this space and relate them to my own. This forced me to put my current research into a more formal vocabulary, which exposed immediate connections to the work of other attendees.

S&P Capital IQ, McGraw Hill Financial

The BIRS workshop I attended provided a superb opportunity to meet new colleagues and work collaboratively in a setting that allows, indeed encourages, intense concentration. During the workshop, a longstanding co-author and I were able nearly to complete an article that has been awaiting time for us to collaborate in person. Even more important for me was the chance to meet in person a number of researchers whose research I have been following closely. More generally, the workshop allowed researchers from the several subareas of the rapidly developing Bidirectional Transformations community to get an up-to-date overview of the whole subject. Extremely valuable for everyone involved and for the subject.

Professor
Mathematics and Computer SCience, Mount Allison University
Nov 24 - Nov 29, 2013

Helped me form a better picture of the current context and state of the research in this area, which is closely related to my research interests. Provided me with some questions to look into and potential areas of future research interest, although I need more time! It also clarified in my mind what my current MSc student should be looking into. The meeting provided me with a valuable opportunity to make some new contacts, and renew other contacts. It also allowed me speak confidentially with colleagues who have had contact with a potential future pdf candidate. Altogether I really valued and appreciated this opportunity.

Berndt Brenken Mathematics, University of Calgary

It is wonderful to spend a few careless, focussed days in relative isolation with a nice, small group of people. These few days at BIRS I experienced the serendipitous atmosphere that works so inexplicably good in science. The organisers made the fantastic choice to reduce the number of talks and leave a lot of free time for discussion. For me, this turned out to be the best part: the naturalness with which small teams would form and let their thoughts flow, spending time together in the small discussion rooms; I was in at least one of those every day, and most of these discussions I expect will lead to new collaborations and definite insights.

Mathematics, Utrecht University

As a PhD student (in number theory) I have only recently started studying operator algebras. It was very enlightening to hear more about how these structures can be used (in a number theoretic setting) in more generality. I have met many people with whom I have had interesting discussions. Hopefully I could also discuss things with them, once I am further along in my project.

Utrecht University

This was a very interesting meeting and gave me ample opportunity to talk to experts in the field as well as getting to know what is happening in the field right now. These two aspects were most important for me. Organizers did a superb job.

Professor
Mathematics, University of Western Ontario

I found the workshop very interesting and informative. It did indeed help my research directly, since it brought together a team of 4 researchers with whom I have several ongoing projects. One feature of this workshop was that it was very well organised: the order of the talks was planned so that later ones could build on earlier ones. I also enjoyed the half-workshop format: it was easy to get to know all 21 participants. (I think this is probably especially beneficial for younger people, of whom there were quite a few.)

Iain Raeburn Mathematics, University of Otago, New Zealand

The workshop was extremely beneficial and stimulating. The program of talks was excellent, and introduced me to a number of exciting new ideas in number theory and dynamics that are closely related to my own area of operator algebras. A few specific benefits of the workshop were: * The intensive research environment and excellent breakout rooms enabled me to interact with collaborators to make significant progress on three separate research projects. * A number of the talks suggested extremely interesting connections with the theory of number theory and semigroups that are likely to lead to new research projects and new collaborations. * The workshop introduced me to new research contacts, both amongst high-profile established researchers, and amongst exciting current students who will be a part of the next generation of researchers in the area. * The workshop was extremely valuable for at least one current post-doc in my department; attendance and the opportunity to speak will have had a very positive effect on his job prospects. All in all the meeting was extremely well organised and scientifically stimulating and struck an excellent balance between interesting talks, and time and space for research interaction.

School of Mathematics and Applied Statistics, University of Wollongong
Nov 17 - Nov 22, 2013

Thanks to you for all the attention! My participation at BIRS workshop was very useful and inspiring in the sense that allow me to aim new projects in related areas of mine. The workshop was very innovative in the areas that was covered, so all the on going projects actually are focusing in a most wide point of view. So the workshop was very interesting and useful for me. Thanks a lot!

Cientific and applied Computation Laboratory, Facultad Politécnica

As one of the organizers, I found the experience working with the BIRS team to be one of the best I've ever had in my career. Both prior to the meeting and on site, they are the best. Our program appeared to work very well, thanks to the extraordinary contributions of all the participants, both speakers and those who did not but contributed with their questions and round the clock discussions. New understanding of ongoing research questions, a sharper understanding of many outstanding problems, and the generation of some new questions were balanced against subgroups working on continuing collaborations. It was a great experience for my postdoc as it was for me. This multidisciplinary interaction has had impacts in all these disciplines and we expect to see more in the future making bridges between a good number of junior researchers for whom this was their first experience with this sort of workshop.

Kenneth Millett Professor
Mathematics, University of California, Santa Barbara

This was extremely good meeting. The knotted proteins are very interesting area of the research. For that reason, we had almost 100% attendance on all session - something very infrequent even when there is -20C outside. I would also like to praise Linda for all her efforts.

Department of Molecular Physiology and Biological Physics, University of Virginia

I think the workshop I attended was very interesting and high quality. BIRS facilities are excellent (my room in Corbet Hall a bit too cold). Overall, big success.

Mario Nicodemi Prof.
Dip.to di Fisica, Universita' di Napoli

I attended this workshop/conference as someone only marginally involved in the field, and was impressed at the level of collegiality between the participants. There were no disputes that I could recall, and everyone was impressively friendly. Any competition between the participants was hard to detect; there were certainly no egos on display. Overall a great learning atmosphere- I had a great time. Kudos to the organizers!

Associate Professor
Physics and Astronomy, University of British Columbia

As usual, this BIRS meeting was excellent--great location, great food, great science. I did indeed have a fresh insight into how the mathematics of DNA recombination can be directly applied to reconnection events of vortex tubes in fluid mechanics. One of those eureka moments during a talk on DNA recombination by Mariel Vazquez at the BIRS meeting.

DeWitt Sumners Mathematics, Florida State University

I have been a participant at quite a few BIRS workshops and they are always stimulating, interesting and useful. Every time I visit I renew my acquaintance with people with research interests close to mine and meet new people in more disparate parts of the subject. On this occasion I spent quite a lot of time talking to three of my collaborators about research problems -- e-mail might work well but it's hard to beat a face to face conversation and a blackboard! In addition I learned a lot about entanglements in proteins, an area about which I had known rather little before this workshop.

Stuart Whittington Chemistry, University of Toronto
Nov 15 - Nov 17, 2013

I learned a number of new ideas that will be helpful in my work as a curriculum developer and teacher trainer I met some wonderful people, who could be potential collaborators in the future

Henri Picciotto's Math Education Page

Gordon Hamilton and James Tanton put together a wonderful Unsolved K-12 conference. I feel that identifying 13 unsolved math problems that can be shared with K-12 students will be tremendously beneficial. I enjoyed being part of this event!

Executive Director
Riverbend Community Math Center

The Unsolved K-12 Workshop was incredibly stimulating for my professional life. It has advanced me professionally and academically in profound ways. It has expanded my knowledge of unsolved problems in mathematics, inspired me to work with teachers to disseminate and implement these problems in their classrooms, networked me to the colleagues in the discipline that I can now draw upon for information / wisdom / experience. I thank the organizers, Gordon Hamilton and James Tanton for inviting me and for providing such inspiring environment for this work. I love the conference booklet that Gord had put together!

Nov 10 - Nov 15, 2013

I would sincerely like to thank and commend you for one of the most productful workshops I have attended. The workshop most definitely impacted my work and helped me to refine my creative science and math writing skills. The prominent participators in the workshop contributed to my professionality, as I hope my skills in digital creative writing in science and mathematics contributed to theirs. As a result of the workshop, I have already started to study the interaction between mathematics and poetry, a field which I most definitely would not have dreamt to enter had I not had the opportunity to meet the inspiring individuals that I met at the BIRS workshop. The workshop has inspired me to further deepen the knowledge, research and innovation in the interdisciplinary fields of creative writing and mathematics at our institute and I intend to hold local lectures, day workshops and perhaps even a weinar or conference on the topic. Once again many, many thanks.

Technology in Education, Davidson Institute of Science Education, Weizmann Institute of Science

Professor Emeritus
Mathematics, City College, City University of New York

I am a mathematician by training, but am currently spending my creative time writing poetry and blogging on the topic, "Intersections -- Poetry with Mathematics." I brought to Banff the beginnings of a poetry project -- I wish to develop a collection of verses that will focus on the properties of prime numbers and will convey to poets and other non-mathematicians the beauty and poetry of mathematics. Discussions with colleagues at BIRS helped me to see the strengths and weaknesses of my work-in-progress; they also suggested sources to tap for new ideas and directions for possible expansion of the original project-idea. For me a valuable week, a source of enrichment for the weeks and months to come! Thank you!

Mathematics and Poetry

I enjoyed the camaraderie and the intense atmosphere at BIRS. We had a very successful workshop, where each of us learned from one another. I was able to make substantial progress on a current manuscript and I left Banff with new ideas for how to revive an older project. Overall this has been an excellent opportunity for me. I met some old colleagues and made new connections with very interesting people. In terms of facilities and such, things went very smoothly. I was sad that the exercise facilities are not in Corbett Hall but it makes sense I suppose. The facilities were perfect otherwise. The food was great, the rooms were comfortable, and the conference room was convenient. I hope to one day lead a workshop at Banff myself (together with my philosopher colleague Emily Grosholz) on humanistic (aesthetic, historical, philosophical, literary) aspects of mathematics. This workshop will be a good model for us.

Mathematics, Pomona College
Nov 10 - Nov 15, 2013

In addition to congratulating the organizers, I want to thank you and your superb team at BIRS. They are outstanding. The workshop was extremely successful for me in many ways, probably the best workshop I have been to this year (out of 4). The scientific highlights for me were (a) new contacts with researchers in probability and statistics and the insight that I can incorporate many aspects of their presentations into my work; (b) new contact with one researcher in conservation ecology and the prospective of long term collaboration; (c) continuing work with existing collaborators on at least three projects. Thank you so much.

Department of Mathematics and Statistics, University of Ottawa
Nov 10 - Nov 15, 2013

I came to the BIRS creative writing in mathematics and science workshop with a fictional work about an ambitious high school senior in the South Bronx, her progressive math class, and her mentors. It is a story built from a few solvable mathematical riddles, and loosely based on a true-life story. An excerpt (a half-dozen of the 47 chapters) circulated in advance of the workshop led to many valued intelligent conversations, discussions, opinions, and constructive ideas that could not have happened without the intelligence and collegiality of our wonderfully eclectic group of entirely egoless participants, all eager to hear and to know more about each other’s projects. Several perceptive ideas for improvements came during the time of my workshop presentation, and others came as residual ongoing discussions, sometimes late into the evening. I believe that everyone gained hugely from the wisdom of our wonderful group. In speaking with others, I understand that the whole event was an outstanding success, and that everyone felt both a sense of accomplishment and an awareness of work to be done. I am a nonfiction author, in particular, an author of narrative popular mathematics. The work I presented at the workshop is my untrained attempt at putting together a work of fiction incorporating narrative mathematics skills. With one whole week devoted to critiques in writing, I came away with a comfortable list of ideas for improvements and an exhilarating sense of accomplishment, a feeling that would be hard to come by in my usual world of solitary writing.

Marlboro College

I was thrilled when I received the invitation. Now that the workshop is over, I realize how lucky I was to be part of it. I had the opportunity to meet a wonderful group of writers/scientists and to benefit from their expertise. In particular, I highly appreciated their comments and constructive critique of the two pieces I submitted, and their advice as to possible venues for their publication. I'd like to believe that in a small way I also contributed to the success of the workshop by leading a discussion on the use of fiction to communicate mathematical, and more generally scientific, concepts and results to a wide audience. I wish to thank again Marjorie and Florin for inviting me to BIRS. I had a wonderful time, and not only on the professional front.

Nov 10 - Nov 15, 2013

The workshop was amazing. Thank you so much. It was the first time, as far as I know, that there was a workshop devoted to the mathematics of cyclic populations, and it turned out to be an extremely good topic: It was focussed enough, so that everyone was interested in everyone else's talks, but rich enough to generate an enormous variety of mathematical approaches and ingenious experimental designs. In addition, the group gelled beautifully, and the discussion sessions were lively and very interesting. I am quite confident that the paper we started writing during the workshop will actually get finished. There is more about the paper in the report, which I hope to submit by the end of the week (it's written - I just need approval from my co-organisers).

Mathematical Sciences, University of British Columbia Okanagan

It was such a splendid workshop of the size which make the communications and discussions with top active researchers in the field much more effective.

Huaiping Zhu Mathematics & Statistics, York University (Canada)
Nov 08 - Nov 10, 2013

The igtc summit is a fantastic networking opportunity. The focus on students throughout the weekend makes it one of the most important events of the year and does a lot for student employability and research enthusiasm. As this workshop is at the edge of my field, I learned a lot, especially since it was very accessible. From these summits and the igtc program in general I am a much better supervisor because of its strong emphasis on providing students with opportunities and the goal of reaching out to a broader audience for collaboration and networking.

Associate Professor
Department of Statistics and Actuarial Science, Simon Fraser University

Participating in this BIRS workshop has been a very positive experience. The variety of research presented by the students and faculty was extremely informative and interesting. Also, the possibility for discussions between students and IGTC faculty gave me valuable insight into problems on which I am currently working. I also found this to be a great networking opportunity, especially at the current stage of my degree. Two of the faculty members at the workshop offered to let me know about any post-doctoral positions that might become available in the next year. Also, the career component of the workshop was excellent, and very relevant for all the students.

Statistics and Actuarial Science, Simon Fraser University

This was a fantastic workshop that allowed me and my students to network and to find out about important research being carried out by other Math-Biology groups in the PIMS geographic region. We found an important and direct link between the research on breast cancer done in my group and that of another group in Edmonton (Ton Hillen), something we were not previously aware of. As a result, my student has been invited to visit the other group, and some mutually beneficial collaboration may result. We have already discussed comparing two distinct ways of modeling the same scenario, which would allow for direct comparison of methods used in the field of 3D cell interaction computations (Cellular Potts Model versus Deformable Ellipsoid model). This is something I had always wanted to be able to do, and is possible for the first time now. Aside from benefit to my own research, the workshop was of exceptional interest and quality as far as student presentations, career planning, and quality of advice for finding positions and planning for the future. I am very very glad I got to go to this workshop, and I hope it will be repeated in the future. In my mind, this is one of the best investments in young scientists that we can make, at relatively reasonable cost in terms of time, funding, and resources.

Prof
Mathematics, University of British Columbia

It was great fun and learning experience. I had chance to meet new students with range of background. It was nice to discuss my research work problems with other students and faculty members to have better suggestions/recommendations that are helpful for me. Simply, it was awesome!

Muhammad Sajid Iqbal University of Lethbridge

The workshop was a way of getting acquainted with topics that are currently outside of my comfort zone, as well as present my own research to people working in diverse fields. In that respect, this may well prove to be a catalyst to many new projects. I can testify that I did meet a lot of new people, some of whose work I find extremely interesting and germane to my own work. Since I am a graduate student expecting to finish within a year, I hope I made a suitable impression on the many people I met here. I feel I can provide new tools and techniques to certain problems they are interested in, or I can work on a slew of different problems that may have unexpected connections to their research. For example, cancer genomics now goes hand in hand with the understanding of the spread of cancer, and epidemiologists often look to genomic indicators for the spread of the disease. From the point of view of my favourite discipline, being a more theoretically oriented person, I do not think the workshop had an impact on my understanding of the concepts I am interested in, but the whole point was to understand something new, and I believe that the workshop excelled at this goal.

Department of Mathematics, Simon Fraser University

This IGTC workshop was geared towards graduate students in math biology, and as such proved to be excellent. The training sessions certainly helped my students' careers and exposed them to different views and different career paths. The poster session gave them feedback from researchers and students and created lots of discussion and energy. The talks exposed them to different topics and gave insight as to how modern mathematics is being used to model biological systems. In addition, I learned about models being developed by other researchers in math biology, and found out about some papers in the literature. These may help with my research projects. I also witnessed the enthusiasm and talent of this group of students.

Mathematics and Statistics, University of Victoria

First, thanks for the organizers' supporting me to attending such a nice workshop and present my research to colleagues. I learned a lot from this workshop. I got to know a lot more related research topics that interest me from the talks and posters from other colleagues. I also got a variety of good suggestions from the senior researchers on how to balance the life and research, how to adjust myself to future academic life. Meanwhile, I made a lot of friends with graduate students and enjoyed that wonderful talks. Finally, I had a more practical expectation of my future career after listening to the record of new faculty who were IGTC graduate students. Thanks to Dr. Daniel Coombs' perfect organization of this summit and personal suggestion to me. By the way, the accommodation is really splendid!

Chuang Xu University of Alberta
Nov 03 - Nov 08, 2013

Since this was a very focused mini workshop, each talk was interesting to me and will impact on my (and indirectly my students') research. Of course, there was also a bit of networking, both advertising my department's students and postdocs and learning about such folks elsewhere. Together with 3 others, I also proved a new result answering a published question.

Professor
Nov 03 - Nov 08, 2013

It was very nice to participate with other colleagues doing different kind of mathematics. I think everyone wanted to explain basics of their own work. The idea of having a small workshop is great since helps the participants to interact. I met postdoc students with whom I am going to colaborate.

doctor
Mathematics, Instituto de Ciencias Matemáticas. CSIC
Nov 03 - Nov 08, 2013

The BIRS Workshop on Computable Model Theory was wonderful. The talks were good and it was incredibly helpful to have so many colleagues gathered together in one place. It is too early to tell where some of the research collaborations will lead, but it is certain that they would not have even started without the BIRS workshop. Thanks for all the work keeping BIRS running. It is a fantastic resource for the mathematical community.

Mathematics, University of Connecticut
Oct 27 - Nov 01, 2013

It is my duty and pleasure to thank you for the very stimulating workshop I was invited to.

Gian Michele Graf ETH Zurich

The workshop was great, it was an occasion to meet people that I heard about but never had seen before.

The workshop was very stimulating and hopefully will lead to new research. It was also very stimulating for my graduate student who attended it. I had previously organized two workshops at BIRS (2005 and 2009) and plan to organize more in the future.

Abel Klein Professor
Mathematics, University of California, Irvine
Oct 20 - Oct 25, 2013

A super conference. A great meeting of substantive scientists and applied math specialists. Surely there will be both novel managerial methods and contributions to statistical science resulting. Keep doing what you are doing so well.

Department of Statistics, University of California, Berkeley

Thank you for the opportunity to respond regarding the BIRS workshop. I was a bit intimidated going to the workshop after reading the positions and backgrounds of most of the attendees. However, after attending the workshop I have to say that I have a new appreciation of the power and role advanced statistical analysis can have on every day programs and situations and the people who understand those methods. The presenters and attendees were all very down to earth people with great insights into methods of solving day to day problems that I found really fascinating. I have come away with some great contacts and appreciation of what Statistics can do in the everyday world. If ever I have the opportunity to attend another BIRS workshop, I would do so readily. My attitude towards, and understanding of statistics and mathematics as it relates to my everyday job and its challenges has changed. Thank you again for a enjoyable and educational workshop.

Dave Finn Wildfire Management Specialist
Environment and Sustainable Resource Development, Alberta Government

The use of quantitative methods for the management of fire on populated landscapes is my primary research interest, so I found this workshop to be highly relevant. The workshop was very well organized and featured a well thought out list of invitees. The participants were a nice mix of senior academics, early career researchers, post graduate students and fire agency personnel. The program contained a good mix of both prepared talks and discussion sessions. Participants approached the workshop in the true spirit of scientific inquiry, with exchanges of ideas and robust discussions and debates held throughout the week. As a direct result of the workshop I gained some new insights into problems I'm working on, made some new contacts and I expect I'll be involved in at least one new collaboration/paper.

Mathematical and Geospatial Sciences, Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology

The BIRS workshop on Managing Fire on Populated Landscapes was extremely useful for me. It led to some new insights that will help with my research. I will also be exploring two potential new studies arising from contacts made at the workshop.

Steve Taylor Pacific Forestry Centre, Canadian Forest Service
Oct 13 - Oct 18, 2013

I think this workshop was very exciting; it brought together people looking at Whittaker functions from many different points of view.

James P. McIntyre Professor of Mathematics
Department of Mathematics, Boston College

The workshop was a very useful continuation of a previous one this year at ICERM, by helping keep up the momentum in this area. I had the chance to present my work in a talk. I continued to learn several interesting things - I appreciate that the organizers took into account the topics on which I wanted to hear presentations. It was a good occasion to meet my collaborator, Anne Schilling, and continue a project with her.

Professor
Mathematics and Statistics, SUNY Albany

I was not so familiar with WMDS (Weyl group multiple Dirichlet series) before this workshop, and this program was particularly useful to learn the basic concept and techniques on this subject! It contributes for me to find connections to the theory of prehomogeneous vector space, which is my research topic. There are lots of time to talk freely, and such informal discussions were helpful also. In addition, my collaborator and I made a good progress on our joint project, which was invaluable.

Department of Mathematics, Graduate School of Science, Kobe University

My participation in the BIRS workshop impacted my current research in many ways. I enjoyed all talks in this workshop and got some new fresh insight.

Math Department, Boston College
Oct 06 - Oct 11, 2013

It was an amazing experience for me. I gained a rough idea on what this area is about, what is their most concerned problems etc. I also got the chance to talk to professors and students from both statistics and oceanography fields and generate some interesting conversions. I also identified another two problems that we might attack in the future and maybe new connections.

Yang Liu Department of Statistics, University of British Columbia
Sep 29 - Oct 04, 2013

Attending the workshop 'Geometric and topological graph theory (13w5091)' turned out as an excellent opportunity for scientific collaboration, as we managed both to initiate new collaborations as well as deepen the existing ones. In the latter regard, we had several exchanges on possible projects that could be submitted to various grant applications, as well as on completing the existing projects that are close to termination. Regarding the new collaborations, we discussed several open problems, and tested several approaches to them. With Radoslav Fulek, we investigated the gap of the crossing number additivity over cuts, with Jernej Rus, we devised a roadmap that will lead to an efficient algorithm for counting stable traces in graphs, and with Dan Archdeacon and Luis Goddyn we investigated approaches to formulating the thrackle existence problem as a stack of constraint satisfaction problems that may lead to a new algorithm for recognizing thrackle graphs. Besides the actual work, there were several interesting talks presenting deep, although sometimes counterintuitive new results.

Drago Bokal Faculty of natural sciences and mathematics, University of Maribor

This was an excellent workshop. I gave a talk on my most recent research project. I get several helpful comments, and made further progress on it. I also heard some wonderful talks by Kostochka and others on progress on some old problems on graph coloring, with very impressive results. I met a number of students (I knew almost all of the postdocs and faculty).

