Participant Testimonials
With these facilities and in these surroundings, it would be hard *not* to have new research ideas.
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.
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.
Mathematics and Statistics, University of Lancaster
