Participant Testimonials
It was a very rewarding workshop. There were some topics that I am not an expert in, but which I found very interesting. It is possible that I will do research in these areas in the future. Together with Sturmfels and his group we made plans for a future project, and a planned visit to Berkeley. During the workshop I made progress on the understanding of which convex sets admit an LMI representation. I found counterexamples to the generalized Lax conjecture which asserts that all real zero polynomials have LMI representation.
It was an excellent workshop with extremely many high level talks - congratulations to the organizers! I met many colleagues for the first time and I am sure that the discussions as well as the talks will influence my current and future research.
I found the workshop on Convex Algebraic Geometry very stimulating. It is a new field of applications of real algebraic geometry of which I have high expectations. I'll start shortly some new PhD projects on the subject, that would not have been feasible without having attended the workshop. I also made some new contacts that will most likely result in future collaborations.
It was a wonderful and inspiring visit, and it will certainly have impact on my future research.
It was my second stay at BIRS and as a few years ago I again enjoyed a lot my stay there ..!! The talks were all excellent and very informative. Interaction with participants was also very easy and fruitful. In particular I could interact with M. Putinar and we decide to collaborate on a chapter to write for a handbook on semidefinite programming and polynomial optimization.
LAAS-CNRS and Institute of Mathematics, University of Toulouse
The workshop has certainly given me many fresh insights in the field; I was able to learn about new techniques, discuss questions at length with a number of participants, many of them not easily available for me otherwise, etc etc. I am starting a project that might resolve an open question asked at the workshop.
A very inspirational workshop, meeting colleagues from different areas of math discussing the same fundamental objects and problems. It will certainly affect my research in the area of convex geometry both in the short and in the long term.
I recently attended the BIRS workshop on Convex algebraic geometry. This subjects represents (in my view) important new perspectives on another recent development in mathematics, namely Positive Polynomials and Optimization, which was a Banff workshop I helped to organize in 2006. There was a significant (40-50%) overlap in the participants, but the core topics had changed significantly. This topic of convex algebraic geometry represents one of the significant new developments that is occurring between traditional areas of pure and of applied mathematics, and was important for the new SIAM activity group in algebraic geometry, which I am involved in. Also, with the inspiring atmosphere at Banff (one is inspired to work very hard in order to get invited back!) and the new people in the subject, it will have a lasting effect on the developments in this new field.
Mathematics, Texas A&M University
The workshop featured a high number of great talks on important topics of the emerging discipline of convex algebraic geometry. Many of the talks gave me new ideas and insights which will be worked out in ongoing and future research projects. I think that the workshop will remain an important cornerstone for the long-term development of the topic of convex algebraic geometry. Thanks to the organizers and to BIRS!
Mathematics, Goethe-Universität Frankfurt