Department of Mathematics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Firstly, I would like to thank all of the workshop participants and especially the organizers and Banff Centre staff who helped make the workshop productive and successful. Paul Seymour and I presented the following conjectures by Kalai and Meshulam: (1) If a graph has no induced cycles of length a multiple of 3, then the number of even independent sets minus the number of odd independent sets is at most one in absolute value (2) If a graph has no induced cycles of length a multiple of 3, then the graph has bounded chromatic number (and, as a stronger conjecture, is also 3-colorable) (3) If a graph has all of its induced subgraphs satisfying number of even independent sets minus number of odd independent sets is at most 1 in absolute value, then the graph has bounded chromatic number These conjectures generated much discussion, especially with Zhentao Li. Zhentao Li, Paul Seymour, and others, including myself, worked on adapting Matthew Plumettaz's results for graphs with no cycles of length a multiple of 3 to the dual problem of having no bonds with a multiple of 3 edges. We discussed how to prove that there is no simple, 3-edge-connected graph with no bonds having a multiple of 3 edges. Additionally, many of the presentations not only presented interesting problems to consider, they also provided possible approaches for proving the Kalai and Meshulam conjectures in whole or in part. I was able to meet with fellow workshop participants, who were friendly and eager to discuss graph theory both during the scheduled activities and outside of those activities; I look forward to having future discussions with them. The workshop was a very educational experience, one that I hope is a starting point for my future mathematical endeavors.

Gregory Gauthier Mathematics, Princeton University

It was a great meeting. I learned not only excellent results, but whole new topics to study and use. One example is the talk of Jacob Fox, where I learned the topic of Turan-type problems for permutations, apart from his outstanding result solving (disproving) several old conjectures. Also I started a new project with Hehui Wu at the conference.

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

My participation in the BIRS workshop was excellent stimulus to my research. There were many exceptional high quality talks from Jacob Fox's talk about the new and exciting interval minors to Paul Seymour's talk on variants of Woodall's conjecture. Yet there were also many informal but equally enlightening conversations. In particular, I was able to discuss ongoing work with my colleague Zdenek Dvorak, to work on open problems with Sergey Norin, and to discuss career plans with many of the graduate students attending. Groups of us would sit around at night and tackle interesting open problems. While we were able to resolve a number of questions via our combined manpower, there were still a number left unresolved that caught our attention, for example Aharoni's conjecture that chromatic number of the union of two chordal graphs is at most the sum of the clique numbers. I am very pleased to have been so inspired.

Mathematics and Computer Science, Emory University

It was a great workshop, there were many exciting talks, I would like to point out two of them. Jacob Fox's talk (Stanley-Wilf limits are typically exponential) was extremely interesting, just like the main result, it is really surprising that such elementary (but very tricky) methods work in this deep problem about matrices with forbidden submatrices. These results are strongly related to the theory of geometric and topological graphs. Radoslav Fulek's talk (Recent progress on Hill's conjecture) was also very interesting, he described a generalization of the methods and formula of Lov\'asz et. at. that connects crossing numbers and $k$-sets to monotone (and more general) drawings. I learned about many interesting new results, methods, ideas, from the talks and from discussions, and I hope I can use some of them in my own research.

Geometry, Renyi Institute

Some of the presentations contained new ideas that both gave fresh insight to an old problem I had grown frustrated with and a new problem I had not considered before.

Matthew Yancey Institute for Defense Analysis

I really enjoyed most of the talks, some of them gave me new ideas, some gave new questions that I would like to study later in my research(f.e. Alex Scott's talk was really interesting for me, since it is close to my research area). Also, I worked during the workshop with Professor Alex Scott and Bruce Reed.

Computer Science, McGill University
Sep 27 - Sep 29, 2013

The conference brought together people from academia and government and in very diverse backgrounds - mathematical modeling of infectious disease and aboriginal / First Nations health researchers. I gained an enormous amount of insight into how these methods can be useful in the specific context of aboriginal health. I also met researchers and graduate students that I would never had had an opportunity to meet, and I think some of these contacts will be very useful in the future. Thank you very much for hosting this opportunity.

Epidemiology and Biostatistics, McGill University

Thanks for your email. We had a wonderful time at BIRS and a very productive meeting. BIRS really is a beautiful facility. Thank you to you and your team for making the arrangements and for ensuring that the meeting ran smoothly. The food and accommodation were great and all of the participants seemed to really enjoy their stay. The only problem we encountered was with the A/V equipment. A macbook was left for us to use so that we could project presentations but the correct attachments to connect the macbook to the projector were not left for us. Luckily someone else had a Windows laptop and we used that.

Katya Richardson The Centre for Disease Modelling, York University

I did really enjoy my time in Banff both for the atmosphere locale, food etc and for the content of our session. I learned a lot, made new professional connections, and developed some new ideas re research around indigenous health. I will be developing these with my colleagues and using them in my work in the future. I also thank Jianhong Wu, Seyed Moghadas, Michael Li and the others involved in organizing this workshop.

Don Sutherland Consultant Global Public Health

Thank you very much for your message and for your great efforts on governing BIRS. I greatly enjoyed the workshop, both the scientific part and excellent venue. The workshop provided a great opportunity for exchange in ideas and fruitful discussion, as well as for most pleasant personal interactions. All this is very valuable for my research program. I wish you all the best in carrying on your important mission of supporting research.

Marina Ulanova Medical Sciences, Northern Ontario School of Medicine
Sep 22 - Sep 27, 2013

We found that BIRS was a wonderful and very well organized host for our workshop, in what was of course a very stimulating and beautiful environment. The workshop was very focused and went very well.

Applied Mathematics, University of Waterloo
Sep 22 - Sep 27, 2013

I just wanted to write to you personally to say how outstanding the BIRS facilities, staff and organization were for this event. I have held one workshop previously at BIRS in 2010 and it was a pleasure to have the opportunity to host again in 2013. I can honestly say that I don't know of a finer venue for such meetings, and hope to have the opportunity to host another BIRS workshop sometime in the future.

Mechanical Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Sep 22 - Sep 27, 2013

I certainly enjoyed the meeting and especially had some really productive conversations both with Ralf Schuetzhold ( which is not surprising since he is my former post doc and we are writing a book together, part of which we worked on while at BIRS-- it was great in that it gave us uninterrupted time to work together) and with M Hotta, whom I had met before but with whom I had some very stimulating and intense discussions, and we will probably be writing a paper together. So thanks again.

Bill Unruh Physics & Astronomy, University of British Columbia
Sep 20 - Sep 22, 2013

Thanks to Michael and Zongpeng for organising and to BIRS for setting up the stage for this exciting and intimate gathering. I am really glad to have attended this workshop. The workshop went very smoothly and we had some really good discussions. One of my favourite features about this setting was that we really got a chance to appreciate the intricacies involved each other's works, which is usually not possible in a much larger workshop or conference. I also got some new ideas and future directions for my own research based on the interactions we had.

Postdoctoral Fellow
Institute of Network Coding, Chinese University of Hong Kong

I really enjoyed the workshop, I had the opportunity to meaningfully interact with colleagues on a number of research problems in a great environment, thanks for making this possible!

IC ARNI, EPFL / UCLA

This was a very nice workshop. I have got some new ideas from the presentations. Several excellent presentations were very inspiring. Also I got to know several people who work in this area and we might have further discussion in the future. Thanks to the BIRS and the hard working organizers who gave us the nice workshop.

Yaochen Hu Electrical and Computing Engineering, University of Alberta
Sep 15 - Sep 20, 2013

The conference gave me a much better insight to my field. As a young graduate student I feel that I greatly benefited from following the talks and speaking with other participants. I made new friends and strengthened old relationships. These contacts may well lead to collaboration some day or help getting employed, but have not done so yet. The practical arrangements were excellent and I enjoyed my stay greatly.

Department of Mathematics and Statistics, University of Jyväskylä

It's been a pleasure organizing this workshop at BIRS. This is my first visit as a participant and as a organizer and I have to say that I was very impressed with the Research Station. The staff were really helpful (during the past two years) and the facilities were excellent. We have the feeling that the workshop went well and there was a good balance between talks and time for discussions, but we'll get a better feeling once we write out our report. Many thanks for the support, centers like this are invaluable for the profession.

Pure Mathematics, University of Cambridge
Sep 13 - Sep 15, 2013

The workshop I attended significantly broadened my knowledge of the field, gave me many new perspectives, and I got to know new people in the field with whom I may collaborate in the future. I hope to attend the next time this workshop will be held at BIRS. I strongly recommend the BIRS scientific board to consider making this a 5-day workshop where more people can be invited and longer talks can be held.

Dr.
Racah Institute of Physics, Hebrew University of Jerusalem

An excellent meeting with great speakers!

ETH Zurich
Sep 08 - Sep 13, 2013

This was a very fruitful meeting for me, and I think others, in discussing current research on a selective model in the Lambda coalescent. There was a particular section in a proof that needed working through that we managed to work out in the meeting and present to the audience. I did get a lot out of the meeting that firmed up research ideas. It was a great meeting in a great environment. I also went walking on an afternoon off through Cory pass with others.

Department of Statistics, University of Oxford

The workshop was a very nice experience for me to keep up with the new development in my research fields.

Xiaowen Zhou Mathematics and Statistics, Concordia University

The workshop gives me a chance to realize the application of the Poisson-Dirichlet distribution and Dirichlet process in Bayesian statistics, which is quite amazing.

mathematics & statistics, McMaster University
Sep 01 - Sep 06, 2013

This Workshop was a unique opportunity to meet top-level scholars in this field. As a researcher I gained a lot of insights in the discipline and several suggestions to pursue my research in many directions. Finally, the participation of several practitioners was also useful to my research in this field. Overall, it was a wonderful opportunity to develop new contacts and collaborations and to get new ideas on specific topics.

Rossella Agliardi Associate professor
Mathematics, University of Bologna

The week long workshop gave me the opportunity to discuss my research area with regulators, practitioners, and researchers from other disciplines who broadly share my interests. It sparked quite a few new ideas and I thoroughly enjoyed the experience.

Christine Parlour University of California-Berkeley

The scientific contents was focused on one theme, but very diverse in term on the participant backgrounds, scientific approaches, professional contexts (academic versus industry), or questions to be addressed. This very interesting balance leads to a steep learning curve for me, and to intense discussions. It was certainly a very enriching week, where I exchanges intensely with some colleagues, but also where I learned to understand and appreciate in depth other approaches used in the field. The week was also very interesting in term of the contacts made during the week, both in the academic circles and in the industry.

SwissQuant
Aug 30 - Sep 01, 2013

Great workshop!!! It will influence the direction of my research!

Professor
Geological Sciences, The University of Texas at El Paso
Aug 25 - Aug 30, 2013

This is early to say something about the outcome, but we started a promising discussion with S. Shadrin in Banff. I think in general the workshop has been successful to exchange new ideas with the many participants, and get updated. Two years ago, I attended the workshop New Recursion Formulae and Integrablity for Calabi-Yau Spaces (11w5114) and after the talk of H. Fuji, the intense discussions with B. Eynard and M. Marino at the workshop have led two of us to propose a conjecture (arxiv:math-ph/1205.2261, submitted to Quantum Topology) concerning the asymptotics of the colored Jones polynomial of hyperbolic knots correcting and completing the work of Fuji et al.

Max Planck Institut fuer Mathematik

Very well-organized workshop in beautiful environment. Will affect my work as PostDoc with one of the organizers.

Thomas Bothner Mathematical Sciences, IUPUI

I benefited a lot from the lectures and discussions with the workshop participants. I will see if some of the ideas I had during the workshop can be made into real research projects.

Mathematics, Boston College

The workshop in Banff on Integrable systems and Moduli spaces was extremely fruitful. And the services offered by BIRS was impeccable. Through you I would like to thank BIRS for extending all out supports to make the workshop successful.

Syed Chowdhury Mathematics and Statistics, Concordia University

My participation in the BIRS workshop impacted my research in the way that discussions and feedback from my talk helped me understand things around my research much better. I have also learned a few fresh ideas on the cohomology of moduli spaces, as well as gained a much better understanding of their relation to integrable systems.

Professor
School of Mathematics, University of Minnesota
Aug 18 - Aug 23, 2013

My participation in the WIT workshop had had and will continue to have a strong impact on my current research. Our team was more productive than I would have dared to dream it could be. This new collaboration will lead to the submission of at least two articles in the near future, of which one to the workshop proceedings, and we fully intend to continue collaborating over the next few years, as we have numerous exciting ideas for extensions of our project. It was altogether an amazing week, professionally and personally.

Professor
MATHGEOM, Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne

My participation in the BIRS workshop had an impact on my current research and allowed me to get a fresh insight into some aspects of my thesis. I was happy to meet some new and old colleagues there, from whom I learned new things, useful to me. The workshop week was very productive and fantastic!

EPFL MATHGEOM SB GR-HE, EPFL

The WIT workshop was extremely productive and I am still amazed of what we all managed to do in just four (long) days. I admit that I was sceptical about the concept, but it worked! Our team plans to submit a paper to the workshop proceedings and I am sure that we will continue our joint work in the future. It was a great opportunity to meet women in topology and the atmosphere at BIRS was really inspiring. The workshop was also the starting point for a 'Women in Topology' network. I hope and expect that this will in particular help young women in the field.

Professor
Department of Mathematics, University of Hamburg

This was the most productive workshop I've attended in my career. We went from a few half-baked ideas to enough material for a research paper over the span of four (albeit rather long) days. I now have new collaborators with whom I'm eager to work in the future. I expect this week to pay dividends for a long time.

Benjamin Peirce and NSF Postdoctoral Fellow
Mathematics, Harvard University

I have no hesitation to say that the WIT workshop was the best and most successful and productive mathematical event that I have ever attended, and here is why: - One of the workshop's goals was to forge collaborations between women in topology, and it has been accomplished. In my case (and I believe many others too), the collaboration will be continuing well beyond the scope of the workshop. - The collaborative project that I participated in during the WIT workshop was my initiation into a subfield of homotopy theory that I had not previously worked in. As a consequence, my research has been significantly broadened, which is yet to positively influence my career. - My team obtained significant new results that will be written in two research papers. - Our results will be a basis for follow up research projects. - The atmosphere of the workshop was more friendly and supportive than most math meetings I've attended. - The evening discussion groups on issues of concerns to women in math/topology were extremely helpful, especially for us younger mathematicians. - As a result of these discussions, a network of women in topology is being formed as a forum to continue the support and collaboration of the WIT workshop.

Vesna Stojanoska MIT

This was an excellent event. It certainly had an impact on my research and I expect the effects to continue for a long time. In the short term, our research team involves me with three new junior collaborators. We expect to submit a research article to the conference proceedings. We have also discussed possible future meetings of our team and plans for possible longer term projects. The meeting marks the start of an international Women in Topology network. This will be an excellent contribution to supporting young women in the field. For me the meeting was a great opportunity to get to know many of the younger women. I expect it might have an indirect effect on future hiring, in that I will now be aware of potential applicants I might otherwise not have known of. The workshop was a very positive experience for all involved, I think. I very much look forward to future Women in Topology events.

School of Mathematics and Statistics, University of Sheffield
Aug 11 - Aug 16, 2013

The workshop had a great balance of biology and statistical components. The mix of people from different fields contributed to interesting and fruitful discussions during and between sessions. I made new contacts and deepened existing ones. The week also made it possible to move one of my long-term projects forward thanks to one of the other participants. The BIRS workshop with approx 40 people is by far the best setup for network, discussions and scientific creativity that I've ever experienced.

Henrik Bengtsson Assistant Professor
Epidemiology and Biostatistics, University of California San Francisco

The workshop assembled some of the most excellent researchers in my field - statistical aspects of genomics, gene regulatory networks, personalized medicine. Talks and the informal interactions during breaks, meals and outdoor activities were extremely stimulating. A number of ideas were exchanged that are likely to affect the future path of our research.

Genome Biology, EMBL

I was very happy with the scientific content of the workshop. The program was particularly well designed, featuring several talented researchers in my field and in connected fields, some of whom I didn't know and will now have a chance to get more familiar with their work.

Statistics, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), France

The BIRS meeting was my first, and I totally enjoyed the experience. The workshop attracted some of the most prestigious and productive scientists in the field as speakers. I got to catch up with many colleagues, and got to make many new friends. The talks are great, the facilities and services are very nice, the environment helps participants socialize. I might be collaborating with Benjamin Haibe-Kains, and during another talk I thought of a good project to try out at my home institution. I would recommend the BIRS conference to anyone in my field, and would love to come back again.

Professor
Biostatistics and Computational Biology, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Harvard School of Public Health

This is my first BIRs and it was stellar. Not only did I learn a lot that has helped my research program but two specific collaborations have emerged. One is the application of a Bayesian effect size shrinkage approach to a family genetics studies we currently have been writing up. The other is a statistical model for analysis of differentially expressed genes from high-throughput RNA-sequencing data. Both have advance our ability to analyze complex and high-throughput RNA sequencing data.

Stanford University

I am writing to express my great appreciation to BIRS for hosting the recent workshop on regulatory networks and personalized medicine. The workshop was exceptionally well organized and featured numerous engaging presentations. My own research has already benefitted significantly: following my talk a participant informed me of his previous development of (an obscure) constrained optimization algorithm that is ideally suited to the problem (genome reconstruction) I was exploring. Moreover, another talk detailed methodology (network deconvolution) that dovetails nicely with, and potentially greatly expands, a student's doctoral thesis. I had several informal interactions -- readily facilitated by the fabulous setting -- that I believe will also enrich my research. So, thanks to you and BIRS for enabling a wonderful and fruitful experience.

Epidemiology & Biostatistics, University of California, San Francisco

The BIRS workshop has been very informative. I got to know many cutting edge works, which definitely will have good impact in my own research. I also got to know in person other participants in the workshop, and could potentially form valuable collaboration with them in the future. I talked with quite some students and postdocs in the workshop. I will be happy to hire some of them if they are interested in joining my group later.

Pei Wang Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center
Aug 04 - Aug 09, 2013

The workshop was very useful. Considerable number of personal discussions with different participants was fruitful for my own research.

Ivan Babenko professor
Institut de Mathématiques et de Modélisation, Universite de Montpellier II
Aug 02 - Aug 04, 2013

Many thanks for the chance of organizing the BIRS workshop of "Inexact Optimization Theory for Resources and Environmental Management" (13w2178). It was very successful.

Environmental Systems Engineering, University of Regina
Jul 28 - Aug 02, 2013

The workshop provided me with a lot of fresh insight and alerted me to some new and exciting results in the area. The selection of speakers was excellent! Several ideas for new projects came to my mind after listening to the talks.

Mathematics, Texas A&M University

This workshop is the third in a series on related topis (the first two took place in 2005 at AIM in Paolo Alto, and in 2009 at the MFO Oberwolfach. What has made these workshops particularly interesting is that they have been very focused (on eigenvalue problems), yet have attracted researcher across several disciplines, most notably Mathematical Physics, Spectral Geometry, Functional Analysis and Convexity. I am particularly interested in the "ovals conjecture", which says that a certain geometric eigenvalue problem involving the curvature of a loop should assume its minimum at the circle. Significant progress on this conjecture was reported at both subsequent workshops. This time. Jochen Denzler showed that the problem has a solution given by a planar, convex, smooth curve with strictly positive curvature. This problem continues to intrigue me, and the above meeting at BIRS was the ideal place to discuss it. I hope to see a resolution in the coming years ! The community is especially welcoming to younger researchers and students, including several Canadians who have recently returned to the country. Sadly, a number of researchers from abroad were affected by the visa strike and could not attend.

Mathematics, University of Toronto

The workshop gathered together some of the leading researchers in this area and I found it quite profitable to learn about the most recent results, as well as being able to discuss future directions with some of the participants. It is too early to say whether or not these will translate themselves into actual publications, but definitely the overall balance in this respect is quite positive. It is not possible to follow all the developments and publications in this area, so I believe that the workshop was quite useful in giving an overall view of what is going on, which of course also shapes future developments. Workshops are always useful to discuss the work of your students and postdocs with other researchers, finding out about positions, etc, and this one was no exception.

Group of Mathematical Physics, University of Lisbon

Although I knew the majority of the participants already, there were several valuable new contacts. In particular, new ideas for research directions grew out of discussions with Alessandro Savo and Lotfi Hermi, and the open problem sessions were thought-provoking. I am not currently either seeking a job or involved in hiring, but it could make a difference in future hiring that I met some bright young people in spectral theory.

Mathematics, Georgia Institute of Technology

At the BIRS program 13w5059, I reported on the work that originated in discussions at the 2010 BIRS workshop 10w5106; additional progress was achieved at a 2012 workshop 12w5072. This resulted in two publications: 1) Y. Canzani, D. Jakobson, R. Gover and R. Ponge. "Conformal invariants from nodal sets." pdf, arxiv:1208.3040. To appear in IMRN; 2) Nullspaces of Conformally Invariant Operators. Applications to Q_k-curvature." pdf, arxiv:1206.0517, published online in Electronic Research Announcements in Mathematical Sciences, Vol. 20 (2013), pp. 43-50. I am also involved in several projects extending those results. At the BIRS program 13w5040, I reported on a series of projects that were discussed at the workshop 09w5040. These projects resulted in 3 publications: 1) Y. Canzani, D. Jakobson and I. Wigman. "Scalar curvature and Q-curvature of random metrics." To appear in Journal of Geometric Analysis. DOI 10.1007/s12220-013-9406-9; 2) Short announcement: Electronic Research announcements in Mathematical Sciences, Volume 17, 2010, pp. 43-56. 3) L. Chen and D. Jakobson. "Gaussian free fields and KPZ relation in R^4." arxiv:1210.8051, to appear in Annales de l'institut Henri Poincare. Another project is nearing completion, and a series of related projects have been completed (Y. Canzani, D. Jakobson and J. Toth. "On the distribution of propagated Schrodinger eigenfunctions." arxiv:1210.4499, to appear in Journal of Spectral Theory), or are in progress.

Professor
Mathematics and Statistics, McGill University
Jul 21 - Jul 26, 2013

The workshop was a great success for me! I met two collaborators with whom I could work intensely. I also met other people I know and could discuss with them. I met young people I did not know which was also very interesting for me. Certainly the workshop was very inspiring for me! The talks and discussions gave me new ideas.

Institut fuer Algebra
Department of Mathematics, Universitaet Bielefeld

I made new contacts with people I hadn't met before. Some of the talks were very inspiring for me, and in fact, I now have a new idea of a whole (rather big) project based on some of the talks and discussions I had afterwards. I also continued some of my ongoing research projects with people I hadn't seen in a while. And perhaps most interestingly, the environment is really inspiring too: on one of the nice afternoon hikes we had, we started talking about mathematical ideas, and it turned out that our research had connections we weren't aware of before.

Prof. Dr.
Department of Mathematics, Ghent University

Thank you very much again for your hospitality during this workshop. We enjoyed a great scientific program which nevertheless left enough time for working on research projects with the colleagues. During this workshop Kay (Magaard) and I have been working on a sequel of our paper "Imprimitive irreducible modules for finite quasisimple groups". The objective is to complete the classification for quasisimple groups in characteristic 0. In our first paper we had to assume that the groups of Lie type arise from algebraic groups with connected centers. This assumption excludes certain quasisimple groups. I was also invited to give a talk on recently completed work with Husen and Magaard. Apart from the scientific actitivities, I enjoyed the inimitable location of BIRS, and in particular the delicious food offered. Thank you once again for inviting me.

Lehrstuhl D fuer Mathematik, RWTH Aachen University

I did already send details on my scientific interaction with other participants to the organizers of the conference. I got to know several young participants which might facilitate future hiring decision.

