Participant Testimonials
BIRS provides in one workshop more research stimulation and professional development than a decade worth of conference going. I can happily say that there was not a single talk in which I did no learn something useful. The workshop lead to both new connections for myself, new ideas for my research group and new opportunities for my students. I have several collaborations planned from it, and have developed new research interests in causal inference. It will take some years to work through all the ideas I have discovered here. For a workshop organizer, the BIRS infrastructure was fantastic! Having a staff who know what they're doing and take care of local arrangements allows you to focus on producing an excellent program. The application and organizing procedures are easy and a major benefit of organizing is you get exactly the workshop that you want to attend.
I had a wonderful experience at BIRS; it was a fantastic opportunity for a young researcher like myself to learn from and interact with real leaders in my field. The facilities were very nice and especially accommodating for my family (I brought along my wife and 7 month old son). Besides the beauty of Banff itself, the Banff center facilities were very cozy and well maintained. I went on a tour during my first day which was very informative and interesting. Nothing but positives. I was a co-organizer but the lead organizer - Giles Hooker - did a fantastic job as well in putting everything together. Finally, I will note that the video recording capabilities were fantastic and an excellent idea for easily disseminating the work and ideas that took place. Wonderful experience top to bottom - I very much hope to attend again in the near future!
Participation in the Birs conference had a wonderful impact on my research, suggesting new directions to look at as well helping move along the things I am currently working on. In particular I found the papers on how to use machine learning for semiparametric estimation and on dynamic models to be insightful, providing ideas I can build on. It was wonderful also to hear about different ways of thinking about problems that I had seen before. In addition, I was busy talking with people about their work nearly the whole time not in seminars. It was the most intellectually stimulating conference I have attended for some time. The organizers did a great job selecting participants and papers.
