Participant Testimonials
The workshop had the optimum pace so that I could seriously appreciate each and every talk. The talks were also nicely bunched in broad themes. I got a very good understanding of the current state of the art in index coding, network coding, and various equivalence results in network information theory. The workshop has provided new impetus in our existing collaborations and has also lead to new collaboration on problems discussed during the workshop.
The BIRS workshop was an excellent opportunity to share problems and ideas in my field of study. One of the open problems I was studying was partially solved in an open problem session during the workshop. At least two new research directions were raised during the workshop (after my presentation) which will be subject to future research and collaborations.
The BIRS workshop has provided me with new insights, allowed me to make new collaborations and new contacts. It successfully brought a group of people working in similar areas together, allowing us to exchange ideas and generate new insights.
This workshop was a great opportunity to examine the subtle differences between coding-theoretic and Shannon-theoretic approaches to modeling communication channels. I had a number of very helpful conversations and learned quite a bit about some new problems. In particular, I had some familiarity with index coding but the workshop really helped me dig in and understand these problems in a more holistic way. That kind of learning is nigh-impossible at our regular conferences -- this workshop was an ideal setting for this.
Electrical and Computer Engineering, Rutgers University