Fachbereich Mathematik, TU Kaiserslautern

While at the workshop I was able to finish one joint paper (with other participants) and start on a new collaboration. The workshop also benefited me by drawing world-class algebraists to Alberta, some of whom agreed to extend their travels to visit me in Lethbridge. This has been a great boon to my research.

Math & Computer Science, University of Lethbridge

We had long chats with Zinovy Reichstein . His favourite area (the subject of his recent ICM talk) is essential dimension of various structures. It seems that I will be able to prove some new results about the asymptotic structure of finite groups(my favourite area) with given essential dimension. With James Wilson we discussed possible joint work elaborating a connection I found between permutation groups (the subject of the workshop) and p-groups (his favourite subject).

Laci Pyber Discrete Mathematics, Renyi Institute of Mathematics Budapest

The workshop was excellent. I now have at least three new collaborative broad research projects to work on, possibly more.

Mathematics, New York City College of Technology, City University of New York

Joy Morris, Pablo Spiga and I spent quite some time at BIRS working on the problem of proving that almost all Cayley graphs on generalised dicyclic groups are graphical regular representations. We made significant progress and it looks like we will submit a paper based on this research later this year. I also had some interesting discussions with László Pyber about related topics.

Gabriel Verret FAMNIT, University of Primorska

Participation in the BIRS workshop on Permutation Groups introduced me to ideas and new contacts that could benefit my research. Although at an early stage and there is nothing concrete to report at present, there is the possibility that papers and new collaborations could emerge from the meeting. My research in topological groups has links with permutation groups and algebraic groups, which were the main focus of the workshop, and two of the talks described ideas that might transfer to solve particular problems concerning topological groups. I will explore both these ideas in future work. Although broader and less specific, insights gained in other talks were also beneficial. I had useful discussions with several people. In some cases these consolidated links that had been initiated previously but in at least two other cases were new links that could lead to new collaborations. I met and heard talks by a number of younger mathematicians in fields related to mine, who I will keep in mind when advertising positions in future.

George Willis Professor
Mathematical and Physical Sciences, Newcastle Australia

The workshop was fantastic, and I am deeply indebted to the organizers and BIRS for making it so successful. Being quite young in my career, the opportunity to interact mathematically and socially with the other participants, being of all different levels, was great, and I will likely not realize all of the impact for many years. That said, here are some concrete anecdotes: 1) I spent a few hours discussing some aspects of Moufang sets with Tom De Medts and Yoav Segev. There are some configurations that have come up in my research on which I am hoping that they may have some insight. The problem did not get solved, but we shall see. 2) I spoke with Dennis Gulko about his research on linear sharply 2-transitive groups. I was especially excited that his approach made use of the notion of generic 2-transitivity, a topic on which I have been thinking and which was the subject of my talk at the workshop. He is interested in extending his work to linear sharply 3-transitive groups, and we talked a bit on how one might get started. 3) After speaking with Dennis about his work on linear permutation groups, it seemed to me that it would be quite interesting to investigate linear Moufang sets. I believe that the general theory might be able to be considerably sharpened when restricting to the linear case, and perhaps, in a way analogous to Gulko's work, one might be led to consider some generic version of a Moufang set. I mentioned these ideas to De Medts and Segev, and they agreed that these would be interesting to explore. 4) Following my talk, I received some comments from Bob Guralnick and Zinovy Reichstein on a problem I mentioned about degrees of generic transitivity of simple algebraic groups, and I plan to follow-up with them in the near future. Again, I am so happy to have been a part of such an enjoyable workshop. Many thanks to all those that made it possible.

Mathematik und Informatik, Universität Münster
Jul 14 - Jul 19, 2013

It was a great meeting in a wonderful setting. I benefited a lot from many discussions with several prominent colleagues - a few for the first time. But also it gave me the opportunity to interact with several young researchers, which I found to be rewarding.

Tim Healey Mathematics, Cornell University

An interesting link was discovered at the workshop during the discussion following the talk of Reidun Twarock. During her lecture she explained that the structures of the capsids of numerous animal viruses, including not only the overall icosahedral structure but also the detailed structure of the subunits, could be understood by by applying a finite set of powers of two generators of an isometry group to a point in \mathbb{R}^3. This provides an interesting link to the theory of "objective structures" of James, which can be viewed essentially as the union of orbits of a discrete group of isometries on a finite set of points in \mathbb{R}^3. The distinction is that the generators used by Twarock do not generate a discrete group. There are a great many nondiscrete groups of isometries and the subfamily used by Twarock enjoys a certain uniformity property. As explained by Twarock, there are links between these ideas and the "method of projection" from higher dimensions used to construct quasicrystals. The possible implications of this circle of ideas is that potentially a large class of non-periodic (and non-objective) structures seen in Nature, including possibly quasicrystals, polymers, glasses, can be viewed as the action of a nondiscrete group of isometries on a set of simple structures.

Aereospace Engineering and Mechanics, University of Minnesota

I found the workshop extremely useful on several aspects. On the one hand, I was able to present my work in front of a very selected and high quality community, which is hard to gather together in the same room in a standard conference. On the other hand, I was able to have discussions that helped me move my research forward. Additionally, I established long conversations with another attendee which is likely to be the beginning of a collaboration. Thank you for the great organization and for making this type of workshop possible.

It has been a great meeting with a high impact on my current research.

I very much appreciated being part of the Mathematics and Mechanics in the Search for New Materials workshop, organised on the occasion of the 60th birthday of Dick James. I had the opportunity to refresh several of my long standing collaboations with people in this field, get first hand information on some new opportunities for joint research and provided some of my colleagues at home with potentially interesting new contacts. I also very much appreciated the beautiful surroundings of the centre.

Prof.
Physics, University of Antwerp, Belgium
Jul 07 - Jul 12, 2013

The workshop gave me a great opportunity to learn in-depth about the current development in various sub-areas of complexity theory. The workshop will likely inspire several projects in the next year or two. Conversations with Sasha Sherstov and Scott Aaronson inspired me to look for an information complexity attack route on the (notoriously hard) Arthur-Merlin communication complexity model. The talk and conversation with David Steurer encouraged me to start looking for another proof for the Parallel Repetition theorem. Overall, it's been a wonderful and important experience that will impact my group's work.

Assistant Professor
Computer Science, Princeton University, Department of Computer Science

I participated in the workshop on complexity which took place in July 2013. It was an amazing workshop - I got to hear about recent development in the various areas of complexity theory and to discuss potential research directions with many of the attendees. There is even a potential new research direction that emerged from our discussions; as well as many "old" hard problems which we discussed and brain-stormed about. For me, this is the third time I am in this workshop (previous times were in 2008 and 2010) and I have to admit that this is one of the best workshops in complexity theory that I know. This is because of the unique mixture of a beautiful and relaxing surroundings; an amazing host of participants at the workshop; great organization and selection of talks; and an environment which supports academic collaboration in as hassle-free mode as possible.

School of Mathematics, Institute for Advanced Study

This workshop is always wonderful; it presents many of the most exciting recent works in complexity theory. I heard about new results and useful techniques; learned about work very related and relevant to something Scott Aaronson and I proved; and benefited from giving a talk about something still in the works.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

The workshop was a very productive experience, both in terms of learning about new results in the area as well as informal interaction with existing and potential collaborators.

School of Informatics, University of Edinburgh

I had an excellent professional experience during the Computational Complexity workshop. In addition to the very interesting and informative slate of talks, I was able to re-connect with collaborators and push forward several research projects. Some of the discussions we had at BIRS have re-invigorated research projects and given us new approaches.

Computer Science, Columbia University

I learned a lot on various on going work as well as very recent achievements on the field, i.e., the computational complexity theory, that I have been working. When coming back, I have told several important topics discussed in the workshop, which may be very informative to researchers in our group. I am extremely happy to get some new results out of discussions with the participants of the workshop.

Professor, Vice Dean
Department of Mathematical and Computing Sciences, Tokyo Institute of Technology

My participation in the BIRS workshop contributed to my research in several ways: It helped communicate recent finding with the community. I have learnt of new problems and some of them are already on the way to being solved. I got a much better understanding of the main themes of current research.

Amir Yehudayoff Technion-IIT
Jun 16 - Jun 21, 2013

For a person like me who is trying to choose his field of research for future, it was a great conference to start with. I learnt a lot, interacted with masters of the field and got inputs for my SSL(Sequence Specificity Landscape) program. After seeing everyone's interest in the field and towards my work, I am now excited to continue working on this project and improve my programs so that it can be helpful for analysis for other people too. I new about research of few people who presented, by this meeting I was able to clear my doubts by asking them. Also learnt about research of lot of other people in the area, which is equally exciting and challenging. This conference has filled in me the interest to work on research, specially in the area of DNA-Protein interaction.

Devesh Bhimsaria Student
Department of Biochemistry, University of Wisconsin

Thank you very much for hosting the workshop on Rules of protein-DNA recognition. The meeting was spectacular! Very high quality talks, all highly related to my research, and also very inspiring. Alexandre Morozov and Gary Stormo did a great job putting together such an excellent scientific program. It was great to have, in the same room, so many professors who have pioneered the computational models and the experimental techniques I am currently using in my research, and the discussion times allowed me to better understand the details of each model/method, as well as compare and contrast the various existing technologies. In addition, several collaborations were initiated during this workshop. Remo Rohs, Matt Slattery and myself are going to write a review on the topic. David Lukatsky and I have already exchanged data and results, and we are now talking about writing a paper together. Alex Morozov and I have started a new collaboration - we are now trying to use his thermodynamic models on some of the data I am generating in my lab, and we have already discussed some ideas for future projects. I expect that other discussions during the meeting will also turn into collaborations later on. So, in conclusion, the workshop has helped me a lot in my research, both in terms of immediate effects, as well as inspiration for future research directions. Thank you again for making this workshop possible!

Institute for Genome Sciences and Policy, Duke University

Looking over my notes virtually all talks provided me with a new valuable nugget of information. However for my work directly, several talks had a significant impact: Phil Bradley & Carlos Comacho: Provided computational support for the idea that water plays a consistent, potentially (structurally) predictable role in forming protein-DNA interfaces. Phil's ideas that there are solvent 'rotamers' will greatly assist in efficient prediction of hydration schemes. Carlo's finding that differential solvation of a particular protein-DNA contact in different protein or DNA sequence contexts provides a potential (and likely correct) explanation for 'non-linear' effects of substitution mutations on protein-nucleic acid complex affinity. Tali Haran: Injected a note of function and reminded us that binding protein concentration and not just sequence, are important elements when considering functional binding site occupancy. Scot Wolfe: For illustrating his method for selecting not only preferred DNA sequence, but protein sequence outside of the interface region. Aseem Ansari: While not earth shattering, the sequence preference 'landscapes' will provide novices in the field with an easy to read way to identify interesting features of selected sequences. The practical outcomes via new methods to be employed and collaborations was almost as valuable as the ideas. Collaborations: Phil Bradley and I will begin a collaboration on large scale prediction of protein-DNA interactions in bacteriophage repressor proteins. This effort will have a significant impact on testing hypotheses related to how toxin-encoding bacteriophages have evolved to have a 'hair-trigger' induction mechanism-a feature that may lead to their increase virulence. We sent the first set of 'test' data to him today! New methods: Having failed at using purified chimeric transcription factors to identify cooperative changes in preferred binding site motifs, the information on bacterial one-hybrid obtained from Scot Wolfe's and Marcus Noyes' talks and informal interactions with them have emboldened us to try this route. We ordered the oligos and DNA yesterday. We hope that experiment will be complete by the next meeting!!

Professor and Chair
Department of Biological Sciences, University at Buffalo (SUNY)

This was an extremely productive meeting for me. It gave me a chance to see how my research projects might fit into the goals of the protein-nucleotide world. I met many people whose papers I had cited but had never crossed paths with before. I discussed potential collaborations with other participants, based on both published and unpublished work. Attending with a close colleague and collaborator, the meeting helped us put our upcoming paper into the context of the state of the field. It has also been very helpful in our thinking about future projects and an upcoming proposal.

Mathematics and Biochemistry, University of Wisconsin - Madison

The meeting was a great way to learn about new tools, their power, and their potential pitfalls. I will include what I've learned in my teaching next year. I also got a chance to network with several people I might collaborate with in the future, and to spend some focused time with a current collaborator from a different institution. Also, we really really really appreciated how helpful BIRS was when we were marooned in Banff. My extra time there was very productive.

Biochem & Mol Biol, University of Chicago

This was a wonderful meeting. I like this kind of small meeting focused on specific topic rather than large conferences, especially in this perfect environment. In spite of the small meeting, there was a good mixture of presentations from different backgrounds. I listened to all the talks, and all of them were interesting and useful to my research. I was impressed by the progress of this field, especially new experimental methods and new tools to analyze them. This meeting helped me to expand the scope of protein-DNA recognition. I could meet many new people and the discussion was very stimulating. All the talks and discussions were inspiring and lead to new insight into the mechanism of protein-DNA recognition. This meeting also provide me a possibility to collaborate with some researchers.

Professor
Kyushu Institute of Technology, Kyushu Institute of Technology

The BIRS workshop on protein-DNA interactions was really superb. It brought together people working on a common topic, protein-DNA interactions, with a variety of experimental and computational approaches. Although I had previously read papers by most of the participants I had only met about half of them. The talks generated several new ideas that we will test and possibly some new collaborations. It definitely will have an impact on our research directions.

Professor
Department of Genetics, Washington University in St. Louis School of Medicine

The range of topics related to protein-DNA recognition that was the highlight of the meeting. The opportunity to hear both experimental and computational approaches related to protein-DNA recognition provided the opportunity to expand my perception of the key questions that remained in the field, and the suite of approaches that are being used to achieve greater understanding of the biological questions that still remain. The meeting also provided a great opportunity to strengthen interactions between my laboratory and the Stormo and Noyes laboratory. In addition, new potential collaborations were defined with the Hughes lab on protein DNA-binding specificity and the Bondos lab on artificial homeodomain recognition. Opportunities to discuss science over meals were particularly valuable with both theoretical and experimental approaches being weighed for particular questions. Alex Morozov and Carlos Camacho provided very valuable critiques of an idea that my lab will pursue on homeodomain evolution that will affect the planned direction of these studies. This was by far the most valuable meeting in this field that I have attended.

associate professor
Program in Gene Function and Expression, UMass Medical School
Jun 09 - Jun 14, 2013

The program was diverse and at the highest level of the field. I have happily reconnected with some old friends and made new ones, thanks to this conference. We started some new collaborations. Thank you!

Department of Mathematics, University of Surrey

This is my best workshop since many many years. My participation impact and help strongly my research: - many answers given by specialists, and such answers are not written on books. - A new possible collaboration with a leader in the field starts! Thank a you a lot for this marvelous center in such beautiful mountains. Thank you Brenda, Joseph and all the BIRS organization.

Laboratoire J.A. Dieudonné & Team COFFEE INRIA, Université de Nice Sophia-Antipolis

The main value of BIRS was the possibility for the informal discussions over the course of the week. I took advantage of the opportunity to trade ideas with people who I normally would never see in any other circumstance.

Marshall Slemrod Mathematics, University of Wisconsin
Jun 02 - Jun 07, 2013

It definitely impact my research in a very positive way, giving a more general vision of the current achievements, and it allowed me to directly talk with people involved in research projects very close to mine. It also allowed me to talk directly with my 3 actual coworkers, all of them participating to the workshop.

Professor
Mathematics, Universita di Bologna
May 26 - May 31, 2013

I have attended 3 other BIRS meetings, and this was easily among the best. The discussion was unusually lively, and it was very clear that the audience was engaged with essentially every speaker (often at meetings with disparate backgrounds some subset of talks simply get tuned out, and this did not happen here). I had that one crystalline idea, that came out of a question session at the meeting, that will very likely end up as a theoretical paper, and for me this is an excellent criterion to judge whether a meeting was a success. Systems Biology is a challenging area, with lots of different ideas about the direction it should go, but the organizers did an excellent job in identifying participants that share a common interest in rigorous quantitative methods, and that was sufficient glue to hold it all together.

Professor
Molecular Biology and Genetics, Cornell University

My participation in the workshop has given me the opportunity to meet many new people that work in the same field of study, and it was an excellent test bed to find out if certain ideas and/or plans are worth further investigation. The informal discussions over lunch and dinner were a great source of new knowledge and various new ideas. Support from the Banff Centre was flawless, the fitness centre and swimming pool a luxury I didn't anticipate, and the Maclab bistro a nice place for a drink.

Anton Crombach postdoc
Centre for Genomic Regulation and Universitat UPF Barcelona

It was a fantastic meeting, a great mix of people I already know, respect and always want to hear from, together with others whose work was new and interesting to me. Talks and informal breakout discussions prompted a big "ah-hah" insight for me, clarifying a problem I had long been wrestling with, and which has now finally come together. This insight will soon go into a grant proposal, a paper, and maybe a whole significant research direction for me, one which might include a collaboration with somebody I met for the first time at this meeting.

Ecology & Evolutionary Biology, University of Arizona

The BIRS workshop I attended was a critical step in bringing together mathematically minded people from Evolutionary Biology and Systems Biology. If the mathematical methods in these fields are unified, I believe we will look back at this workshop as a key step in that development.

Assistant Professor
University of Toronto

Great workshop, which has probably resulted in one collaboration for me.

Department of Physics, Emory University

Scientifically the workshop was one of the most useful and impressive that I have attended in my career. The selection of speakers was outstanding, and what was particularly useful was that I was brought into contact with people from related fields that I would not have otherwise come into contact with. This has had important impacts in the way I am thinking about the problems I am working on. I also think that the setting, in a beautiful place where it is not too easy for participants to leave the venue, together with the communal meals at a single location, highly contributes to meaningful interactions between the participants. I hope that it will be possible to organize follow-up meetings of this kind, because they are highly effective.

Biozentrum, University of Basel

Expanded my horizons, certainly. New contacts made. A few new research ideas and possible directions.

Applied Mathematics, Western University

The work shop was great. The size of the meeting was just right enough to be able to meet everyone. I learned a lot and had a very good time. The center is so well organized, it's amazing.

Sloan Kettering
May 19 - May 24, 2013

This was an extremely good event. The programme was both very stimulating and comprehensive. All the participants clearly took it seriously as the papers and contributions were all very well done. Personally, I learned a lot and left with a considerable amount of new knowledge and much food for thought, which will have a long-term influence on my own work and that of some of my collaborators. It was also a great pleasure and a privilege to be invited and to be able to spend a week at BIRS. This is a superb centre; a tribute to those who created, developed and funded it. And of course to those who run it today: we were made very welcome, the friendly and supportive atmosphere created by the BIRS staff undoubtedly enhanced the workshop. It was also good to be reunited with some well-known skew-ellipticals, other folk that I’ve met before and to meet new people. Not for the first time, I was reminded that statisticians are a great group: invariably smart and always fun to be with.

Chris Adcock Sheffield University Management School

The participation to the workshop on "Non-Gaussian Multivariate Statistical Models and their Applications" was a wonderful experience of which I shall keep a most pleasant memory in the years ahead. The BIRS organisation and facilities are outstanding, in an exceptionally beautiful location, and it was clear since the beginning of the workshop that the days ahead were going to be most stimulating. Indeed, in the following days, the presentations and the discussions, both in the formal and in the informal occasions, have been up to that initial perception. The workshop has offered the opportunity deepen interaction with people that I already new, but even more importantly I had the chance to meet people of whom previously I had only known the publications. Getting together with them and talking informally in a comfortable atmosphere has offered the possibility of perceiving new perspectives. All of this is offering to me a wider perspective of the theme were I am involved as well as a chance of new collaborations. I believe that the organizers have put together an excellent list of names, blending together contributions from different but related streams of the literature. This will contribute to a step forward of the discipline.

Professor

The workshop went off very well, with lots of interesting presentations and discussions about the past, present and the future with regard to research in the focus of the workshop. Everyone enjoyed the event, the location and the facility immensely. A small group of us also discussed the possibility of putting forward a proposal for another workshop on the theme of "Stochastic Orders and Their Applications" and with special focus on reliability. I am meeting with two of them in a few weeks time in South Africa in a major reliability conference when we may finalize the details so that we can put forward a proposal. Overall, the event was a grand success and thanks for providing an opportunity for us to organize this workshop on Non-Gaussian Multivariate Statistical Models and Their Applications.

Mathematics and Statistics, McMaster University

Many people participating in the workshop have a high research level. It was great to have the opportunity of hearing them in live. I have had the opportunity of knowing them and also of meeting another people that otherwise I wouldn't know. In my case, this unexpected contacts have been the most promising, in the sense that I have been discussing some ideas with them that hopefully will yield new future research projects. In summary: I have learnt many new things and I have been discussing about new research projects with professors that I did not know before.

María Dolores Jiménez-Gamero Estadistica e Investigacion Operativa, University of Sevilla

It was a great opportunity for exchange with colleagues. The level of the talks and the discussion was superb. I have particularly appreciated the fact that in this meeting two different groups of researchers were put together to discuss a common problem. I have learned different perspectives for my own research.

Professor
MEMOTEF, University La Sapienza of Rome

This was a wonderful workshop in an inspiring location. For me it was an opportunity to meet in the flesh some figures in the area whose work I have been reading for a number of years. I now have a series of ideas to follow up and a number of potential collaborators. I feel certain this workshop experience will lead to new research outputs and I return home reinvigorated.

Professor
Actuarial Mathematics and Statistics, Heriot-Watt University

The workshop was quite stimulating. I also got the chance to work with two of my coauthors and we made substantial progress on our joint project by solving a tricky convergence result about empirical processes with pseudo observations. Otherwise, I was happy to meet new colleagues and spend a week in such a charming location.

Associate Professor
Mathematics and Statistics, McGill University

It was a wonderful opportunity that top researchers in both skew-symmetric distribution and copula gather and discuss different aspects. Meeting top researchers in both fields is a treasure in my research life. I have learned a lot on both fields. Discussions stimulate my new research directions.

Toshinao Yoshiba Bank of Japan and Institute of Statistical Mathematics
May 12 - May 17, 2013

The meeting at BIRS last week was very well organised by Mark, Alan, Peter and Henri, as well as being academically really interesting and stimulating. I met up with some colleagues, made a number of new contacts and outlined some potential new collaborations. If any of these blossom into substantive pieces of work I will ensure that BIRS is both informed and acknowledged. In the meantime, very many thanks for the hospitality and facilities at the Banff Centre; altogether this made for a great week.

Zoology, University of Oxford

The BIRS workshop last week (Impact of Climate Change on Biological Invasions and Population Distributions) was excellent, and has already had a strong positive impact on my research program. During the workshop, as a result of ideas arising from talks I heard and discussions with colleagues, I have come up with a new set of approaches for one of my research questions, fresh insights into the work I am currently doing, and an associated research program for my upcoming PhD student, to arrive in September. I have also been invited to visit one of the workshop participants in Oxford next summer, and have set up a new research collaboration with two other participants. The latter will hopefully result in a publication.

Mathematical Sciences, University of British Columbia Okanagan

This workshop is great. I definitely learned a lot from high-quality talks and excellent participants.

Assistant Professor
Mathematical and Statistical Sciences, University of Alberta

The workshop organized by Mark Lewis et al is wonderful: Worldwide active leading researchers get together to discuss the topics, I've learned a lot from many of the participants and their talks and discussion. Guess that others at the international level also got to know what I have been doing. It's great! I am thinking of organizing some workshop in the coming competition.

