Participant Testimonials
Easily one of the best workshops I have attended over the course of my career. The small group size facilitated more conversation, which I believe has generated a lot of ideas and future direction for our field. I came away from the workshop with more questions, and ideas, than when I arrived, and I feel that the format helped me get to know colleagues in my field I would not normally have had an opportunity to speak with. Excellent presentations with questions and answers that carried over into our meals and after-dinner discussions. As for the organization, it was seamless, providing us a venue to focus on what we came to do, talk about state-of-the-art science. Finally I would add, the surroundings are beautiful, and the campus seems designed to make sure you can appreciate the beautiful vistas at every moment of your stay.
Atmosphere Energy Earth Division, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
BIRS was the ideal site for our workshop. Participants were together throughout the week, which encouraged lots of informal discussions and ideas even outside the regular meeting times. Several of the participants told us it was the best workshop/conference they had been to in many years! The flexible format and relatively small size made it possible to run our meeting as a true workshop, not just a series of prepared talks. We feel we made genuine progress on some fundamental questions of the mathematics and physics of climate modelling!
The meeting went very well. The topic was very interesting to me, the participants were the right people for the subject, and the (work and play) environment could not have been better. I cannot really think of anything of substance I would change. The venue and opportunity was so very nice that colleagues and I are already considering preparing a proposal for a meeting organized through BIRS on another topic in the future.
The workshop was extremely beneficial from several viewpoints. It made me aware of important theoretical developments directly relevant to my research, which I was not previously aware of. It made me aware of potential new applications for my research that I had not necessarily previously envisioned. It provided potential seeds for new collaborations in the future. It allowed me to exchange viewpoints with like-minded colleagues, thus providing new angles to my research that should prove beneficial for my future papers. I'll be involved in a collaborative paper prompted by the workshop.
Meteorology, University of Reading
