Participant Testimonials
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