Huaiping Zhu Mathematics & Statistics, York University (Canada)
May 10 - May 12, 2013

The workshop was really useful. A special thanks to BIRS for providing such a nice, warm and, friendly environment.

Mathematics and Statistics, University of Calgary

That was an amazing conference. It was specially useful for graduate students to see what type of research is being done in other universities close to home.

Mathematics and Computer Science, University of Lethbridge
May 05 - May 10, 2013

The meeting was very revealing, and gave me quite a number of new directions to think about. Also, I found all talks interesting, and almost all very well presented -- which is to say that the organisers made a very good selection ! The visit was thus extremely fruitful

Faculty of Mathematics, University of Bielefeld

First, the workshop gave me a chance to catch up with some of the latest interesting developments in the field. And second, it gave me a chance to talk closely with a couple of colleagues I have been wanting to bounce some ideas off of. I am optimistic that at least one of those discussions (one with Rafe Jones, another with Par Kurlberg) may lead to further developments. Third, I was newly inspired by some of the questions about expected cycle lengths and orbit structures in generic rational functions over finite fields. I have thought about some of these questions before, but the workshop gave me new ideas and insights, not to mention renewed enthusiasm for some of these questions.

Mathematics, Amherst College

Thank you for a great scientific experience and a very well organized and pleasant stay.

Reinhard Laubenbacher Virginia Bioinformatics Institute, Virginia Polytechnic Inst.

This conference was quite unique in my experience so far: The topic is perhaps a relatively new (emerging?) topic, and not yet crystallized: most people felt as if they approached the topic "from the side" i.e. that they were approaching the topic from "their" field. This meant that at this conference you found quite a diversity of backgrounds, but all of them interested in the topic at hand. I found this to be very stimulating: the diversity of type of questions, approaches, and knowledge was as refreshing as freshly pressed cool orange juice!

Mathematics, Jacobs University

It was wonderful. I have never come back from a conference feeling so excited about opportunities for new research directions. I am very grateful to the organizers. The environment at BIRS also made it a very pleasant experience.

math, Drexel University

The week I stayed at Birs for this workshop was excellent. The organizers did a very good job, inviting researchers who are active in the wide area of dynamical systems on finite fields (and beyond). The talks were very stimulating and "inspiring creativity", as Banff Centre aims to be. Nevertheless, the accommodation, the weather and the landscape were wonderful and all these elements made the workshop even more successful.

Free University of Bozen

This area of research is new, interdisciplinary, and rapidly evolving, and this timely workshop provided a unique overview of it, thanks to the skills and complementary interests of the organizers. It was BIRS at its best: plenty of interactions, high standard of presentations, and miraculous weather.

School of Mathematical Sciences, Queen Mary University of London

I met with coauthors and finished a paper. I learned a few new things but it is too early to tell their impact on my research. I met some people who might be interesting job candidates in the future. I really enjoyed the meeting. Nice talks, nice people, nice weather.

Mathematics, University of Texas at Austin

As a senior researcher, I know most scientists (except for newcomers) at most conferences that I attend. This workshop was different. The organizers have put together an interesting group of people working on related problems but from very different directions, many of whom I had not met before. I saw many interesting problems and perspectives. In fact, I will study some of the problems that were posed at the workshop. Several colleagues commented to me along the same lines. Great applause to the organizers for putting together an unusual and highly successful list of participants.

Professor
Computer Security, B-IT, University of Bonn, Germany

The workshop brought together researchers from two different areas, finite fields and dynamical systems. I expect many fruitful scientific cooperations between people coming from these areas. Personally, I got several new ideas for future research and met new people who may become co-authors soon. An invitation to esteemed research institutes as Banff, Oberwolfach, ... is always an honor and a plus in any CV. Moreover, I had the opportunity to meet co-authors to discuss running projects and organizing workshops.

Professor
Apr 28 - May 03, 2013

This was a great workshop in a fantastic place. Congratulations to Tucker and George for putting together a great program. The facilities and staff are first-rate at BIRS so congratulations to you as well. I know many participants hope to return for another workshop in the near future.

Emory University

it was a great experience. the stuff was extremely organized and professional. the facility is first class, and the food was great! thanks you for your service, we had a great time.

Chemistry and Chemical Biology, University of New Mexico

A main goal of this workshop was to bring together theoretical chemists and mathematicians who are interested in molecular quantum dynamics to exchange information. It was highly successful in doing this. Chemists learned of recent mathematical results from mathematicians and mathematicians learned what problems are important to chemists, and what the state of the art in chemistry is. Several participants have sent me e-mails commenting on how successful this workshop was in bringing the two groups together. I presented a talk on a simple mathematical model for molecular Rayleigh and Raman scattering. Chemist Todd Martinez (one of the chemistry participants) has worked on this subject from a chemistry perspective, and he had several questions for me that have caused me to do further analysis of the problem. I have also had subsequent e-mail communication with William Miller that will change my future work on this subject. I have also met several times with Edward Valeev (another chemistry participant) since the workshop. He and I have discussed what we have learned from Todd Martinez and William Miller, and we have discussed the further analysis and future directions to be pursued. He and I have also discussed other topics we learned about during the workshop. One of Ed's comments a few days ago was, "It's fun to discover connections between ideas. It's amazing how much we can learn from one another." The venue was spectacular, and the staff support was the best I've experienced in a very long time. (I was an organizer.) Everything went very smoothly. Thank you!

Department of Mathematics, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University

The joint meeting of scientist working mathematics and theoretical chemistry inspired very interesting discussions quite different from the more routine communication in "conventional" workshops or conferences. Everything was perfectly organized!

Department of Chemistry, Bielefeld University

The workshop was very good. It allowed me to present to people who work in related areas to the topic of my presentation our work that perhaps went unnoticed previously. Advantages and disadvantages of different methods could be discussed with their developers. I cannot say new project/collaborations originated from the workshop, but possibilities thereof were discussed and it is possible there will be new work resulting from the workshop.

Mechanical Engineering, National University of Singapore
Apr 26 - Apr 28, 2013

The SNAP Foundation is a non-profit organization whose mandate is to encourage the development of mathematics learning resources at the classroom level with very little retraining of the teaching staff, with very flexible budgets, and by utilizing the energy and natural curiosity of the students themselves. The main theme of the BIRS workshop was, “What is a SNAP math fair and how to organize a math fair in your classroom”. The speakers mostly consisted of teachers/educators who shared their math fair experiences and success stories. The first SNAP type math fair was designed in Edmonton by Mike Dumanski and Andy Liu in 1997-1998. Since then, a large number of schools in Alberta and beyond have adapted the SNAP math fair to their needs. The SNAP program has been spread through similar workshops and conferences, and mainly by teachers themselves. SNAP received its initial funding from the Canadian Mathematical Society and from private donations. PIMS, the Pacific Institute for the Mathematical Sciences, has been a long time financial supporter of our math fairs. BIRS, the Banff International Research Station, has provided funding for the BIRS math fair workshops that have been held in Banff on a regular basis. Currently, our major supporter is Thinkfun - a company that develops a variety of excellent puzzles. This year marked the tenth annual Ted Lewis SNAP Math Fair Workshop at BIRS. Some of the feedback from elementary teachers is given below: “I had a terrific time with the group! Thanks for sharing all of the ideas and puzzles!” “Thank you so much for the invitation to the SNAP Math Fair Conference! I am absolutely thrilled with the possibilities I have to bring math alive in my classroom and school. I am so excited to spread the information, websites and puzzles that I was able to gather at the conference. I greatly enjoyed hearing the various perspectives on math fairs and can't wait to plan one of my own. Please keep me on your mailing list and inform me of other SNAP activities that I could participate in.“ “Thank you for organizing this event. I know that my kids love playing games, so any new ones are always welcomed in my room. It was fun as always and it hurt my brain just a bit.” Thank you BIRS for providing a location for another successful workshop. We are extremely grateful for what you do to help SNAP math fairs grow. Sincerely, The SNAP Foundation

Sean Graves Mathematical and Statistical Sciences, University of Alberta
Apr 21 - Apr 26, 2013

The meeting gave me the opportunity of contact with some specialists in C*-algebras I wouldn't have meet in other circumstances. And also helped me to reconsider some of the lines of my current research. I expect that it will produce positive influence in my present work. And definitely, the meeting will produce a very important impact in this topic of research.

Full Professor, Ph.D.
Apr 14 - Apr 19, 2013

The workshop was very interesting. It showed the most recent developments in this field of arithmetic groups. The subject has a long tradition, but new insights, questions and ideas, as well as young people came into the field and these made this workshop very successful. Let me mention in particular the work on expanders and on growth of representation dimensions leading to new Zeta functions. There were also mini courses on recent subjects, where one had a chance to not only see the results but also to get a feeling for the methods involved in how to approach the problems and how to obtain the results. Three of those come to my mind, one on the recent solution of an old problem, the so called rank theorem, one on pseudoreductive groups, which solves some hitherto technical problems around non-separability and positive characteristic and one on Kac-Moody groups, a field that gives for mathematics new and interesting examples of groups and also has applications in physics. I think this was a very successful workshop. It also gave young people the opportunity to present their work. It fine tuned my opinion about two of the participants. It also gave very young colleagues the chance to see the forefront of current research. The workshop also gave me the opportunity to meet colleagues I had known for a long time, intensify my scientific contacts with them, but also to get to know more closely younger people who are new to the field.

Herbert Abels Fakultät für Mathematik, Bielefeld University

Indeed the workshop was useful and stimulating. I would also like to record here my appreciation of the excellent arrangements made by BIRS for the stay of the participants: that contributed no little for the success of the workshop.

Madabusi S. Raghunathan Department of Mathematics, Indian Institute of Technology
Apr 07 - Apr 12, 2013

I enjoyed the conference very much. It brought together several disciplines within mathematics, which was great. I wouldn't want every conference to be this way, but here are two big pluses this time: First, several of the expository talks were really quite good, and broadened my knowledge to greater familiarity with these other disciplines. Second, and most important, two conversations I had in particular with members of another discipline provided a new, useful view on a tangentially related current research project of mine.

Mathematics, Harvard University

Last week's workshop at BIRS was an outstanding event for me and for my research. I took advantage of many extremely interesting talks, and of having the possibility to meet and discuss with some of the main world experts on mapping class groups. These 5-day workshops, with few but very good researchers toghether at an extraordinary environment, provide the perfect conditions for discussions, interactions and development of research projects. This was my case indeed. Thank you for organizing this kind of meetings, in particular this one and the other two I attended previously (on braid groups, some years ago).

Algebra, University of Seville

My fourth visit to BIRS was, like all those visits, enjoyable and interesting. The somewhat unusual conjunction of topics in this meeting stimulated me to think about connections between mapping class groups and Floer-thoeretic questions in symplectic topology (the latter topic is what my research is about). I asked the mapping class group experts a number of directed questions about properties of mapping class groups which might potentially apply also to symplectic mapping class groups in higher dimensions (the basic connection being through the notion of a Dehn twist). Based on their answers, I came away with a number of definite and novel problems in symplectic geometry (some ambitious, some less so) which I or my students might well work on in the future. I'd emphasize that it was the topic of the workshop and the presence of experts that stimulated this line of thought.

Mathematics, University of Texas-Austin
Mar 31 - Apr 05, 2013

The workshop was extremely interesting with top speakers in the area and very interesting talks. There was also time for very fruitful interactions with the participants.

Departamento de Matematica, Instituto Superior Tecnico

This is clearly a well organized workshop with a good selection of timely and interesting talks. I benefited personally from attending this workshop in many ways. During the workshop, I had good discussions and consultations with some of the world's leading experts in mean field games and other mean filed approaches for social dynamics. For sure my future research directions will be influence by this workshop. In addition, the organizers invited well qualified junior researchers to the workshop. This is very helpful for "talent hunt".

Richard Tsai Mathematics, University of Texas at Austin
Mar 24 - Mar 29, 2013

I had a great time at Banff and left with several new ideas and a lot of inspiration. One new project has to do with finding ways of using our bordered monopole Floer invariants to compute relative invariants of 4-manifolds with boundary. This was inspired by David Gay's talk on his work with Kirby on trisecting 4-manifolds.

Assistant Professor
Mathematics, Boston College

Every time I come to BIRS I come away with lots of new ideas. This time, though, I had some new ideas that haven't been exposed much to the public and I really appreciated the opportunity to run those ideas by my colleagues in detail. I established at least one new collaboration partnership, with Joan Licata.

Mathematics, University of Georgia

As was the case of each of the prior 3 workshops on "Interactions of gauge theory with contact and symplectic topology in dimensions 3 and 4", the meeting in March of 2013 was truly incredible. I found that the lectures at this workshop were among the best and most relevant to my research that I have seen at a conference in recent memory. I had several inspiring conversations over meals and on mountain hikes, and came away from the workshop full of ideas and mathematically invigorated. This has been my experience with each of the meetings of this biennial workshop, and I very much hope that the workshop will continue in 2015. I think that of all the conferences or workshops of my mathematical career, these meetings have been the most influential to my research.

Mathematics, Michigan State University

This was an excellent meeting, with a good mix of mathematical subjects and participants. For me, it was particularly useful because I met three collaborators from three separate projects, and made progress with each one. One of those collaborators was someone I rarely get to see face-to-face, so it was particularly valuable for us to be able to talk between the lectures and in the evenings.

Professor
Mathematics, Brandeis University
Mar 10 - Mar 15, 2013

The week at BIRS (off teaching duties, off kids, with inspiring people around) was perfect. I got a lot of work done, new ideas coming up, a paper finished. Many people seemed interested in my work. It was truly wonderful. It's hard to say if the workshop affected my students' job prospects, but contacts and staying in touch and publicizing our work surely has a long term affect on this.

Prof.
Mathematics, Tel Aviv University

This was not my first participation to a 5-days BIRS workshop; it was maybe my fourth visit to Banff and BIRS, and every time I come to this place I love it more! During this particular meeting I could present a part of my recent research, and it was a good occasion to exchange opinions, ideas and impressions with other participants who are working on the same, or on similar, topics, in particular Vitali Milman, Liran Rotem, Artem Zvavitch and Dima Ryabogin. This exchange will influence for sure my future directions of research. Moreover I had the opportunity to work with Monika Ludwig, a participant from Vienna, on the research subject that I am liking most in this period, i.e. classification of valuations on function spaces. We had several fruitful discussions which helped us to enter a bit more in this topic, which is still almost unexplored. BIRS represents for me a place where I can devote myself entirely (or almost entirely) to do research, forgetting the rest of the world for one week!

professor
Mathematics, University of Florence

This stay at BIRS had important impact on my current research, since after the talk a colleague mentioned some techniques that I was not aware of. Additionally this led into new collaboration.

Dr. rer. nat.
Institute of Analysis, Johannes Kepler University Linz

The perfectly organized workshop at BIRS stimulated my interest in some new and important questions which were presented in the talks. I am quite sure that this will lead to new publications on these important problems on the borderline between convex geometry and Banach space theory.

Inst. f. Mathematics, University of Osnabrueck

There were three talks that I liked very much. This is much more than I usually experience in a one week conference. These were the talks by Monika Ludwig, Dima Ryabogin and Shiri Artstein (she gave two talks the second on Friday after I left. I'm talking about: "Viterbo's conjecture implies Mahler" which included a very nice introduction to symplectic geometry). I also learned about a result of Prochno and Schutt in a talk by Prochno (I should have known about it independently of the conference but somehow it escaped me until now). I managed to simplify and generalized their main result and am writing a short note about it.

Gideon Schechtman Mathematics, Weizmann Institute

For the past two meetings which I attended at BIRS, I met people from my field who I almost never see elsewhere, hence the chance to talk on specific problems, still open, in my area. At this particular meeting, I also appreciated the variety of talks many of which reported on recent progress. Overall, the meeting was very beneficial for my research in what concerns both the update in the field and the professional contacts.

Mathematics and Statistics, Concordia University

Really appreciate that BIRS provides a wonderful research environment. It was always my pleasure to be there for great research workshops. Thanks for your great job.

Department of Mathematics and Statistics, Memorial University of Newfoundland

It is so nice for geometers and analysts gathering and exchanging ideas. The organizers did a great job. The program and the speakers are carefully selected and arranged in a professional way.

Jiazu Zhou Mathematics and Statistics, Southwest University
Mar 03 - Mar 08, 2013

The application of Iwasawa workshop was very useful and stimulating for me. It had so many interesting talks which gave insights into various different areas of Iwasawa theory, which is my area of research and also gave a clear idea of the directions where the research is moving and also what are the new topics that are coming up in this area of arithmetic geometry. It will have a positive impact on my future research work. (I am a postdoc myself, so in my case the question of impact of the workshop on hiring is not applicable.) Thanking you once again for giving me this excellent opportunity to attend the workshop.

Department of Mathematics, Graduate School of Science, Osaka University

My participation in the BIRS workshop had a great impact my current research, through which I talked to the experts in the field and had very insightful conversations. Some of the talks were directly related to my research problem, but I found the discussions that I had over coffee breaks and dinner were more helpful for my research problem. The talks given in the workshop were more helpful to me in the direction of expanding my understanding how Iwasawa algebras are used in other fields, and I think the latter point is as important as the former one regarding my own research problem.

Dohyeong Kim mathematics, POSTECH

I found the workshop extremely interesting and productive. During the week I was there I completed one research paper (joint with two other participants), made substantial progress in another existing project, and began two more completely afresh, neither of which would have happened if I had not attended the workshop. Altogether this week was one of the best mathematical conferences I have attended in my career so far.

Dr
Mathematics Institute, Warwick University

There have been quite a lot of very interesting talks. In fact, I recommended some of the videos to colleagues (not only the video of my talk). Aside from the talks, I had the opportunity to discuss a problem (which arose in my current research) with some specialists in the field. It seems that this was very helpful and will eventually lead to a solution of this issue.

Bielefeld University

The workshop was stimulating and encouraging. I received useful feedback on a project I'm considering, and questions about applications of my work to other areas of interest. Some colleagues even raised prospects of visiting positions in the future.

NSF Postdoctoral Research Fellow
Department of Mathematics and Statistics, Boston University

We had a very good conference last week in Banff and many of the youngsters from different parts of the world, who were first time visitors to Banff, deeply appreciated both the mathematics and the place!

Mathematics, University of British Columbia

BIRS and the Banff Center together with its calm and charming environment among the beautiful mountains provided an ideal atmosphere to present, communicate and over all discuss mathematics in all its depth. In particular young mathematicians had the opportunity to profit from this intense workshop which also offered the opportunity to report on their PhD thesis.

Mathematisches Institut, Heidelberg University

BIRS is a wonderful place to work and to collaborate. Yes, the workshop will have an impact on my research, yes I learned many new results at the workshop, yes I made new contacts that I wouldn't have had otherwise, yes it influence an hiring decision I am involved in. Thank you for providing such a wonderful place.

Marie-France Vigneras emeritus professor
mathematiques, Universit'e Paris 7. Institut de mathematiques de Jussieu.
Feb 24 - Mar 01, 2013

This was an outstanding workshop which triggered a lot of discussions and exchanges. My main technical discussions have been with D. Gamarnik (MIT) on local algorithms, Augustin Chaintreau (Columbia) on random graphs, and Andrea Montanari (Stanford) on point processes.

ECE and Mathematics, University of Texas at Austin

My time at BIRS was indeed very stimulating. In addition to many interesting discussions, motivated by some of the talks in the workshop I have formulated a couple research problems, which I will begin working on soon. Thanks for providing such nice support and venue!

Guy Bresler Laboratory for Information and Decision Systems, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

The workshop was a fantastic time to bring together people working on high dimensional inference and on the analysis of social network dynamics. I think we have rarely a chance to all interact and this was a perfect setting and size to get the most of this interaction. On my side, one of the person I met there who is in the same area will probably be joining my reading group and I hope that this will initiate a great collaboration. I also started chatting with another person about a possible follow up of her work. I think Banff, the excellent environment and the quality of the program made us all aware that they are potential research benefits that we had missed in our respective communities due to rush schedules. I look forward to attending more events organized at BIRS.

Columbia University - Computer Science

The workshop was very good and we had numerous interesting discussions. The posting of the talks online is great and a valuable asset for my students and the community more generally.

University of Southern California
Feb 17 - Feb 22, 2013

This workshop definitely brought me fresh insight and new contacts.

Emmanuel Cosme LGGE, Universite Joseph Fourier de Grenoble 1
Feb 10 - Feb 15, 2013

I very much enjoyed visiting BIRS, and I found the workshop very productive, as a significant fraction of it focused on topics I am currently exploring. The group of participants was well chosen, with closely overlapping research interests and representing the leading research in the field. I am looking forward to coming back to BIRS at some point in the future.

Sera Cremonini Physics Department, Texas A&M University, Cambridge/Texas A&M

BIRS was a superb venue for the workshop. A beautiful and inspirational setting to discuss the cutting edge in our field.

Jerome Gauntlett Professor
Physics, Imperial College London

This was a wonderful workshop. This workshop stimulated at least two new projects and possibly one new collaboration. Time will tell if those projects bear fruit.

Kristan Jensen Postdoctoral Fellow
Physics, University of Victoria

I did enjoy the meeting and the facilities. I would like to thank you for this. I am glad you have such a nice center at the service of science.

CCTP and APC, APC, Paris and University of Crete

It was one of the best workshops I ever had. We had meals & accommodations together so that we were able to discuss all day long. So, this was more like a summer school, but much fancier with great facilities and excellent staffs.

My visit at Banff has been a great opportunity to enjoy both the excellent scientific program and the outstanding organization. This was the second time I was invited (the first was in the framework of a meeting on Ricci flows) but the first time to come. It was a fantastic experience, where I realized the role played by art at the Banff Center. I was really delighted. I hope to have again the opportunity to visit the Center.

Centre de Physique Théorique, Ecole Polytechnique

I appreciate the activity at the BIRS very much. It helped me a lot by hearing the response to my talk, which clarified a few points which I did not thought about before I come to the BIRS.

professor
physics, Hanyang University
Feb 03 - Feb 08, 2013

The conference was great. The program consisted of a good mix of leading researchers, many of whom are academically young and very active, several most relevant experimenters, such as Armitage, Hsieh, Drew and Hassan, and a couple of senior leaders in the field who gave the meeting great dignity. Overall the organization, quality of talks, and supportive environment made it a pleasurable experience which begs to be repeated.

Professor
Physics, Technion

The workshop was great and so were the facilities. Thank you and the staff. BIRS is a great place for doing science.

Physics, Technion
Jan 27 - Feb 01, 2013

I'd like to join you in commending the fantastic organizational efforts of Professors Goldman, Peters, Sottile, including your amazing staff and facilities . The workshop was very productive, as it brought together and provided me the rare opportunity to interface with my peers from all over the world, and also to renew some very old friendships. Thank you sincerely, for all that BIRS is doing to further research in the mathematical sciences. These meetings are invaluable!

