Participant Testimonials
I am a fairly new PhD student, who has only undertaken a few research projects in the past. The BIRS workshop gave me a fantastic opportunity to present and discuss my work and ideas with a large number of new connections that I made. I believe it aided me enormously in terms of future prospects, as well as future research ideas.
Mathematical Sciences, Queensland University of Technology
It was one of the most productive and gratifying workshops that I have ever been on. The scientific programme was superb, and the organisation by everyone at BIRS was top-notch. It was also a stunning location and I thoroughly enjoyed my trip. In short, it was well worth the long journey, and I hope that I will get a chance to visit again in the future.
School of Mathematics, University of Manchester
The BIRS workshop was especially helpful in providing insights on which computational frameworks and tools to use in order to move my research forward. I made a lot of great contacts and met potential collaborators with whom I expect to keep in contact. One of the important takeaways from the meeting was a plan for this to be a first step in building a broader community.
School of Mathematical and Statistical Sciences, Arizona State University
This was an outstanding workshop for me in terms of making important new contacts: Adelle Coster from Sydney, whom I was able to help with a problem she presented in her talk, also had time to get acquainted and plan to meet again. In addition, after my talk, we found many points of common interest with Ramon Grima from Edinburgh, and discussed for several hours. We have already exchanged several of our papers and also other references. This contact may well lead to joint work. Will keep you posted. The workshop, in general, was excellent. It brought together people who had several different approaches (a number centered around approximate Bayesian computation, a rather new version of MCMC which reduces computing time in complex models with much or little data) to inference for ODE, SDE and SPDE-type models arising in all sorts of math-bio settings, cell biology (very important current topic) and epidemiology, various medical applications, and so on. Most of the participants, mostly from UK, North America and Australia-New Zealand, had not met. So the group tended to assemble as a whole, rather than breaking into small circles of old buddies as sometimes happens. I felt that I left with lots of new friends! An outstanding contributor was one of the organizers, our own Dan Coombs, who set a number of discussion topics which drew lively, inclusive, sometimes heated discussion, one of these sessions each day. I was lucky and very much pleased to be part of this workshop!
