Participant Testimonials

Jun 04 - Jun 09, 2017

During the conference I had the chance to learn new notions and approaches. The interactions with the other participants have also been very fruitful. It was really useful to get to know a lot of people working on topics related to mine and their research. Moreover from the different interactions I came out also with new concrete ideas for my research that I will develop in the next months.

Giovanni Canepa Institut für mathematik, Universität Zürich

The CMO-BIRS workshop was an outstanding event. It helped me to meet with current collaborators and discuss about the topics of the conference, and it also brought to my attention new ideas, and different approaches for some of the problems I am currently working on. It definitely gave me a fresh insight on the quantization procedure for topological field theories and its connection with derived algebraic geometry and algebraic quantum field theories. As I will be in the job market in the near future, it also helped me to interact with various faculty members, who gave me valuable advice for the upcoming tenure-track hunt. I also had the opportunity to learn different aspects of field theory from a different perspective, and I am very grateful to the organizers for that. I had several fruitful discussions with colleagues from different areas of research and it helped me a lot to have a better understanding of the current state of the field.

Ivan Contreras University of Illinois

This event was a great opportunity to get a finger on the pulse of some of the more interesting new developments in my field. Bringing together a diverse community of researchers, particularly in the relaxed and comfortable environment in which we found ourselves, was a great way to foster informal and unstructured discussions about manifold research topics. I myself was fortunate to have a number of very fruitful interactions with other researchers, including experts in my area, that have really helped clarify some of the trickier points of my current projects.

Vincent Schlegel PhD student
Mathematics, University of Zurich

I was able to give a very short presentation of about my PhD research. One of the attendees - an expert on the subject - commented on some points that he thought were missing, this gave me the chance to discuss with him in more detail and I now have some interesting new ideas for my research (plus, a new contact I wouldn't have made otherwsie). It was also an opportunity to see some people again, and discuss ideas that we already shared for a while. I think I can say we made some progress.

Konstantin Wernli University of Zurich