Computer Science, University of Texas at Austin

My participation in the BIRS workshop did impact my current research. The workshop participants included a very interesting mixture of theoretical algebraic geometers and applied geometric modelers. As a result, I obtained very positive feedback on my talk at the conference including several important questions that I plan to address in the future. I am trained originally as an algebraic geometer so the possibility to interact with many people in the applied sciences was also very fruitful. I was able to understand better the problems as they arise in applications. I also met several new contacts that I would not have had otherwise. The location of the institute is just amazing. It really inspires you to work harder. Being surrounded by nature fills the spirit with joy and energy to engage in new and ambitious projects.

Department of Mathematics and Statistics, Sam Houston State University

It provides a broader perspective to the field and gave me an updated view of where things stand in algebraic geometry.

Parker Distinguished Professor
Computer Science, University of North Carolina

This was a great workshop at a great place. Probably, one or two new collaborations will result from that meeting.

Prof. Dr.

One very attractive characteristic of this workshop was that it aimed from the very beginning to being inclusive - i.e.to include researchers who were "users" of the algebraic-geometric techniques and results, or who faced specific problems motivated by concrete (practical or mathematical) questions, alongside with "specialists" in the pure, mathematical territory. So it felt easy and natural to ask questions. I learn a lot, sometimes from informal discussions at dinner or during coffee breaks with the participants. One comment from a participant led to a connection I was not aware of, another gave a natural motivation for why the study of certain objects is so important, while the "applied" speakers pointed out important research problems from other fields that rely on algebraic geometry, or that pose new questions of this nature. It has been a fascinating week! I came back with a load of new ideas and contacts with people whom I would be able to consult with, for that direction of my own research that needs more algebraic-geometric insights.

Professor
Computer Science, Smith College
Jan 20 - Jan 25, 2013

The workshop was very helpful. It was new disciplinary group of people for me - I am a chemical engineer who works on developing systems that mimic biological pores, and I met many biologists and physicists that study the structure and operation of the pore itself. Learning about the mechanistic insights was very helpful and inspiring, I came back with new ideas. I also met with many scientists, some of which I am interacting with on potential collaborations. Overall, it was a great experience and very productive.

Assistant professor
Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering, Tufts University

This workshop was characterized by exceptionally high level of scientific interactions and discussions. There were several important suggestions by some of the participants that I am going to incorporate in my research on nuclear pores. I have also started several new collaborations in the areas of polymer-grafted membranes, laser-induced florescence studies of DNA translocation through nanopores and single molecule imaging of chromatin dynamics.

Yitzhak Rabin professor
Physics, Bar-Ilan University
Jan 13 - Jan 18, 2013

The participation in the BIRS workshop impact on current research; no new results were obtained during the workshop, bu many new ideas! Possibly new collaborations.

Dipartimento di Matematica, University of Torino (Italy)

This was an absolutely great meeting! I enjoyed every minute of it, and I have heard similar comments from other participants too. Not only that I learned a lot from it, but I also started to work on two new problems, one with Cristina Stoica and Holger Dullin, and the other with Ernesto Pérez-Chavela. While with Ernesto and Cristina I worked in the past, Holger is a new collaborator. It is unlikely that these opportunities would have occurred under other circumstances than this meeting. I am therefore very pleased to have been there. The atmosphere for top research was outstanding. Thank you for leading BIRS and making it one of the top research places in mathematics in the entire world.

Mathematics and Statistics, University of Victoria

The workshop was amazingly pleasant and useful. The organization in the BIRS is extremely good and allowed us to focus completely on scientific matters, in a very friendly way. Lectures and discussions were fruitful in bringing and sharing ideas. Personally, I believe I got new ideas for starting at least two new research projects. On the most materialistic level, everybody was impressed by the organization and helpfulness of the BIRS staff, by the quality of meals, by the landscape, by the wifi in particular.

It was a great week at BIRS. I worked up to now on subjects peripherical to the N-body problem. Now I am more or less up to date concerning the state of the art. This will be helpful for supervising one of my PhD students. On the other hand, a colleague and I discussed at BIRS and already started a new research project. Thanks!

Mathematics, Erlangen-Nuremberg University

Thank you very much for providing excellent opportunity and conditions to the workshop on Celestial Mechanics which was hold last week at BIRS. It is an excellent conference with many interesting talks, and is an excellent opportunity for experts to communicate with each other. It is my great pleasure to thank you and all of your staff members in BIRS for their excellent works.

Yiming Long Chern Institute of Mathematics, Nankai University

I got more ideas in the 4 days I spent at this 5 day workshop than I do in a typical 4 months period at my home institution. I had numerous conversations, initiated at least one, and likely two collaborations, and am considering organizing a similar workshop in several years. The structure of having two afternoons free, with evening talks was inspired.

professor
Mathematics, University of California, Santa Cruz

It is a pleasure for me to confirm that I found the conference very interesting and stimulating. From discussions with colleagues I had a new occasion of collaboration that I hope will be fruitful.

Mathematics, University 'Roma Tre'

This is a wonderful and effective workshop in terms of new collaborations and new perspectives. Two new research projects will start and a new result is discovered. By discussing with some best experts in the field, some new questions are raised and some unexpected inputs are given. This is just an intensive five-day workshop with many exciting topics. In addition, the Banff center itself is an amazing place with lots of unique events. In the free afternoon on January 16, it gave me a chance to attend some dance and music events which are so great. It is a "short" afternoon I never forget.

Associate Professor
Department of Mathematics and Computer Science, Virginia State University

I'm very lucky to be able to attend this workshop "New Perspectives on the $N$-body Problem". During the meeting, the other professors' talks gave me a lot of inspiration. Some methods I have learned from the meeting may be applied to my own research work. Moreover, inspired by other teachers, I can study some new and interesting problems. At the same time, I am very lucky to get personal guidance from many famous professors, which is beneficial to me for all my life. In particular, I would like to thank one of the organizers of the workshop Susanna Terracini, who gave me the chance to learn from many famous professors face to face. I also want to thank the Banff Center to provide the accommodation.

Xiaoxiao Zhao Sichuan University
Dec 09 - Dec 14, 2012

BIRS provided a perfect surrounding for an intense meeting with a not-too-large, not-too-small number of scientists from around the world. The conference room is superb: the rounded rows of comfortable seats enable a perfect view to the screen and the speaker and encourages discussions since people in the audience can see each other! All technical facilities, like WIFI access, projector, recording devices are more than up-to-date and the staff is incredibly helpful and well-organized. Whenever I have the chance to take part (or even co-organizes a meeting?) in an event at BIRS, I'll be there again!

Prof. Dr.
Dept. of Experimental Physics, Saarland University

I had the opportunity to interact with international researchers who have worked on similar research problems. I enjoyed the discussions that provided me with new avenues to pursue in my research program. I am a junior faculty member who will soon need outside letters of support for my tenure file. This meeting provided me with the opportunity to present my research findings and interact with the leading experts in the field I work in. I know the impact of this meeting will be significant in my academic career.

School of Mathematical Sciences, Rochester Institute of Technology

I had a brilliant time at BIRS and would like to extend my thanks to all those involved with the organization of the week. The talks were interesting and the extended discussion periods after each two talks I felt were a particularly good idea, given how well the audience participated. Whilst not directly impacting on my research now, there were a number of useful conversations I had, which have given me possible ideas for future research, and the chance to make face-to-face contact with many people of whom I have read journal articles and reviews was excellent.

Dr
Chemical Engineering, Imperial College London

The workshop was exactly the right setting to present some interesting results we had in the near past, as I met exactly a group of people that struggles with some issues that we can hopefully help to solve with our approach. The intense discussions that followed my talk told me that we are on the right track and should continue working in this direction.

University of Loughborough

I've been to meetings at BIRS before, but somehow this one was more intense and more focused than before. Pretty much all of the participants got fully involved in all aspects of the workshop (including the discussion sessions) and the week just flew by in a rush of scientific discussions and presentations. The talks are all very good and even the one which wasn't really quite aligned to the workshop theme (not the organisers' fault as the speaker changed topic at the last minute) was interesting. The facilities in BIRS and the Banff Centre were, as always, excellent and the food outstanding. There was some confusion about streaming and/or recording or the presentations, but this is a very minor point. The meeting was one of the best I've ever attended and has already lead to new scientific contacts (and, just as important, renewing of old ones) which will, I am sure, lead to new (and renewed) scientific collaborations in the future.

Stephen Wilson Professor of Applied Mathematics
Department of Mathematics and Statistics, University of Strathclyde
Dec 02 - Dec 07, 2012

This was a very productive meeting for me. The discussions relating to my general programme of research were very useful in the sense that it has brought into focus some key questions. Also, the very high level of participants meant that I learnt very new ideas from the real experts. Remarkably one breakfast conversation (over an hour) was one of the best explanations of mirror symmetry I have ever heard. In summary, it was truly excellent.

Physics, Queen Mary, University of London

Great workshop! fantastic place.

Ruben Minasian IPhT, CEA Saclay
Nov 25 - Nov 30, 2012

We had very stimulating discussions with Michelle Bucher and Koji Fujiwara.

ETH Zurich

I hope that new results will come out of the conference. But this is too early to be confirmed. Anyway I got a lot of new insights and ideas.

Prof. Dr.
Mathematisches Institut, University at Bonn

I heard talks, learned new things about orderability of groups (from Dave Morris), gave a talk myself, and received some feedback on my questions concerning the Atiyah problem. Thanks a lot! The environment is indeed very inspirational, great place.

Mathematics, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Nov 23 - Nov 25, 2012

The whole environment of the Banff Centre and the BIRS facility was extremely conducive to making progress with the goals of the workshop. The manager of the BIRS faclility was very helpful. We were able to make progress towards our own greater understanding of the importance of the Early Years of learning mathematics, and specifically Spatial Reasoning. A number of workable plans to move forwards were "cast", and I feel that these will be acted upon. I understand that the booking process for BIRS sessions has to be made quite a signficant amount of time in advance. It would be very helpful if this could be examined to see if it was possible to shorten the time for both longer sessions and the weekend sessions. The networking potential of bringing experts together is huge, and something that education is gradually picking up more and more from the business world. BIRS can facilitate this process in my opinion, AND actively demonstrate support to and involvement with the early years of learning mathematics.

Pam Hagen EDCP - UBC Vancouver, PhD Candidate & Elementary educator

I made some excellent new contacts. We have spent the day emailing about a joint project, in fact. This was an area I knew little about, but it is an exciting extension of my current work and will enrich it. I have a student who will be able to use the new collaboration that is emerging to enrich her work and make connections to new literature. So, I've only been home 1 day, but already I feel as if it was a great experience that will stimulate research activities.

Institute of Cognitive Science, Carleton University
Nov 18 - Nov 23, 2012

I found the workshop very helpful. Met amazing passionate people, so dedicated to helping. I am in the Elder Project in Sooke teaching Kindergarten classes in 3 schools and one on reserve. I realize how important it is to include forms of math in language teaching. Children are so eager to learn; they are so very open at that age. I think your facility there is great. Beautiful setting- my first time there, good introduction to the territory.

Shirley Alphonse Elder

The recent BIRS First Nations Math Education workshop was unlikely to have very much direct bearing on my mathematical research, but I hope that BIRS will continue to host such workshops, which bring First Nations people into better contact with mathematics, and contribute indirectly to mathematical research, since they begin at the roots, in schools, where we are very much in need of help and stimulus. I found this particular workshop very encouraging, as, apart from the organizers, there were many people present who were keen to spread the word, and clearly able to do so.

Mathematics & Statistics, University of Calgary

This is the second First Nations Mathematics Education workshop I have attended. It was fabulous. The opportunity to collaborate with teachers and elders on mathematical investigations for students was very welcome and would be much more difficult without BIRS support.

Indy Lagu Dr.
Mathematics, Physics, and Engineering, Mount Royal University
Nov 11 - Nov 16, 2012

The workshop was very useful for the following reasons. (i) I could present my work and get some valuable feedback from other participants. (ii) I met new people who could be eventual collaborators. (iii) I learnt a lot of new stuff from the talks and from the informal discussions.

Theoretical Physics, Raman Research Institute

This was an excellent workshop. And wonderfully organized, as always in BIRS.

CERMICS, École des Ponts ParisTech

I had several very helpful discussions concerning my research program and started a new collaboration with other two participant to the workshop that have complementary knowledge on a problem of common interest.

Professor
Mathematics, University of Rome Tor Vergata

This workshop was really useful for me. It was my first meeting in my research field. I am a phD student, and this workshop allowed me to have contact with many other researchers, with whom I hope to begin collaboration. Moreover, the place was the greatest one to do mathematics during one week: all was really well organized, and I spent 5 fantastic days in Banff, with these so beautiful mountains around.

phD student
UMPA, Ecole Normale Superieure de Lyon

The workshop was great, lots of very interesting discussions, with input from various sides, theoretical physics, probability, and numerical simulations. Energy transport in one dimension remains a lively subject with many surprises. Concretely, in the light of new numerical data, I am strongly motivated to reconsider the predictions of nonlinear fluctuating hydrodynamics.

Herbert Spohn Mathematics, Technische Universität München

I was an organizer of this workshop, and had therefore the opportunity to invite researchers whose works and papers I liked -- even though there were quite a few colleagues who I never physically met before. Needless to say, I had many discussion topics when coming to BIRS, and I looked forward meeting the very specialists of the field to get some feedback on these potential research tracks. I was delighted by the outcomes of these discussions, because, as usual, there are hints, remarks and comments which come to one's mind in an actual conversation, and which do not come out in a more constructed series of emails. In addition, there are also all these questions and issues which are raised at the end of the lectures: some inspired new research directions, some gave me new views of current problems of interest, some allowed me to revisit something I thought was settled, etc. There really was quite a biodiversity of viewpoints between physicists interested in the interpretation of results, mathematicians interest in the formal aspects of the theories, and applied mathematicians concerned about the efficiency and precision of numerical schemes. Also, the more familial size of the workshop and the cozy atmosphere of the place (in sharp contrast with the refreshing climate of the surroundings mountains) definitively triggered informal contacts and spontaneous scientific discussions between all generations of researchers, from PhD student to emeritus.

École des Ponts, CERMICS
Nov 04 - Nov 09, 2012

The meeting was extremely well organised and the new results and new insight will have a good impact on our research. New contacts were definitely made which will lead to further interactions. The meeting helped also my ex-PhD student in deveoping his own future and interactions and I am delighted about this.

Charles Williamson Professor
Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Cornell University

To my opinion the workshop was very useful for me. I heard many new interesting results which impact my and my colleagues research. I met the scientists whom I had not known before and we started our contacts. I hope that we will do together with some of them in future. I do not think, that the workshop affect my job prospects, my student's or my postdoc now, but it may happen later. I heard the talks with the applications of the things which I know to problems which I considered very far from them.

Sergey Dobrokhotov Professor
A.Ishlinsky Institute for Problem in Mechanics of Russ.Academy of Sciences

The Workshop was well conceived, bringing together people in fields that are different yet similar enough for meaningful and indeed useful connections to develop. I enjoyed several enlightening conversations, as well as the lectures. The surroundings are magnificent, the accommodation is comfortable, the food is superb, and all the Banff Centre staff were unfailingly helpful.

Professor
Physics, University of Bristol, U.K.

A great workshop in a magnificent research facility: compliment to the organizers!

Professor
Mechanical Engineering, University of Trento

This workshop was a great experience for me. I got to know many great colleagues whom I had not met before: I knew only two of the attendees previously. I received very good feedback on my talk and enjoyed many of the other talks. The video system was really impressive, especially the lecture being posted so soon after being recorded.

Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences, New York University

It was a superb week at BIRS. I enjoyed it a lot and I am very grateful for all the new colleagues I was able to get in contact with. Moreover, my personal research activities were greatly influenced, so much that even my PhD students here in Germany will feel it! Thank you for this wonderful week!

Prof. Dr. (Director of the Institute for Mathematics at TU Ilmenau)
Institut fuer Mathematik, TU Ilmenau

Yes, I have benefited by the workshop very much. The program covered rather interdisciplinary subjects. I could lean many new things. I could also start interactions with researches of different disciplines.

Professor
Graduate School of Frontier Sciences, Department of Advanced Energy, University of Tokyo
Oct 28 - Nov 02, 2012

The presentations and follow-up questions/discussions were great resources for participates to know the current research directions and interests. I marked quite a few papers for further reading. The part I like most in attending the BRIS workshop is that I was able to meet different scholars from closed research areas and discuss research problems with them. This is extremely useful when participates are trying to broaden their research interests and seek for opportunities of collaboration. During this workshop, I had some productive discussions with researchers who are working on Hopf algebras, graded Skew Clifford algebras and got to know some open questions in those areas. We discussed problems and possible solutions over the board in those small rooms downstairs. (A great place to do research. The security man was very nice and made us feel comfortable stay after midnight.) Such discussions were very beneficial. I did have new collaboration that originated during the workshop. I will definitely keep these contacts and continue these research communications.

Linhong Wang Mathematics, Southeastern Louisiana University

The BIRS workshop talks were valuable in helping me to keep up with current research in my field, as well as to learn some related topics that are a bit further afield for me. I met with collaborators on two research projects at the workshop. Both are projects I have just begun, with mathematicians that I do not see very often, and it was important that I speak with them in person at this stage to get the projects moving.

Mathematics, Texas A&M University
Oct 26 - Oct 28, 2012

I enjoyed the conference very much. The networking opportunities were great and I met quite a few like-minded people. Most talks broadened my perspectives and gave me ideas on how to enrich our programs. Very well done! PLEASE inform me about future conferences that relate to mathematics education.

Director
Calgary Bright Minds
Oct 21 - Oct 26, 2012

I think it is rather the participants obligation to say thanks to the organization for the kind hospitality which resulted not only a pleasant week in a beautiful surrounding, but also provided us a fruitful period of time to inform each other about results we reached recently in this field and gave us opportunity to discuss possible promising directions of further investigations. I am convinced that this opinion reflects not only my personal feelings, I am sure it is shared by the other participants of the workshop as well as. If the other BIRS-workshops are nearly as successful as our turned out to be then you can be duly satisfied.

I am very grateful for the opportunity to attend this workshop which gave me the opportunity to meet old acquaintances, Heppes and Borosczky, and discussing interesting open problems with them as well as hearing much new mathematics and having the opportunity to discuss these with others.

Mathematics, Courant Institute of Mathematics

It's a great pleasure for me to thank you for my stay at BIRS. It is very useful to meet people with the same interests as myself. This may sound a highly trivial statement, but it isn't since I'm almost the only one in Scandinavia in the field defining the conference.I had many interesting discussions there and the inspiration received has still not worn out; I'm just now looking into a brand new idea for a solution, at least in low-dimensional cases, of a problem (called Sierksma's Dutch cheese problem) which is strongly related to one of the main themes of the conference.

Mathematics, University of Bergen
Oct 14 - Oct 19, 2012

It is I who should thank you for providing such a marvelous facility in a beautiful setting to conduct workshops. I had never been to Banff before, but I'm hoping that this will not be my last trip.

Jeffrey Angell Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory
Oct 07 - Oct 12, 2012

I had an excellent time at BIRS. The workshop was, as might be expected, interesting and informative, but the infrastructure BIRS provides makes it so much more pleasurable. What's more, it makes it easy to concentrate on the work itself. I had a chance to work with some collaborators, and we fully expect a paper to come out of our joint work.

Danny Dyer Mathematics and Statistics, Memorial University of Newfoundland

The workshop definitely lead to new ideas, insights and research projects. Also some new contacts and one collaboration that would not have happened without this workshop. It is very possible/likely that the workshop will have a positive impact on my job prospects but it is a bit too early to tell.

Department of Mathematics, Utrecht University

I learned a nice proof about a problem I previously published a paper on. A former student of mine and I obtained a result on a problem presented at the workshop. I had productive discussions with several people I previously did not know well.

Mathematics Department, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

The workshop was amazingly inspiring. This happened during the talks and the scientific questionings, but also all along during the discussions in the seminar and over the meals. The atmosphere and service that BIRS are providing are amazing, first rate for sure. I got fresh insights into an old problem (travelling salesperson on grids), due to the interaction with two other participants, one from Canada, one from Spain. It is this international collaboration from various perspectives that makes BIRS a uniquely fruitful place. A new research project may very well result from this interaction. The contact to the colleague from Canada would not have been possible otherwise, I believe.

Peter Widmayer ETH
Sep 30 - Oct 05, 2012

My participation in the BIRS workshop clearly impacted my current research: it was an opportunity for me to meet with several people (e.g. K. Zainoulline) and discuss new ideas, some of which will be the subject of joint papers. Also, naturally, this major event in the field helps us all to keep up to date with the latest results.

Laboratoire de Mathématiques de Lens, Université d'Artois

The BIRS workshop is wonderful. It provides me a great opportunity to give a presentation. This is the firs time that I give a talk in a conference. Most importantly, the workshop is a good place to learn new ideas. Although many presentations are professional and difficult to be understood by me, I get a good first impression of many research topics.

Zhihua Chang Department of Mathematical and Statistical Science, University of Alberta

The fact is that the goes much beyond the only scope of my research, it is even hard to express it properly in English. Even though I was told that BIRS is one of the most incredible places in the world to make mathematics, I have been still amazed. The natural background, the organization, the setting of this workshop was incredible, and it is clearly the conference where i both enjoyed the place the most and worked the most.

Universite Paris 6

The great environment (research- and otherwise) helped me to focus on a particular problem related the the workshop themes and while still at BIRS I typed up some notes regarding that problem, thus also reviving a collaboration on that topic in the process.

Professor
Mathematics, TU Dortmund

I have very recently returned from the wonderfully inspiring and productive BIRS workshop on Lie algebras, torsors and cohomological invariants. I want to thank you most warmly for creating together with your outstanding staff including Wynne Fong, Brent Kearney, Brenda Williams and Caroline Green the extraordinary ideal conditions for collaborative research work and for facilitating up to date quick information about the new results, new developments and new hopes. In particular it was very impressing immediately after a lecture of a participant to receive an e.mail from my graduate student in London, Ontario who was very excited about this lecture and who asked me to recommend him further lectures from the workshop suitable for his current studies and research work. The ease of the use and the quality of recording is remarkable. The hospitality and help of your team in every respect was just great. The workshop itself was superbly organized by Stefan Gille, Nikita Karpenko, Arturo Pianzola, Vera Serganova and Kirill Zainoulline. The lectures were very inspiring and so were the many discussions during lectures breaks,hikes,dining and other relaxing times. Thanks to this conference I began a project with Detlev Hoffman on structure of inseparable extensions and Witt kernels and further possible projects may develop from discussions and subsequent mutual visits with Stefan Gille, Raman Parimala and Kirill Zainoulline. The informative very happy friendly and exciting atmosphere in the spectacular environment was the key to ultimate success of this workshop.

Mathematics, University of Western Ontario

I had a great time at BIRS -- not only were there excellent talks, but there was also some time to continue my research with Arturo Pianzola. In fact, we achieved a breakthrough there for our current research project.

Mathematics and Statistics, University of Ottawa

Among the subjects of this workshop, I was very interested in the part concerning torsors and cohomological invariants, as well as on motivic aspects and applications for quadratic forms and algebras with involutions. I was very happy to assist to the very nice talks we had and to learn more on this subjects. I had also a chance to have a lot of conversations with other participants, which gave me some interesting projects, I am currently working on, and I hope this will lead to some new results soon.

