Participant Testimonials
It was a really useful important and interesting meeting. A lot of time was of course spent listening to lectures, but the great group of participants allowed me to: 1. Work with Luke Morgan on a new breakthrough related to the lecture I gave (on our very recently submitted paper on Generalised shuffle groups); 2. Catch up with two young colleagues Nick Gill and Jason Semeraro, so that we have decided to get back to finalising our work on Conway groupoids (which has been in abeyance since 2016 because we've been on different sides of the world); 3. Work with Colva Roney-Dougal and Eamonn O'Brien to finalise the editing of our paper analysing the Bray involution centraliser algorithm for strong involutions in unitary groups in odd characteristic; 4. Catch up with Barbara Baumeister on our project on regular subgroups of finite primitive groups - hopefully planning how to complete it.
It was indeed a useful and stimulating workshop. Whilst there, Gunter Malle, Radha Kessar and I began to develop a block theory for Spetses, with which small numerical examples seem, at the present time, to be consistent.
Mathematics, University of Leicester
The workshop was very nicely organized and intellectually stimulating. Aside from the lectures, I also got time to discuss and make considerable progress on a joint research project with Martin Liebeck. I also had helpful discussions with Gunter Malle.
Department of Mathematics, Rutgers University
BIRS is a fantastic place for conferences. The technical equipment and the fact that all of us stay on a campus together make it possible to work together very effectively. Moreover, everyone who works there is very friendly and professional, in my experience. I have always enjoyed my stays there, took a lot of fresh input away from the workshops and look forward to the next time!
I would like to personally thank you for the way you run the BIRS. The Banff centre is a magical place, and although it is a really long way for me to travel there, I already look forward to next time. The whole campus setting, the facilities, the creative atmosphere and the smooth running of the workshops are truly inspiring and have benefitted my research a lot over the past years. I am sure that the day will come when I will write my first application for a workshop! Many thanks, I feel that you are doing something very valuable there that benefits many research communities.
