In view of ongoing travel advisories and physical distancing protocols related to COVID-19, all in-person workshops in Banff and Oaxaca, scheduled in June, July and August 2020 will unfortunately be cancelled. At this time, we offer the organizers the option of proceeding virtually, with BIRS supporting, archiving and broadcasting the participants' talks online. This has been done successfully for several workshops such as 20w5025, which ran from March 04-06, though many of you have expressed the limitations and challenges that such a format presents.

The offer of a virtual workshop does not replace the original opportunity to conduct an in-person workshop. As announced earlier, we will try our best to accommodate cancelled workshops when BIRS, CMO and IAS-Hangzhou are able to resume regular operations safely. For the time being, we strongly urge the organizers to consider the virtual workshop as an interim meeting platform.

If organizers decide to run their workshop online, we ask them to check this link: https://www.birs.ca/announcements/2020-03-17/covid-19_update1 to see how BIRS can help in setting it up.

Thank you for your understanding. I wish all of you good health in the days ahead.

Nassif Ghoussoub, FRSC, OC
Scientific Director, Banff International Research Station