Alena Pirutka PhD
IRMA, Strasbourg

I consider the workshop to be a great success. The quantity and quality of young researches and speakers was exceptional. More than half of speakers were young researchers and graduate students. The enthusiasm of the participants was evidenced by the frequent discussions and many questions asked after each talk. I feel that the experience that participants gained during the workshop will prove to be very valuable in their research career and will undoubtedly have a positive impact on the research activity in the area. I think, the idea to bring together people from different areas (Lie algebras and Torsors) was very fruitful and has lead to several interesting collaborations already. I expect that these will grow into joint research projects and publications.

Department of Mathematics, University of Ottawa
Sep 23 - Sep 28, 2012

The workshop was a fantastic tribute to the outstanding work of Harold Widom. On a personal note I can say that discussions spurred by the talk of K. T. R. McLaughlin and of P. Bleher on the normal matrix model has already lead to interesting development in the study of universality (bulk and boundary), and I am presently very actively pursuing the topic with McLaughlin (Arizona). Already some results seem to appear. Thus I reckon it was an exceptionally fruitful experience and thank BIRS for the opportunity.

Associate Professor.
Mathematics and Statistics, Concordia University

This was a very high quality workshop and I learned a lot of new results which will be very useful for my current research. I am in this area for a long time, and I know most of the participants, but there were some new people. It is possible that I will have new collaborations originated at the workshop. The workshop can influence the hiring process which we will have this year at our department. We will see. I think that the workshop will have a significant impact on the area of random matrix models and their applications, in terms of new collaborations, publications, presentations, etc.

Pavel Bleher Mathematical Sciences, Indiana University - Purdue University at Indianapolis

The workshop was wonderful. It gave me a chance to catch up and have some very helpful discussions with colleagues, make progress on two current projects with two of the organizers, and present some recent work. It was also a terrific opportunity for my most recent PhD student to present his work and make important contacts which may lead to future collaborations.

Prof
Mathematics Institute, University of Warwick

At the workshop the most recent results in our field were reported, an information which otherwise would be obtained much later and only partially. Concrete examples for me are: 1) discussions with Ortmann and O'Connell on Brownian motion in the Weyl chamber, 2) discussions with Sasamoto on duality for ASEP, 3) discussions with Baik, Kazumasa (Baik reported on a new identity for he Airy process, Kazumasa could extract an confirmation from his liquid crystal experiment.) 4) discussions with Corwin on the semi-discrete directed polymer with stationary initial data, 5) discussions with Borodin and Corwin on oblique reflections in the Weyl chamber, 6) discussions with Valko on superdiffusive bounds. Presumably there are more. But these discussions advanced my own research. Item 2 is not applicable. There have been many informal exchanges, which generate a common feeling for separating important from less important items.

Herbert Spohn Professor
Mathematics, Technische Universität München
Sep 09 - Sep 14, 2012

My participation in the BIRS workshop was a significant event on my current research. Talks and private discussions led me to some informal insights and techniques that are often hidden in the formalities of papers. I look forward to launching a research project related to the meeting and following up on fantastic discussions that occurred at the workshop. I am hopeful that these will grow into new collaborations, which are so important to a young mathematician, such as myself.

Mathematics, University of Calgary

The workshop was excellent and it did provide me with opportunities for making new contacts, learning about new ideas, and meeting several mathematicians who I have not met before. There were many opportunities for discussing mathematics. The lectures were great and the informal discussions were extremely valuable. The organization was flawless and the atmosphere of the centre is fantastic.

Vladimir Sverak Mathematics, University of Minnesota

The workshop encompassed several topics which were either in my area of current interest or near my extended interests. It was a very good combination, and I had the opportunity to meet both collaborators and researchers I had not met before. We will see if the job prospects of my students/postdocs were affected, but they did get the opportunity to present their work.

Professor
Mathematics, University of California, Berkeley

This workshop and the nice scientific atmosphere in BIRS allowed me, with my collaborators Professors S. Ibrahim and K. Nakanishi, to complete the final steps in proving the finite time blowup for the inviscid primitive equations for the large scale oceanic and atmospheric dynamics. This is a nice breakthrough result, and we will certainly acknowledge our visit to BIRS in our paper.

Professor
Mathematics, University of California and The Weizmann Institute of Science

In the workshop, I listened to several reports I am familiar with and learned some new results and fresh insight; and all of them are useful for my study and research in the future. I also met a lot of outstanding mathematicians in this workshop. I get more confidence from chatting with them.

Shuxia Wang Peking University
Sep 02 - Sep 07, 2012

Thank you very much for supporting our meeting in BIRS this September. The meeting was an absolute success! Just yesterday I received yet another email from a young participant telling me how beneficial the workshop was for him (we will put some of the extracts in the report). It was a very fruitful meeting: new research programs were discussed and what was amazing, some of them turned out to be related in the most unexpected ways! New collaborations were started, the old ones continued, etc. etc. All this would not have been possible without BIRS and your support!

Inna Capdeboscq University of Warwick

During the workshop I was able to discuss a problem with Prof. Andrew Chermak, which I had discussed with Prof. Michael Aschbacher last year. Some new and unpublished results of Chermak seem to point into the right direction, the workshop was an opportunity to bring the ideas together.

Dr.
Department of Mathematical Sciences, University of Copenhagen

The workshop gave me the opportunity to learn about exciting new developments in neighboring fields. I also found the time to work together with several of my coauthors on finishing off joint projects.

Fachbereich Mathematik, TU Kaiserslautern

I found some new, strange examples of non-growing sets in finite simple groups. With Gill, my former coauthor we discussed possible applications of a new growth result he obtained recently.

Laci Pyber Senior Research Fellow
Discrete Mathematics, Renyi Institute of Mathematics Budapest

I was able to make progress on 2 different research projects, one with Barabra Baumeister, and a second with Kay Magaard. As well, I had preliminary discussions with Tim Burness about a possible collaboration. This was all very valuable and would have taken much longer under ordinary circumstances.

Mathematics - MATHGEOM, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne

In my opinion, the lectures given at the workshop were very interesting and informative. They covered many different important research topics in the area. The workshop's schedule also provided ample time for me to discuss various mathematical questions with other participants. In particular, I had stimulating discussions with M. Aschbacher, R. M. Guralnick, and M. Liebeck on some ongoing research projects. I will continue working on these projects.

Department of Mathematics, University of Arizona

This conference was very helpful for my own research programme! I had the chance to talk with several people, including Micheal Aschbacher, and could ask some specific and some general questions that are not suitable over email. It is only at such high-level conferences like this one that I meet these persons and can talk to them. For instance, and more exactly, the motivation of Micheal's study of the E_6 module was important for me to know, so that I can consider similar applications for my study of the E_7 and E_8 modules.

Department of Mathematics, Ghent University

I was at the Banff Centre for the first time and I was impressed by the surroundings and by the atmosphere on campus. There were many interesting talks and plenty of opportunities to talk to colleagues, so I could make progress in an ongoing project, get to know new people and learn a lot about recent important results in my research area.

Mathematik, Universität Halle
Aug 19 - Aug 24, 2012

This was a an excellent conference including stellar researchers who presented the most exciting developments in combinatorics. Between the talks and informal conversations, several new project ideas came up which may lead to papers. I talked with several researchers in the field that led to several enlightening problems and new proof techniques. I was quite impressed with the conference!

Assistant Professor
Department of Mathematics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Aug 12 - Aug 17, 2012

During the workshop I listened many very interesting talks focused on the topic of syzygies, where I have worked and I have still a open research plan. I had the opportunity to speak directly with some of the main experts in the area, also about the connection with physics. During my talk I left an open computational problem, and other younger participants considered it seriously and I am now in contact with them. I hope future collaboration with postdoc students will arise fromm the contacts I had in this workshop.

Dipartimento di Matematica, University of Florence
Aug 05 - Aug 10, 2012

This is a wonderful workshop, I have the chance to talk to the experts about the research I am doing, and hear very useful suggestions and comments from them.

Shibing Chen University of Toronto

During the workshop, I had some stimulating discussions with participants regarding various problems in nonlinear PDE I am interested in. Many of the talks and remarks point to some possible new research projects in the future.

Mathematics and Statistics, McGill University

This meeting at BIRS was quite interesting for me. I knew many of the participants, but a lot of the material was new to me and it will certainly be of inspiration for my future research as well as for the topics I will propose to my students and post-docs.

Sector of Functional Analysis, International School for Advanced Studies (SISSA)

I'd like to express my gratitude for the invitation to BIRS. I really enjoyed and appreciated this workshop, which I found perfectly organized, both practically and logistically, as well as the location at Banff Center (actually it was my first time in Banff). Most of the talks were pretty inherent to my mathematical interests. Even though no new collaboration has originated during this week, some clues to probable future research projects have arisen from stimulating discussions with other participants. Moreover I've had the chance to talk to best experts in the topics concerning some problem in geometric analysis I'm facing now.

mathématiques - Laboratoire AGM, INdAM Cofund, at Université de Cergy-Pontoise

The workshop on conformal and CR geometry last week was very successful from several perspectives. First of all, there was a lot of interaction among the various groups exchanging information on the new directions, and formation of new collaborations. I personally learned a lot about the new operators from Eastwood's survey lectures and from Kengo Hirachi about his approach to understanding the new operator that Jeffrey Case and I are developing. The survey lecture of Guillarmou covers a lot of new ground, and challenges PDE people to develop criteria of existence and uniqueness for the Poincare-Einstein structures. I had also learned about the work of Alexakis/Mazzeo that may be relevant for my own work with Alice Chang. Each time I come to Banff, I have gained new perspective on future research direction and found the environment absolutely stimulating. I would like to thank the BIRS for creating such possibilities for us.

Paul Yang Mathematics, Princeton University
Aug 03 - Aug 05, 2012

Math Kangaroo Contest workshop at BIRS will impact my future research, since right now I am doing some work about digital signal processing, but it gave me an insight of education. To combine what my background and education, I may get into engineering education. It is about motivation for students and passion of educators. I found it is very interesting and such a wonderful thing to devote yourself into. I may volunteer Math Kangaroo Contest in the future to make a contribution for the kids in mathematical education. I also met nice people from different places and backgrounds with the same interest. I think we will keep contact to each other and the networking will work very well.

Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Calgary

The organization was great!

Tchavdar Marinov Associate Professor
Natural Sciences, Southern University at New Orleans
Jul 29 - Aug 03, 2012

I enjoyed my stay at BIRS very much, everyone on the staff was very friendly and helpful and the conference was stimulating.

Rutgers University

The workshop is certainly going to be very useful for the future research of my group. It was a great mix of analysis and geometry and it certainly gives new perspectives for PDEs in a geometric context. The lectures were at a great level, and I had the chance to meet several new people, both junior and senior.

Sector of Functional Analysis, International School for Advanced Studies (SISSA)
Jul 27 - Jul 29, 2012

The workshop was very rewarding. The talks were interesting and serval collaborations got started. As always, BIRS staff made everything easy and the setting is beautiful. Thank you very much.

Mathematics, Iowa State University
Jul 22 - Jul 27, 2012

The BIRS site is fantastic and inspiring. The physical layout and the schedule promoted collegial interactions. The meeting was a perfect mix of quantitative experiments and modeling.

Robert D. Bent chaired Professor, NAE
University of Pennsylvania

Our workshop turned out to be a remarkable success. We brought together mathematicians and physicists on the one hand and biologists on the other, and the interaction was both stimulating and revealing. We noticed interesting differences in our angles of viewing the problems of tissue growth, our approaches to describing and rationalizing the process, and even the use of terminology. From a personal standpoint, I was delighted to learn of the latest experimental results on the signaling pathways; these will be incorporated into our mathematical model. Our model, imperfect as it seems to us, so impressed the biologists that I was invited to visit a top group in Duke University. This dialog between math and biology has given me several new ideas, and has greatly broadened our vista of the related biological problems. Judging from the enthusiastic (and uninvited) email messages from the attendees that have come to me in the past few days, I think many share my impression that this workshop has provided a rare opportunity for inter-disciplinary exchange, and will have potentially far-reaching benefits for research on both sides, e.g. by forging new collaborations. Besides, I was interviewed by the Banff Centre Communications Officer and her staff since the topic of our workshop captured their interest. The interview will appear in the Banff Centre website and through a podcast. Thus we might have done a bit of outreach in bringing our science to the awareness of the public. Thanks again for your aegis of this wonderful gathering, which has given the attendees new ideas that we now rush to implement.

Department of Mathematics, University of British Columbia

I thought the workshop was a useful forum to learn about new research being done in our field. Many of the results were unpublished and I was quite pleased with that. Also, it was terrific to have such an international representation at the meeting. I did renew contacts with people that could turn into potential collaborations in the future.

Biology, MIT

It was very relevant and could make new contacts with people working in the same field. These contact will probably lead to new collaborations and future work. I had new insight, that may have some effect on my current research. No new hiring or new projects so far though.

Applied Mathematics III, Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya

Although I could not attend the workshop due to visa issues, I enjoyed the presentations. Thanks to the live streaming of most of the talks. I am now aware of many interesting findings which would have otherwise taken much longer time.

Dhananjay Tambe Research Associate
Department of Environmental Health, Harvard University
Jul 15 - Jul 20, 2012

The format, and in particular the way that participants are housed and take meals together in more-or-less isolated surroundings, is a great strength of these meetings and an important factor in their productivity. The talks and more importantly the discussions which went on throughout the week, both scheduled and informal, gave me new insight into various definitions and open questions, with direct impact on ongoing work of my own. A new project was also started at the meeting as a direct result of informal discussions with two other participants.

Patrick Fowler Professor
Chemistry, University of Sheffield

I participated in the BIRS workshop on rigidity this summer. During this meeting I reconnected with two old colleagues and made new connections with 4 or 5 new ones. This may ultimately lead to very fruitful new collaborations. Working with one of the collaborators allowed us to combine techniques from our individual works that should lead to a characterization for global rigidity of periodic frameworks. Additionally, at this meeting, various parties that have worked on complex and hyperbolic rigidity were able to get together to finally figure out what was collectively known and collectively unknown. This will greatly help progress on these questions.

SEAS, Harvard University

My visit to BIRS saw me concentrating on developing an existing collaboration into a new area, and it provided an ideal environment for this. We certainly developed some new insights - difficult to yet know how significant these will be.

Department of Engineering, University of Cambridge

This was a useful workshop, with new insights and at least two new collaborations started. How they finish is yet to be seen. I do believe the workshop made a positive impact on the field.

Igor Pak Professor
Mathematics, University of California at Los Angeles
Jul 13 - Jul 15, 2012

I found the event extremely interesting and helpful, primarily for three reasons. Firstly, the technical presentations from experts in their respective areas gave me a lot of new ideas, some of which I am certain I will be able to consolidate through collaborations. Secondly, this was an extremely useful networking event that gave me the chance to meet important female figures in the IEEE community. Finally, I just had a really great time!

Electrical Engineering, Princeton University

My participation in the BIRS workshop allowed me to make important contacts with people from my research area, as well as to be able to get significant insights of their current areas of research which provides me new interesting ideas for my job. Also the contacts I made during the workshop may help me through my career with postdoc opportunities or joint projects.

Cristina Gomez Santamaria Information and Communications Technologies, Universidad Pontificia Bolivariana-Colombia
Jul 08 - Jul 13, 2012

My time at BIRS was really pleasant: it was useful for my mathematical projects and all the activities that your centre offers were absolutely amazing. I agree with you in thanking the organizers of the last week: Han Peters and Erlend Fornaess Wold. I hope to have other opportunities to come to Banff International Research Station.

Mathematics, Universita Ferrara

I found the workshop very interesting and learned some results that I did not know. Also, I started some new collaboration with researchers met there, which I think will produce interesting new results.

Matematica, Università di Roma
Jul 01 - Jul 06, 2012

Another superb BIRS conference, bringing computational mathematicians together with number theorists and topologists to drive experimental and theoretical work on a circle of questions which were complete mysteries only a few years ago.

Mathematics, University of Wisconsin

The conference gave me a unique chance to interact with some of the leading experts on several topics that I have been very interested in recently. I left Banff with several promising ideas/projects and a deeper understanding. I can't wait to visit again!

Marie Curie Intra-European Fellow
Mathematics Institute, University of Warwick
Jun 24 - Jun 29, 2012

My participation in the BIRS workshop did indeed impact significantly in my current research: it provided great stimulation to graduate students that attended, and it initiated a new collaboration (on the topic of application of integral equation methods to eigenvalue problems, a rather novel approach) with two other participants. Interestingly, subsequent to the initiation of this work, I had two independent requests from colleagues at engineering departments at Caltech (Chemical Engineering and Electrical Engineering), whose needs required exactly the type of method we developed as a result of these interactions in Banff: use of commercial software for these problems had proven unsatisfactory, and our new methods provide the needed accuracy and efficiency. We have thus started three independent highly interesting collaborations as a result of the interactions initiated during the BIRS workshop. Additionally, participating students had a tremendous opportunity to meet and interact with some of the most active scientists in the field. In all, this was an extremely useful experience. Thank you so much for making it possible.

Applied and Computational Mathematics, California Institute of Technology

The workshop was the opportunity 1) To present a joint talk with my collaborator M. Costabel and to re-launch this project (Cosserat spectrum), after a good reception by the audience, 2) To meet and have scientific exchanges with J. Ovall, on adaptative eigenvector computations, 3) In connection with point 2), to build a benchmark page http://perso.univ-rennes1.fr/monique.dauge/schroedinger/benchmark.html

IRMAR (Mathematics), University of Rennes 1, France
Jun 22 - Jun 24, 2012

The discussions outside of the lectures refocused me on certain key questions such as what are "points" in the Delta flat topology and what kind of lifting properties do we have in the differential setting. This was quite useful.

Mathematics, CUNY
Jun 17 - Jun 22, 2012

(1) I learned recent results on descriptive set theory and von Neumann algebras, and I found them quite interesting. Among others it was particularly nice to get to know logicians (Farah, Hart, and others) working on applying model theory to von Neumann algebras. I would like to keep discussing about this topic with them. I enjoyed talking with Andrew Toms on central sequence algebras and feel the different flavor of central sequences in C* context. (2) It was nice for me to have had an opportunity to talk in front of experts. It is definitely good for improving my presentation skills and getting to know experts in the relevant field. (3) I found talks on Polish groups quite interesting, and I would like to know more about them. I did not expect to hear such talks, because the workshop were only for set theory and some directly related analysis.

Hiroshi Ando Research Institute for Mathematical Sciences, Graduate School of Science, Kyoto University

The conference was not exactly in my field of research (which would be more on the set theory side), but it certainly allowed me to understand better what is currently done in operator algebras, and to meet some people from that field. I appreciated the effort that some of the speakers (not all) from functional analysis put into being understandable from the set theorists. On the other hand, quite a number of pretty close colleagues were also present. That allowed a good balance between discovery and discussions on more precise subject. The latter opened at least three seemingly very interesting research tracks, and will very likely impact my research very soon. All in all, that was a very pleasant stay, and if the results I expect from turn out to be confirmed, it will also have been a very profitable one.

Mathematics, University of Aix-Marseille

It was my second time attending a BIRS workshop and again I found the experience very enjoyable and extremely mathematically productive. The wide range of expertise of the workshop participants was a particular benefit of this meeting: I found the interactions with specialists in the structure theory of von Neumann algebras particularly useful, as well as learning significantly from experts in model theory and descriptive set theory. With Andrew Toms and Wilhelm Winter, I managed to make progress on the regularity conjecture for nuclear C*-algebras. We are currently preparing a paper on this topic in which it will be a pleasure to record our thanks to BIRS.

School of Mathematics and Statistics, University of Glasgow
Jun 10 - Jun 17, 2012

This was one of the best workshops that I have ever participated in. The format of having the day split into half the time lectures, the other half problems sessions made it possible to really absorb the material discussed in the lecture. In a typical workshop that I have participated in, having an opportunity to really understand the material has not necessarily been a given. This past week I have expanded my background of number theory into the realm of the methods to solve Diophantine equations. Any opportunity to broaden the scope of one's field is always valuable, especially in such a well structured workshop. I had the opportunity to meet a number of number theorists at this workshop, for the first time, which was really great.

Mathematics, University of Calgary

In my PhD I am specializing in the modular approach to Diophantine equations which was one of the topics taught in the school. This way the summer school was very useful to me to get to know other techniques to solving Diophantine equations and to see how they interact with the modular approach. This was something that was already in my plans but this school allowed me to do it in a fast and systematic way. I also met several people I wouldn't have met otherwise and it is not that I had started a new collaboration during the school but I am sure that some collaboration will happen in the future. Also, I arrived two days earlier in order to meet with another mathematician that was in a BIRS workshop the previous week and stayed late in order for us to collaborate.

Nuno Freitas University of Barcelona

The content of the workshop was very relevant to my dissertation research. By participating in problem sessions and talking to the lecturers I got several new ideas to try on a problem I'm thinking about for my thesis. I met several people at the workshop which I'm very glad to have come in contact with, since we work on closely related subjects. I do expect to have future collaborations in research with some of them.

Mathematics, University of Georgia

The workshop gave a good overview of the various tools that mathematicians use today to solve Diophantine equations. There were also exercises that helped us become comfortable using these tools. I gained a good perspective on how Diophantine equations can be solved, and I had a really good time.

Mathematics, Brown University

The workshop was great, with all of the talks being interesting and very helpful. The methods to solve Diophantine equations that were shown were all among the most powerful known today and it was nice to see them explained by some of the people that developed them. I believe the workshop will have a noticeable impact on my future research.

Department of Mathematics, University of Zagreb

The BIRS Summer School on Contemporary Methods for Solving Diophantine Equations was outstanding. I got more out of attending this summer school than any summer school or conference I have attended so far. The lectures were really interesting and well presented and the problems were challenging and very enjoyable. I learnt a lot by working on the problems in small groups and discussing the finer points of the lectures with other participants. The BIRS is the perfect location for such a summer school. The Banff Centre is very well set up and the surroundings are beautiful. Many thanks to the organisers for doing such a fantastic job and I hope there will be more events like this in the future.

Department of Pure Mathematics and Mathematical Statistics, Cambridge University

This BIRS summer school on Diophantine equations has been really fruitful for me. I do not work with Diophantine equations, so it was great learning all the modern methods to solve them in one place. The lectures were brilliant and beautifully interrelated. The problem sessions were challenging and it helped in absorbing the lecture materials. I also liked very much the idea of recording the lectures and it will certainly be useful for people who could not attend this summer school. The Banff Centre's hospitality has been awesome and I really thank all the organisers for all their efforts. The experience from Banff will definitely be helpful for my future research.

Soma Purkait Mathematics, University of Warwick
May 25 - May 27, 2012

I work on building algorithms to automate the design of integrated circuits (IC). Even though I am a practitioner, I use mathematical theories and have to follow the new developments in mathematics to be able to apply them in my work. The participation in this workshop had a significant impact on my research as I became familiar with the newest research in Robust optimization and also had time to discuss my issues with the best in the robust optimization field in the great mountain setting and I have two ideas to work on that I think will result in high quality publications. In addition, I met Dr. Bertsimas from MIT and Dr. Stephan Wild from Argonne National Laboratory. These new connections might result in collaborations in the future.

Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Calgary

I think the workshop has been well organized and serves well the needs of the optimization society. The value proposition of the workshop is well presented, where the panel discussion was very thought provoking. The workshop certainly provides a great start for researchers in optimization society to re-focus on the real value that robust optimization can bring to the industry. I benefit a lot from the workshop, seeing how the trend of robust optimization may evolve.

Mechanical and Industrial Engineering, University of Toronto
May 20 - May 25, 2012

The following points made the meeting in Banff useful to me: 1) New contact with brilliant people I did not know before 2) New knowledge of the discipline I am interested in

Stefano Bianchini Professor
Mathematics, SISSA

It is a very nice meeting. We know the recent progress in the optimal transportation theory, in particular, its connection with differential geometry. During the conference, we have the chance to discuss with the colleagues the various applications. These would give the fresh ideas in some "old" problems...

Yuxin Ge Centre des Mathematiques, Universite Paris Est Creteil

It's a such wonderful workshop, the organizers has done a superb job. BIRS is always a great place for mathematicians exchanging and generating ideas. Myself this time benefited from the workshop, I and my collaborators worked out something we struggled for last two years. It was in Banff last week we were able to put all pieces together. Thank you again, BIRS!

Mathematics and Statistics, McGill University

I enjoyed most talks and fruitful discussions.

Department of Mathematics, Kyoto Univesity

The participation has been particularly fruitful, with a significant impact on my current research.

Mathematics, University of Pavia (Italy)

The workshop expose me to the most recent progress in the area of optimal transport. I get to know many experts in this area and problems that they are interested in.

Szego
Mathematics, stanford university
May 13 - May 18, 2012

The BIRS workshop will impact my research in many aspects. In addition to contribute to my current field of interest, it opened new possibilities along with new collaborations.

Fernando Duda Mechanical Engineering, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro

The workshop brought to my attention a new aspect of the mathematical treatment of turbulence that will be part of my research in the next future. Moreover, I had the opportunity to meet people who worked on fluid models with an approach complimentary to mine; with one of them I started a collaboration.

Mechanical Engineering, University of Washington

This workshop gave me a chance to meet with many well-known people in this field. I discussed with these people about the future direction of my research and got great advices and comments from them. I think that I will have many new outcomes based on this workshop in the future.

Tae-Yeon Kim Mechanical Engineering, McGill University

The workshop stimulated me in continuing with the topic on which I gave a presentation and it gave me some useful directions of further research. The informal way in which the workshop was held is a very good way to stimulate interaction between the participants. There was ample time for discussions during and between the presentations. Since the presentations could also be followed by others through the video stream, I also got useful and stimulating comments from non-participants.

Hans Kuerten Mechanical Engineering, Eindhoven University of Technology

The BIRS workshop has been a great experience for me. I could present my latest research results to a group of people closely connected to it. This is not the case in many conferences. In this sense, I think it is a great idea to organize this kind of meetings. On the other hand, I met and shared experiences and impressions with people that I already knew but also with some others that I just knew by their names. So, for me this gathering has been a great opportunity to make new contacts. I am sure that this will positively influence my ongoing and future research.

F.Xavier Trias Connections Between Regularized and Large-Eddy Simulation Methods for Turbulence
Heat and Mass Transfer Technological Center, Technical University of Catalonia

It was great to know what the leading experts in the field are working on, and so the current hot topics. The station provides also a good working environment.

Mathematics and Statistics, McGill University

I think that the Banff Centre is a magnificent institution which give great opportunities for people to refresh their minds in order to get re-inspired.

Mechanical Engineering, Eindhoven University of Technology
May 06 - May 11, 2012

The workshop was an excellent opportunity to get more familiar with recent developments in my research area as well as with new interactions with other areas. It was an occasion to meet researchers from other areas that I did not know yet or that I just met once so far (at the meeting at BIRS in 2010) and to learn more about their work. I appreciated the fact that the workshop had a well defined focus, and I found that the average level of the talks was unusually high, both regarding contents and exposition.

Dipartimento di Informatica - Settore di Matematica, Universita degli Studi di Verona

During this workshop, we have lots of interesting talks. Moreover, I talked to some colleagues, and the discussion helps me to solve a particular problem in my research. In the same time, I have the opportunity to ask problems to top researchers, like Professor Ringel and Krause, and so on.

Professor
School of Mathematical Sciences, USTC Hefei

The subject of the workshop were links between representation theory, singularity theory and non-commutative algebraic geometry. The talks were especially chosen to relate at least two of these subjects. My own expertise is in singularity theory. I learned a lot about new connections, in particular to non-commutative algebraic geometry. This is a subject which I am not familiar with. I got useful insights into this subject and my attention was drawn to relations which I was not aware of. I found particularly interesting a talk of Kazushi Ueda where he gave an general picture of mirror symmetry throwing also a new light on my joint work with David Ploog. Important for my current research was also the fact that I met my coworker Atsushi Takahashi (Osaka) among the participants and we had the opportunity to discuss our ongoing research. I benefitted very much from the workshop and I hope that there will be another workshop of this kind in two years.

Institut für Algebraische Geometrie, Leibniz Universität Hannover

The workshop was, like the years before, an excellent selection of talks from algebra and algebraic geometry. My private opinion was, that the workshop covered many new developments, that I took a lot of profit from, and also gave some introduction into recent important developments. In particular, the talks of Ragnar Buchweitz I should mention here. I hope that series will proceed and we can meet again in two years at this excellent place.

Mathematisches Institut, University Münster

The workshop was very stimulating. I have learned many new ideas from people in various research fields. During the workshop, I was able to find a possible interactive project with people in another research field. I hope it will work!

Department of Mathematics, Shizuoka University

This was my first experience as a participant of a workshop in BIRS. I met new people and talked to some well known figure (that I didn't really talked to previously) in my area. As a postdoctoral fellow, I even found some opportunities to extend my postdoc. for next year. The organizers gave me the opportunity to give a talk. I had some very constructive comments related to it. They will be useful in my current and future works.

Charles Paquette Mathematics and Statistics, University of New Brunswick
Apr 29 - May 04, 2012

The participation in the BIRS workshop has been very useful for me since I established new contacts and I discussed with experts about my current research projects.

Associate Professor
Matematics, Università di Torino

I did not think about calibrated geometry in Pseudo Riemannion case before the first talk in Banff and I believe some result of Blaine and me should also work for this case. It was a very exciting workshop which broadens my view of math much.

Math Department, Stony Brook University
Apr 27 - Apr 29, 2012

It was an excellent website and I had lots of valuable ideas to use in the classroom. I am hoping to hold my first math fair next year in March. I will let you know how it goes.

Carla Taylor math, St.Edmund School
Apr 22 - Apr 27, 2012

The workshop definitely had a positive impact on my future research activities. I already have 3 PhD students taking up different aspects of research problems that are a direct result of my participation at this meeting.

Howard Levene Professor of Statistics
Statistics, Columbia University

The topic touches on fundamentals...how to deal with data that are incomplete or partially inaccessible...a challenging question. The opening sessions gave a very clear over view of the topic and indicated the challenges. The venue and the organization and the associations provided the essentials. There seems now from the workshop to be an essential resolution which was sketched in the final summary session, central to this is the BIRS workshop style and the BIRS organization.

Statistics, University of Toronto

It was great to meet so many people working in the relatively small field of composite likelihood methods. I think that the workshop was very successful in clarifying the progress that has been made in this subject over the past few years, and highlighting the large number of open questions that remain. I have written down pages and pages of new problems to think about, many of which hadn't occurred to me at all before I attended this workshop. As a PhD student I felt that I was treated no differently to the most well known and respected professors - everyone seemed to be judged not on who they were, but on what they had to say. With the reasonably small numbers, I think I got to talk to just about all of the other participants, many of whom had very interesting suggestions for new ways to tackle to problems I discussed in my talk. Thank you BIRS!

Statistics, University of Warwick

The workshop was excellent in the sense that I met very interesting and influential people in my discipline but also got informed for ongoing research on the field. It also boosted new collaborations which I find very promising for the future!

Associ. Professor
Dept of Statistics, Athens University of Economics and Business

This was my first scientific visit to BIRS and I thoroughly hope it will not be my last. I have nothing but admiration and the highest esteem for the organization, the concept, and the way everything is so efficiently run. Friendly staff, a stimulating natural and built environment do everything to inspire creativity, to use a tag line of the Banff Centre. The research interactions, formal and informal, will have a lasting impact on many people's scientific research, including mine. The Banff Centre, and BIRS as part of it, is the modern-day version of the most splendid concept of "desert" that scholars and monks alike sought in medieval times, and that can also be found in some traditional universities, such as Oxford and Cambridge. It reminded me of the "Chartreuse" in France, where the monks retreated in a superb natural environment to devote themselves to their most beloved activities. The Banff Centre has the additional advantage that the seclusion is wonderfully married with the proximity of downtown Banff. I am ever so grateful for a wonderful experience.

Geert Molenberghs Professor
I-BioStat, Hasselt University & Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium

Our workshop was outstanding, and I started at least one new project, and continued on two others. The talks were very good, there was lots of time for discussion, and we all felt we were making real contributions to an important area of research. My graduating PhD student got great exposure to the leaders in his area, which he found inspiring. Even better, he got some leads on postdoc opportunities that he would not have had. I met several old friends and made some new ones, and came home feeling intellectually enriched.

Department of Statistics, University of Toronto

The workshop is very valuable to my current research. A nice collection of talks has updated me significantly the current status of the research progress on composite likelihood methods. With no doubts these heard new ideas, new methods, and new results will impact my pursuit in future research of composite likelihood methods. I am once again convinced that composite likelihood methods will continue to attract a good deal of attention in statistics and have profound impact in theory, methods and applications.

Department of Biostatistics, University of Michigan

I think this workshop could likely have a substantial impact on the diffusion of composite likelihood methods in statistics and related disciplines. I enjoy the talks and learn much about a diversity of applications of composite likelihood methods. Furthermore, the workshop gave me the opportunity to meet coauthors and discuss about ongoing and new projects.

Ph.D.
Department of Environmental Sciences, Informatics and Statistics, Ca’ Foscari University
Apr 15 - Apr 20, 2012

One thing that the workshop did was mix geometers and topologists. This was good for me (as a topologist) in two specific ways. I met my collaborator Fuquan Fang (a geometer from China). We put the finishing touches on a project and started a new one. I met and had interesting discussions with Claude LeBrun who suggested the problem of determining which 7-manifolds admit Einstein metrics. I have an ex-student (Diarmuid Crowley) who is the world's expert on the topology of 7-manifolds, and I will talk to him about this interesting mix of geometry and topology.

Mathematics, Indiana University

We had a great week at BIRS. Our report will fill you in on some of the new developments both from the talks (most are available on video), and from the lively discussions among the participants. Several of my own projects got a boost from talking to people at the meeting, so that was a bonus. This was the first time I experienced the new TCPL facility for the lectures. It is perfect, and the video recording produces a surprisingly good quality image and sound. As usual, the local organization by Brenda Williams and Brent Kearney was excellent.

Mathematics & Statistics, McMaster University

The BIRS workshop "Geometric structures on manifolds" was wonderful. As with all of my BIRS experiences, I came away from this workshop invigorated and with new mathematical perspective. This workshop, in particular, was great in that it introduced me both to people and to ideas with which I had little prior exposure. I was impressed by the speakers and the diversity of mathematics presented at the workshop. People made a real effort to communicate with mathematicians outside of their normal circles; a rare phenomenon at many conferences that I attend. As usual the organization, the food, the technology, and the accommodations were outstanding. BIRS is a truly special place.

Assistant Professor
Mathematics, Michigan State University

First thank you and the organizing committee for the invitation to the BIRS workshop. I enjoyed it a great deal both mathematically and environmentally. For me this is a extremely smooth conference from arriving at Calgary and leaving Calgary. The instruction is clear, on-time and short enough (so that we have patience to read it completely), this takes care of my arriving at and leaving my BIRS room. Since this is my first time to Banff, I like the format that all our food are taken care of so that we do not waste our time on this front. Another thing I like is that the noon time break is long so that we have time to mingle together. Mathematically I extremely like the diversity of the topics of talks and the quality of the talks, though I am a geometric analyst, I benefit from quite a few talks, in particular the talk by LeBrun on the classification of Einstein 4-manifolds with complex structure, the talk by Hillman on the homotopy type of geometric 4-manifolds, and the talk by Biquard on desingularizing Einstein orbifolds. I enjoyed the talk by Baldridge a lot. Out of talks I asked Bryant some questions about the deformation of G_2 manifolds. He also explained to a group of people about his on-going study of Bonnett theorem in affine spaces, I liked it. I also talked quite a bit of math with Fang. To me this is a very fruitful conference, I can not ask more from it. Here I want to say again, thank you and the other organizer and BIRS.

Mathematics, University of Oregon

As a participant, it was nice to have the talks restricted to 45 minutes. With that length, it's easier to pay attention. The facilities, scenery, and food were all magnificent. In terms of professional development and networking, I feel that my presence at these sorts of conferences is crucial. I already have a postdoc, but I will be moving overseas, so I need to form my North American connections now. The talks were very nice, and it was helpful to see several talks in the same subject area, namely Spin7/G2 manifolds. Most valuable were my interactions with other participants. I met several colleagues and big-name researchers, and caught up with several friends. I had many conversations which were very helpful. Foremost, I am currently working on a project about Chern-Simons theory, which was informed by my discussions with Paul Kirk and Matt Hedden. Also, I had a nice discussion with Robert Bryant regarding an identity I had discovered. The conference was very productive, smooth and enjoyable. I hope to return soon to BIRS!

Postdoctoral Fellow
Mathematics & Statistics, McMaster University

The workshop was a great place to meet people working in an area somewhat different from mine, but still related. I also had an opportunity to work with a colleague on a joint project that was conceived at another BIRS meeting last year.

Mathematics, University of Georgia
Apr 08 - Apr 13, 2012

Attending the BIRS workshop "Open Dynamical Systems: Ergodic Theory, Probabilistic Methods and Applications" was a perfect opportunity for me to reacquaint myself with a subject that I worked on some years ago, and I found the meeting very inspiring, informing me about many aspects of the subject that I can't tell I was thoroughly aware of (such as the developments in numerical computation of spectra of transfer operators and the applications to metastable systems). For renewing contacts and forging new ones, these workshops are ideal, and it helps me in my activities as referee, journal editor and mathematician in general.

Mathematics, University of Surrey

It a very interesting workshop. I met with many people working on similar problems as myself. I learned about new problems and some new results. I have a chance to talk to people I would not probably meet otherwise. Three of my former PhD students also attended, so it was great to meet with them. And Banff is a wonderful place. I greatly enjoyed the walk on the Sulphur Mountain.

Dr
Department of Mathematics & Statistics, Concordia University

Many thanks also for the opportunity to stay and work at BIRS again. It is always a very enjoyable stay. As a matter of fact, the workshop initiated a collaboration with Kathrin Padberg-Gehle and Shane Ross and I am very excited about this. We are going to apply techniques on the detection of global bifurcations based on transfer operator techniques to fluid motion. We suspect that this might be a new way to, e.g., predict certain phenomena like vortex splitting and thus have interesting applications in weather forecasts.

Center for Mathematics, Technische Universität München

The BIRS workshop 'Open Dynamical Systems: Ergodic Theory, Probabilistic Methods and Applications' offered the opportunity to become familiar with many recent results on topics in both abstract and applied ergodic theory. I think that without this opportunity it would have been very hard if not impossible to have gained a reasonable understanding of some of these latest results, which might influence my future research. Also, the workshop facilitated communication with the other participants. Although it is very hard to say a few days after the workshop, how many of the new ideas- my possible collaborators and I came up with during several conversations -will end up in publishable papers, I am very hopeful in this respect. Furthermore, some of these possible new collaborators, are researchers that I would have not been able to discuss at large with, otherwise. I am a postdoc and no, I do not think that the workshop influenced my job prospects. I think that the workshop made realize once more that there are many open questions in both abstract and applied ergodic theory that are worth exploring.

Dipartimento di Matematica, Università di Roma

Very nice workshop, lots of good talks with interesting differences in background, bravo. Banff is a wonderful place.

Serge Troubetzkoy Institut de Mathématiques de Luminy (UMR 6206)
Apr 01 - Apr 06, 2012

I have been to BIRS on several occasions, attending quite different programs on varying topics. BIRS has always offered a highly-stimulating intellectual environment, without fail. It was exactly that way this time, as well. However, this was the first time that I had organized a meeting in BIRS myself, and so I had a first chance to see more closely how the institute is run. It is truly an amazing undertaking, with wonderful, dedicated staff, in [as always] spectacular surroundings. I am deeply grateful for the opportunity to have been there. At the end of the conference, several people expressly told me how energized they felt about their research program. I too feel that way. Almost everyone that I spoke with told me how they found the new video technology truly remarkable [it truly is].

Professor
Mathematics, University of Utah

My participation in the BIRS workshop was very helpful to my research. I learned about new developments and recent results, and I could discuss with major experts in the field in a very relaxing atmosphere.

David Nualart Professor
Mathematics, University of Kansas

The fact that the workshop's main subject was restricted to Stochastic Analysis and SPDEs made that almost all talks were very interesting and definitively provided me a fresh insight in the topic. I also had the opportunity to discuss with some of my current collaborators about our ongoing projects, some of which are related to the content of some of the workshop talks. In general, I found the workshop's format very convenient and it has positively influenced my research projects.

Mathematics, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona

I appreciate very much to listen to new problems related to the area in which I work. In particular I think to the problem of parabolic Anderson model that I was not familiar before. It has maybe helped a PhD student of mine to have a new significant contact.

Unité de mathématiques appliquées, ENSTA-Paris Tech
Mar 30 - Apr 01, 2012

I like every aspect of this workshop. The level and areas of mathematics I had seen in this workshop is excellent.

Department of Mathematical and Statistical Sciences, University of Alberta

It was worthwhile for me. In particular, for doing more attractive works in visit other partners.

Omid Zabeti University of Alberta
Mar 25 - Mar 30, 2012

Attending this workshop was very helpful for my research. During the week I was able to spend time working on some examples with participants Geraschanko and Satriano which we hope will lead to a joint paper on integration on toric stacks. I was also able to meet Amalendu Krishna and learn about the use of A^1 homotopy techniques in cycle theory on stacks. This too looks like it may lead to a joint project. Finally, the conferenece gave me a chance to work with ongoing collaborators Jarvis and Kimura and an opportunity to present some of our joint work on $\lambda$-ring structures in orbifold K-theory. This is the second Banff conference I've attended. At the first conference in 2008 I met Jarvis and Kimura and we began a collaboration that continues to date. Once again, it looks like I'll be able to gain new collaborators by attending a Banff conference. I think that having participants share a dormitory and common meals definitely helps foster mathematical discussion.

Mathematics, University of Missouri
Mar 18 - Mar 23, 2012

Thank you very much for the great job that was put forward by BIRS to make the workshop such a wonderful experience. I agree that the organizers put together a set of very interesting and stimulating topics. I indeed brought back several ideas that I plan to investigate in the next few months.

Industrial Engineering and Operations Research, Columbia University

We had a fantastic workshop on Monte Carlo methods. The atmosphere is very conducive to discussions and planting the seeds for new research directions and projects. I am currently working on two ideas. They will however take time before they become publications.

Associate Professor
Department of Computer Science, University of British Columbia

As always, I fully enjoyed the privilege of attending a workshop at BIRS! If you do not mind, here are the links to my reflections on the meeting: http://xianblog.wordpress.com/2012/03/20/banff-worshop-birs-12w5105-meeting/; http://xianblog.wordpress.com/2012/03/21/banff-workshop-birs-12w5105-meeting-2/; http://xianblog.wordpress.com/2012/03/23/banff-workshop-birs-12w5105-meeting-3/; Once again, the organisation was flawless, the facilities beyond the reasonable, the new feature of videotaping the lectures brilliant (I have had several feedbacks from people who were NOT at the workshop), and the atmosphere at the workshop particularly congenial (a. everyone attended a. every talk and there were only two talks that I found superfluous). Incidentally, I took the opportunity of sleepless nights at BIRS to write the following http://arxiv.org/abs/1203.6249; although it is not related to the theme of the workshop.

Mar 11 - Mar 16, 2012

A lot of talks were very interesting and informative for me. I have met several people interested in the theory of Elliptic algebras (I worked at this theory during ten years, see Russ.Math.Surveys 57 (2002) 6 or arXiv:math/0303021 for a survey). I have made an informal talk for them and we had a lot of discussions. When I returned to elliptic algebras (preparing to my informal talk and during our discussions) I realized that there are some possible directions of research there and I plan to start these research.

Dr.
Mathematics, Brock University

This conference was very influential for me to learn many subjects related to my area but not exactly the same area. In particular, results from a view of representation and non-compact symplectic varieties were impressive for me. Bedies these, I was happy to hear from Doctor Gunnar Magnusson (a participant) that my talk is also applicable to construct non-K\"ahler manifolds of intertesting nature. This was very impressive for me, as I never thought about applications in such directions.

Keiji Oguiso Professor
Graduate School of Science, Departmenrt of Mathematics, Osaka University
Mar 04 - Mar 09, 2012

The conference enabled me to continue some collaborations in progress and made me aware of some new work that is closely related to things I had done years ago on the C(alpha) spaces and may lead to additional results. In addition I was able to talk to a prospective postdoc, Dosev, and we subsequently completed arrangements for him to spend next year in Stillwater.

Professor
Mathematics, Oklahoma State University

The workshop kept me up to date with a field of research close to mine. I had new contacts that I wouldn't have had otherwise. Feedback about my talk helped me improve a paper.

Visiting Assistant Professor
Mathematics, Texas A&M University

During the workshop, I had an idea for a proof that originated a paper that is almost ready now (tentatively entitled "A new proof of Pietsch's composition theorem"). Also, a question after my talk made me realize a result that followed from what I already had. Moreover, another comment made me aware of the fact that I was looking at a situation well understood in categorical Banach space theory; I am now in the process of incorporating these categorical methods into my research. Thanks to the workshop, I got invited to give a talk at another conference. I don't think this would have happened if I had not been there.

Department of Mathematics, Texas A&M University

The workshop gave an impulse to my current research, essentially by talking with people I already collaborated with, as well as opening possibilities of organizing future events with some people I met at the workshop.

Valentin Ferenczi Mathematics, Universidade de São Paulo

I would like to thank you and the organizers of BIRS 12w5019 for doing an outstanding job on organizing this workshop. It is perhaps the best conference, evaluating facilities, attendance and scientific program, I've ever attended. Best regards,

Ioannis Gasparis Mathematics, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki

I learned that a problem I was very much interested in on commutators had been solved by Matt Tarbard. Since he did not know that his example solved the problem, it was good that I was in the audience when he spoke. I was struck by the depth in the development of the infinite dimensional theory. Due to the work of the Argyros and Odell-Schlumprecht schools, we have a completely different picture of the structure of general Banach spaces than we had a few years ago. It was gratifying to see how many good young people are working in the field.

Department of Mathematics, Texas A&M University

1. I worked on current projects with current coauthors. 2. I discussed possible future projects with recent coauthors. 3. Most importantly, I met new people with whom I discussed possible future projects. 4. The whole atmosphere was very inspiring.

Mathematics, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

I found the workshop very inspiring and thoroughly enjoyable. There was a good mix between people specializing in various directions of Banach space theory. I definitely made some new connections and learnt some new results relevant for my ongoing research.

