Participant Testimonials
The BIRS site is fantastic and inspiring. The physical layout and the schedule promoted collegial interactions. The meeting was a perfect mix of quantitative experiments and modeling.
University of Pennsylvania
Our workshop turned out to be a remarkable success. We brought together mathematicians and physicists on the one hand and biologists on the other, and the interaction was both stimulating and revealing. We noticed interesting differences in our angles of viewing the problems of tissue growth, our approaches to describing and rationalizing the process, and even the use of terminology. From a personal standpoint, I was delighted to learn of the latest experimental results on the signaling pathways; these will be incorporated into our mathematical model. Our model, imperfect as it seems to us, so impressed the biologists that I was invited to visit a top group in Duke University. This dialog between math and biology has given me several new ideas, and has greatly broadened our vista of the related biological problems. Judging from the enthusiastic (and uninvited) email messages from the attendees that have come to me in the past few days, I think many share my impression that this workshop has provided a rare opportunity for inter-disciplinary exchange, and will have potentially far-reaching benefits for research on both sides, e.g. by forging new collaborations. Besides, I was interviewed by the Banff Centre Communications Officer and her staff since the topic of our workshop captured their interest. The interview will appear in the Banff Centre website and through a podcast. Thus we might have done a bit of outreach in bringing our science to the awareness of the public. Thanks again for your aegis of this wonderful gathering, which has given the attendees new ideas that we now rush to implement.
I thought the workshop was a useful forum to learn about new research being done in our field. Many of the results were unpublished and I was quite pleased with that. Also, it was terrific to have such an international representation at the meeting. I did renew contacts with people that could turn into potential collaborations in the future.
It was very relevant and could make new contacts with people working in the same field. These contact will probably lead to new collaborations and future work. I had new insight, that may have some effect on my current research. No new hiring or new projects so far though.
Although I could not attend the workshop due to visa issues, I enjoyed the presentations. Thanks to the live streaming of most of the talks. I am now aware of many interesting findings which would have otherwise taken much longer time.
Department of Environmental Health, Harvard University