Mathematics and Statistics, Lancaster University

The workshop was excellent in every way. The talks were of very high quality. I was introduced to the latest directions in research in Banach space theory. I also had the chance of interacting with colleagues to discuss possible joint projects.

Mathematics, National University of Singapore

In general, my participation in the BIRS workshop has only had a positive impact upon me, in every aspect. Indeed, i was given the chance to get more familiar with fields i was not involved in so far, as well as offered the opportunity to become better informed about methods and results concerning my main field of study. Since i am a young researcher, the workshop was an excellent way for me to meet other researchers, young and more experienced alike, which led to various scientific discussions, offering the prospect of new collaborations and papers. Since i still have a few years ahead of me in order to obtain my Ph.d, my job prospects may not be a matter of primary concern to me, nevertheless i believe that coming in touch with all these members of the scientific community will have a positive influence on this aspect in the future.

Pavlos Motakis Mathematics, National Technical University of Athens

The workshop was very fruitful for my current and future research, thanks to new methods I got more familiar with during the workshop and new research projects which I started there - also in collaboration with other participants. I appreciate very much the talks delivered during the workshop as well as the possibility of discussion with other researchers I don't have opportunity to meet often.

Anna Pelczar-Barwacz Institute of Mathematics, Jagiellonian University

Mathematics, Miami University

This was a splendid conference,one of the best I've ever been to, and I've been to a lot! All of the talks were at an exceptionally high level,and well illustrated the great diversity in our field of research-hats off to the organizers! Informal discussions ,some with people I'd never met, produced very stimulating questions and new directions of research. In particular, i'd like to mention the following questions which emerged during the workshop. Let X be a separable Banach space with the bounded approximation property. Is the double dual of the space of compact operators on X non-separable? An affirmative answer would show there cannot be a reflexive Banach space with the approximation property such that every operator on it is compact + scalar multiple of the identity. But here is an approach,which in any case points to a new fundamental object associated with this problem. Suppose X has a monotone basis,and let Se denote the space of sequences tending to zero,which act as bounded operators on the basis by multiplication,endowed with the operator norm. A beautiful argument shown me by Ted Odell shows that every sequence tending to 0, of bounded variation belongs to Se. Is Se^** non-separable? Even if one could simply show that Se is not quasi-reflexive, the above mentioned problem about reflexive spaces would have a negative answer. The conference greatly helped me crystallize my thinking concerning the Invariant Subspace problem, Although I believe i am close to a negative solution to the Hyper-Invariant subspace problem (for Hilbert space), I understood during the conference that results I've already obtained yield a new direction in research in classical harmonic analysis,of independent interest. Furthermore, i discovered formulations of a "suitable" class of Banach spaces for which my ideas would work,if they carry through for Hilbert space itself. Finally, I started a joint project with a young guy from Canada,concerning the following open problem If an operator on a complex Banach space has the unit circle as it's spectrum,but no point spectrum,does it have a log? i conjecture that my recently discovered weighted invertible bilateral shift is a counterexample. Of course the organizers created a marvelous,warm atmosphere during the entire conference. a most enjoyable and highly stimulating experience!

Haskell Rosenthal John T Stuart IIi Centennial Professor of Mathematics Emeritus
Department of Mathematics, University of Texas at Austin

My participation helped established a new cooperation on a paper to be written. This collaboration would most probably have taken place also without the conference but it would have been much more time consuming and painful. I think the participation of my postdoc, Detelin Dosev, (and of Dale Alspach, Bill Johnson and myself) helped him secured a job at Oklahoma State University next year.

Gideon Schechtman Mathematics, Weizmann Institute

The Banach space conference was excellent and I had the opportunity to learn about new developments and talk with mathematicians I haven't met before. I also worked with a colleague present at the conference on a project of common interest and we arranged to meet again over the summer to continue our collaboration. The setting of the conference, the organization, accommodations, facilities, are all very very good.

Adi Tcaciuc Department of Mathematics and Statistics, Grant MacEwan University

I enjoyed the Banach space workshop enormously. The program was mathematically exceptionally strong with a number of very deep and difficult results on constructions of some special spaces with very few bounded operators and on related structures in arbitrary Banach spaces or in algebras B(X). Several "more fundamental" general lectures presented perspectives (and some technicalities) of the theory of infinite-dimensional Banach spaces in the last several years and pointed out directions for the future. These lectures were complemented by shorter technical talks illustrating concrete recent results and methods, given by a number of obviously very talented researchers of younger generation. Most of talks were on a highest scientific level, and all were interesting. I could not pick talks to miss would I want to "play hooky" so as a result I attended all of them (!). To tell the truth this was quite an unusual experience for me. I discussed that with some other "senior" friends and we were all very impressed especially by a quality and a number of young people in the area. I was happy to see breakthrough developments of recent years, especially the construction of Argyros and Haydon which has as a starting point Bourgain--Delbaen's space from the late 1970's. In Banff i started to understand some other potential ideas closer to my own research. It was a very stimulating meeting.

Nicole Tomczak-Jaegermann Department of Mathematical & Statistical Sciences, University of Alberta

The workshop: Banach space theory did have positive impact on my current research. There were several new results about closed ideals and commutators of operators on certain Banach spaces. These are the topics I am currently working on. I also got to know some people working on Banach space theory from Europe whom I never met before.

University of Memphis
Feb 26 - Mar 02, 2012

I had conversations with Vern Paulsen, Marius Junge, Benoit Collins, Toby Cubitt, Matt Hastings and Andreas Winter that I want to follow up on. It's too early to know if these will lead to new results, but Vern and Marius told me about areas of math that are far enough outside of what I normally do that it would be very interesting if a new connection were made. Also, I mentioned an open problem and Matthias Christandl came up with a partial solution to it. And I made some small progress on an open problem of Magdalena Musat and Uffe Haagerup, and helped simplify a result of Carlos Palazuelos. In general, the workshop left me with some small concrete new pieces of knowledge, and a large number of promising directions that I want to pursue. Overall, a great way to spend a week!

Computer Science, Univerity of Washington

My time at BIRS was great. The workshop brought together people in operator theory and quantum information theory. I am a quantum information theorist, so this was a great chance to learn about some problems in operator theory that are closely related to quantum information theory. I have to admit that I learned about and started thinking about one of the biggest open problems in operator theory, the Connes embedding conjecture. To be honest with myself, I probably have very little chance of making progress on this conjecture, since it has been such an outstanding problem in operator theory. However, since I learned about it, and further learned about various related conjectures in quantum information theory and about how to cast the embedding conjecture as a certain natural problem in information theory, I have been very interested in this problem and it has captured my attention. So, perhaps something good will come out of this---unlikely, but if it does it will be very nice! I also had a chance to present some topics that I am working on, and got some outstanding feedback from different perspectives than I am used to. This has already benefitted my thoughts on these problems, and some of the insights from my discussions at BIRS will likely benefit a paper that should be finished fairly soon. The organization was outstanding in every aspect. The venue is excellent, the rooms are great for discussion and the TCPL is a wonderful spot.

Matthew Hastings Duke University

The workshop was very important to me, and I think also to Gdansk group of quantum information. Thanks to the workshop I have become aware about a rapidly growing sub-community of quantum information that uses powerful mathematical tool to solve problems that have been so far intractable by our community, including myself. If I did not participate in the workshop, I might have not noticed this big trend for quite a while, which would seriously affect me and my group. I have realized that I have to learn these techniques, and also I have actually treated this workshop as a first course, asking all the time, more or less stupid questions, trying to get as much as possible. I am going now to invite several people that presented their results during the workshop to my group, so that we can learn more. I feel, that this workshop will prove very fruitful for several projects, which our group in Gdansk have are just starting. I am therefore extremely grateful to BIRS as well as the organizers of the workshop.

Michal Horodecki Prof
University of Gdansk

The workshop remains an important condensing point (and is quite unique for the operator algebra QI interaction), and initiates or boosts a lot of collaboration, I had lots of important talks lat week. I will make sure we mention the workshop in resulting papers.

Mathematics, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

As on previous occasions, this BIRS workshop was a hugely pleasant and intellectually stimulating experience. I got some nice ideas to take away from it, on which I'm working now. I found particularly useful the "open problems" session, during which I posed a question, and was delighted to learn some of those of my colleagues. I think the whole thing was a great success and helped bringing two sub-communities closer together, with potentially significant impact in the future.

Mathematics, University of Bristol
Feb 19 - Feb 24, 2012

Just to let you know that the program was very successful and stimulating for my research. I hope there will be other such opportunities for Combinatorics on Words. I thank you for all the work you do.

Computer Science, University of North Carolina Greensboro

This workshop certainly inspired my research. Most participants shared their work in progress stressing open problems they feel important and directions they hope promising. I appreciate the informal atmosphere which allowed people to speak about topics where they do not have any tangible results (yet), which is usually not possible on conferences. The workshop helped me to clarify several subject areas suitable for Ph.D. students. I have met people with whom I had been considering some long term research goal for some time, therefore this helped to move them a step forward. Finally, I got involved in one or two new open problems during the workshop.

Department Of Algebra, Charles University of Prague
Feb 12 - Feb 17, 2012

This workshop allowed me to discuss my research with other mathematicians interested in similar topics. I am shifting the direction of my research slightly as a result of the many talks and informal discussions I had with my colleagues at BIRS.

Boas Assistant Professor
Mathematics, Northwestern University

This was a very focused workshop, and the level of the discussion was unusually constructive and to the point. I learned much that I did not know and which would not have been uncovered with a broader thematic coverage. This will surely affect my future research in many ways.

mathematics, University of Bergen
Feb 12 - Feb 17, 2012

Participation in the BIRS workshop was extremely helpful for me. Being an outsider to the field of left-orderability helped to make me aware of the important questions and gave me some new ideas to think about. Furthermore, I was able to meet many new mathematicians that I had not met before and was thus able to learn a great deal of new things from them; there was also a lot of opportunity to speak more with people I had already met - it was particularly helpful to have so many of them all in the same place! I also started a new project with someone based on the discussions that were facilitated at BIRS, which seems quite promising.

Tye Lidman Mathematics, UCLA

Yes, the BIRS workshop was very productive for me. In my talk, I said slightly jokingly, no doubt Dave Witte Morris (one of the participants) should be able to finish this off using his techniques. However Dave made a very clever comment in my talk, and then we got together and finished the problem off. I believe we have proved a significant result, which we wouldn't have done without the workshop. At this time I'm writing a joint paper with Dave.

Mathematics, Virginia Tech
Feb 12 - Feb 17, 2012

Great chance to exchange ideas with other experts. Several new ideas and probable collaborations. Many of my (former) students and postdocs were there and gained a lot from the experience.

Professor
Mathematics, University of Chicago
Feb 12 - Feb 17, 2012

The workshop brought together around the orderable groups people from different fields ranking from low dimensional topology to algorithmic group theory, through the dynamical systems. The quality of the lectures as well as the conversations among the participants were exceptional from my point of view. It is a bit early to say how this workshop will influence my research. The only concrete fact in this direction is a draft of collaboration with Cristobal Rivas. However, the amount of information I learned from the lectures and the conversations as well as the new contacts I made during the week will definitively help me in my research, but I cannot predict how and when.

Professor
IMB, UMR 5584, Université de Bourgogne

We had an extremely productive meeting. Although I was originally concerned that we had only a half workshop, I now realize that it was in many ways an advantage to have a more intimate group. We had a very good mix of old hands, younger mathematicians and graduate students -- female experts and persons from as far as Japan, France and Chile. Even less than a week after the workshop, I know of at least two publications which are direct results of collaboration last week at BIRS -- by Dave Morris (http://arxiv.org/abs/1202.4716) and Patrick Dehornoy (still in progress). Other people collaborated in small groups working on aspects of the subject of our meeting, between talks an in the evenings. For myself, I spent virtually every free hour in a new collaboration with the Harvard grad student Thomas Koberda on an open problem regarding the space of orderings of a free group (not yet solved, but we're still hard at work on it). I would like to thank the staff at BIRS for helping to create an environment in which mathematicians can maximize their research interaction. It was such a pleasure!

Professor
University of British Columbia
Feb 05 - Feb 10, 2012

This was a very productive workshop for me, leading to new results, a new collaboration that I expect will lead to a paper, and learning about a result very closely related to something I had recently done with a lot of potential for cross-pollination.

Professor of Computer Science
Department of Computer Science, Yale University

Being at BIRS was a wonderful experience: The wonderful surroundings, the convenient facilities, and the warm hospitality of the staff has made the stay very comfortable. (Similar thanks go to the Banff centre staff, in the recreation facilities and the dining room.) For me it was first and foremost an opportunity to catch up on interesting research in my area. But it was also an opportunity to create new research: With 11 of my collaborators attending the workshop, I could make progress on several papers that I am writing (in one case, a presentation of the work by one of my coauthors has helped to find new applications). I also had a chance to describe some fresh results to relevant researchers and get their feedback. Finally, I got started on one or two new research directions.

The Technion

I formed new collaborations during the workshop and started working on two new projects with researchers I met there. In addition, I gained new insights about several topics that were discussed, which will definitely impact my research.

CSAIL, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

This was an extremely productive workshop for me, maybe more so than almost any other workshop I've been involved in. The workshop was not quite in my area, though I have expertise in general randomized techniques. I was able to get feedback and encouragement from experts on shared memory computation on some half-baked ideas that I came with. An expert in this area whom I had never really talked to joined me and a couple of others in a collaboration which extended one of those ideas and will likely lead to a publication. On another idea, I received encouragement to publish and names of people to contact who might know more about the problem. Finally, working there with someone I often collaborate with, we came up with ideas which I think can be used to solve a major open problem.

Professor
Department of Computer Science, University of Victoria
Feb 05 - Feb 10, 2012

My participation in the workshop had a very concrete impact on my research. Indeed, at this workshop I began a collaboration with Luc Devroye on a problem related to my talk. This resulted in some new research that has now been submitted to a journal, and which can be found on the arxiv http://arxiv.org/abs/1202.5945.

School of Computer Science, Carleton University
Jan 29 - Feb 03, 2012

I worked closely with Chris Laskowski on a continuing project related to my talk and made significant progress. The talks of Kim and Scow helped clarify a further paper I am working on. The paper of Hils may resurrect a project that has been on the back burner. Discussions with Tanevic and Haskell were helpful with my editorial responsibilities with the Bulletin of Symbolic Logic. Many other talks provided inspiration and insight that should be helpful in the future.

Professor, Emeritus
Mathematics, Statistics, and Computer Science, University of Illinois at Chicago

On February 2009 when a similar Classification theory (model theory) Workshop was help at BIRS, I talked with Dr. John Goodrick for the first time. Then we promised to start a research project together. Some months after, he and I and Alexei Kolesnikov met together and started a research project: A category theoretical understanding of model theoretic amalgamation. This project was very successful and resulted as a joint paper accepted in Israel Journal of Mathematics. The project was continued and we are now developing model theoretic homology theory connected with our earlier work. We already submit our some 70 page homology paper, and continue to work on extending the results in the paper. All these fruition began with the mentioned BIRS Worshop. Moreover in the new BIRS Workshop (Neostability theory), I and John met again, and we work and talk together. On Thursday evening in the lounge, we finally resolve the problem how to compute the higher homology group of a canonical higher groupoid. This is a big jump toward the study on computing higher homology groups and on solving our related conjectures. We express our deep thanks to the meeting organizers and BIRS administrators and staffs who support all this happening. Finally I want to mention the following. During the workshop, Dr. Joon Kim (who graduated in 2011 under my supervision) gave a talk. Many audience including scholars from Bogota, Colombia seemed impressed by his talk. And I just received an email from Joon Kim that he will get an official postdoc offer from Universidad de los Andes, Bogota, Colombia. This is a great help as well to the beginning-stage Korean logic community. Joon Kim is the first Ph. D. ever produced in South Korea specialized in mathematical logic. So his success as a research scholar is crucial in growing Korean logic community.

Professor
Mathematics, Yonsei University

First of all many thanks for giving me the opportunity to take part in this conference, in such a beautiful, inspiring and well organized environment. It gave me the opportunity to have constructive talks with at least two people coming from very far away, which is not always as successful when writing emails. It also allowed me to meet new researchers having close interests to mine, which could be a first step towards future projects. Of course, it also permitted to have an up to date overview of what people are looking at in my field of research : I did learn a lot.

mathematics, Galatasaray Üniversitesi
Jan 22 - Jan 27, 2012

Thank you so much for having me to BIRS for this workshop. The talks were excellent and the workshop was very well organized. The Banff Centre is a fantastic place to have this type of conference, and I will definitely highly recommend it to others, as well as hopefully attending or organizing future workshops myself! Thanks again very much for you wonderful hospitality.

Mathematics, UCLA

Thank you very much for organising these fantastic workshops at BIRS. I had a great time in Banff last week. I have learned about new mathematical models in my field, I have met great researchers (such as Prof. Jose Carillo de la Plata - whom I would have not met otherwise), and started a possible collaboration (and a possible paper). BIRS is a fantastic place to do research (to start new projects, to establish new contacts, ...). I was honoured to be invited to attend this workshop, and I am already looking forward to my next visit at BIRS.

Raluca Eftimie Mathematics and Statistics, McMaster University

This workshop was addressed very timely and interesting problems and is certainly going to have significant impact on my future research. It served excellently in forming closer relations with key players of the field I had hardly opportunity to meet otherwise.

Institute for Mathematic and Scientific Computing, University of Graz

I was one of the few engineers among mathematicians and researchers from other fields working on the topic of swarms or multi-particle systems with local and non-local interactions. I learned a lot about the view and aspect researchers from other fields have. It helped me form new ideas for expanding my current research. I also had the opportunity to communicate our results and views. I believe that it was a very useful interaction.

Veysel Gazi Professor
Electrical and Electronics Engineering, Istanbul Kemerburgaz University

It was a very nice and interesting workshop. I particularly enjoyed hearing about the work of up-and-coming junior people. A junior colleague (postdoc) and I also started a new collaboration with one of the participants.

Professor
Mathematics, University of Arizona
Jan 15 - Jan 20, 2012

I was very fortunate to attend the BIRS workshop on interactive information theory. As a computer scientist I don't usually get to interact with information theorists and electrical engineering researchers. This workshop provided me with such an opportunity. I have been working on applications of information theory in the field of computational complexity -- a subarea of computer science. The workshop has really impacted my research agenda in two ways. It exposed me to new ideas from information theory, which allowed me and my students to make progress on the problems we have been working on. At the same time, it made me aware of the problems and challenges in information theory to which the techniques we have been developing can be applied. I hope BIRS will hold another workshop in this area in the future years.

Computer Science, Princeton University and University of Toronto

The workshop was very beneficial in getting people from related fields together. This is valuable to our community as it created a better awareness of the specific problems people are currently addressing, and available mathematical methods to address these problems. It also gave me an opportunity to meet and exchange with new researchers in my area. This too is of great value. I think that the BIRS workshop will have a definite impact on the research in our area (interactive information theory). It may take a few months or a couple of years for the seeds planted during the workshop to come to fruition.

Jean-Francois Chamberland Electrical and Computer Engineering, Texas A&M University

The wonderful BIRS Workshop on Interactive Information Theory (Jan 16-20, 2012) afforded several intellectual benefits. I met and learned of the research of several computer scientists who work on areas related to my own but who normally do not attend the same meetings as I do. The tutorial lectures organized by Profs. Devroye, Khisti and Blake, as part of the Workshop program, were very useful. Several new and exciting ideas were discussed. My student, Himanshu Tyagi, gave a well-received one-hour tutorial which, I think, will have a beneficial impact on his future career in academia.

Professor
Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Maryland

This has been perhaps one of the three best scientific gatherings I have ever been to. The small number of selected participants and the focused topic provided opportunity for intensive discussions. After this workshop there is a potential for at least 3-4 new collaborations, which is excellent and rare in other conferences.

Professor
Electronic Systems, Aalborg University
Jan 08 - Jan 13, 2012

The participants, and the organisers in particular, have really appreciated the BIRS experience. The organizational help we received and the facilities and location were all outstanding, and allowed us to concentrate on the meeting goals and scientific discussions. We are currently in the process of gathering all the material of the discussions/talks into the basis of our report which we look forward to sending to you in due course. Please pass on our sincere thanks to the BIRS team.

University of Melbourne

We really enjoyed organising the workshop with BIRS. The organisational help we received was outstanding and made it easy to setup the workshop. The facilities at BIRS are excellent, very well suited for such a workshop. So overall we were able to concentrate on the science instead of lots of administrative issues. I believe the workshop brought together scientists working on different approaches towards quantum devices, which triggered quite a few new directions to explore. We are currently in the process of compiling the report describing the overall results in far more detail.

School of Computer Science and Informatics, Cardiff University
Dec 11 - Dec 16, 2011

The conference was wonderful. I found out about a new model for dynamic networks that my student and I will examine this semester. I also got caught up on several areas that I had not followed closely for the last few years.

Professor
Statistics, Duke University

The reception some of my ideas got has motivated me to work faster on some of them with a view towards publication. They are joint work with a PhD student so I'm hopeful it will help his career as well. Certainly, I made new contacts (I even got invited to be an AE for a journal!) and kept up with developments in the work of some people I follow. Of particular note is that one researcher gave a talk and I didn't know she was working in that area (longitudinal) so I have asked her to read over a section of a review paper I'm working on and she agreed. That will be helpful to me. The workshop left me with the overwhelming feeling that sparsity issues, which were a major topic of the talks, has been pushed about as far as it can be. It told me we need new ideas since we've hit the limit of the old ones. This is particularly true in the statistical side of data mining and machine learning. I think I saw some glimmers of new ideas that might become important in the future, especially predictive criteria ...but only time will tell. I think we need another conference!!!

Bertrand Clarke Medicine, University of Miami

My research recently stalled and this workshop was a lifesaver! It was very stimulating to meet with other people in my research area and to hear what they are doing. I'm now much more enthusiastic about some of my ongoing projects and thinking about new ones. This is quite a small research area and it's easy to feel isolated and somewhat alienated from the mainstream of the discipline. A small workshop is ideal for bringing potential collaborators together and renewing existing ones.

Mathematics and Statistics, Utah State University

The workshop was small enough for me to get to know all the participants in person. It was interesting that some presenters are using the same datasets with mine, taking different approach to research to a different finding. I could also hear a presentation which supports our methodologies. In summary, the workshop was very motivating for me to proceed my research in this field.

Yumi Kondo Statistics, The University of British Columbia

I saw several talks that change how I think about topics I will teach. I also got some good research ideas that I started following up on while on the trip home. In addition I met some up and coming Canadian statisticians that I expect to keep in touch with over the years.

Professor
Statistics, Stanford University

The conference is great. Talks are interesting and I learned a lot. I like small conference like this one so that participants can interact well with each other.

Yichao Wu North Carolina State University

I am very pleased I was invited to participate of this workshop. The level of the talks and interaction with colleagues were excellent. For example, Matias, Yumi, and I had very nice discussions with Alejandro Murua (from U. of Montreal) We believe we started a very nice future collaboration. I also had fruitful discussions with other participants including Steven Wang and Bert Clarke. The facilities and accommodations were outstanding. Thank you VERY MUCH.

Statistics, University of British Columbia

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