Banff International Research Station

班夫国际研究站(BIRS)成立于2003年，是一项北美倡议，旨在解决合作研究、跨学科协同以及科学家之间密集和长期互动的必要性。BIRS是一个独特的基础设施，它为数学科学及其应用中的思想、知识和方法的交流提供了一个创造性的环境。它的课程几乎涵盖了纯数学、应用数学、计算和工业数学、统计学、计算机科学的方方面面，但也包括数学物理、生物学、工程学、经济学、金融学、心理学和科学写作。 与任何其他北美研究所不同，BIRS的主要运作模式是一系列每周一次的研讨会，每个研讨会有42名研究人员参加，他们的学科以深入而新颖的方式应用数学、计算机科学和统计学。每年有48个这样的工作坊。此外，空间站还接待两至四名研究人员组成的团队，为期两周，以便进行协作、不受干扰的研究和/或完成重大科学项目。空间站的设置也是暑期学校和研究生夏令营、主办重点合作研究小组和促进大学与行业互动的理想场所。该站每年接待来自30多个国家的400个机构的2000多名研究人员，他们参加了60多个不同的项目。 BIRS代表着北美科学合作的一个新的发展水平，因为它第一次将NSERC、美国国家科学基金会(NSF)、艾伯塔省创新和墨西哥国家科学技术委员会(CONACYT)这种规模的合作伙伴关系聚集在一起，为北美的教职员工和学生提供了新的令人兴奋的机会，使他们能够接触到最高水平和所有数学学科的国际同行。 BIRS对机遇的非同寻常的反应导致了极高质量的比赛，近150项拟议活动在48周内展开竞争。 除了为期5天的工作坊和“团队研究”计划外，BIRS还主办了NSF的重点研究小组、加拿大合作研究团队、系主任会议和其他领导层务虚会、女性数学聚会、新兴地区的暑期学校、学生建模夏令营、数学奥林匹克团队的培训课程、工业论坛、科学写作方面的“工作室”，以及数学、音乐和艺术的桥梁会议。BIRS在为原住民举办讨论科学和教育问题的研讨会方面走在了前列。 BIRS在危机时刻(如SARS的流行病问题和安全的技术挑战)发挥科学领导作用，并积极应对科学机遇和挑战(量子计算、基因组学和燃料电池)。 BIRS提供了具有成本效益的合作研究途径：通过确保专用空间供长期使用而产生的节省，通过实现显著的规模经济而产生的节省，以及通过汇集几个组织、艾伯塔省和三个联邦政府的资源而获得的优势，使BIRS能够极大地增加参与国际合作研究的研究人员的机会。

Established in 2003, the Banff International Research Station (BIRS) is a North American initiative that addresses the imperatives of collaborative research, of cross-disciplinary synergy, and of intense and prolonged interactions between scientists. BIRS is a unique infrastructure that provides a creative environment for the exchange of ideas, knowledge, and methods within the mathematical sciences and their applications. Its programs span almost every aspect of pure, applied, computational and industrial mathematics, statistics, computer science, but also mathematical physics, biology, engineering, economics, finance, psychology and scientific writing. Unlike any other North American institute, the main mode of operation at BIRS is a series of weekly workshops, each hosting 42 researchers in disciplines in which mathematics, computer science and statistics are used in deep and novel ways. There are 48 such workshops each year. In addition, the Station hosts teams of two to four researchers for periods of two weeks to allow collaborative, distraction-free, research and/or to finish major scientific projects. The setting of the Station has also been ideal for summer schools and graduate summer camps, for hosting focused collaborative research groups, and for promoting university-industry interactions. Every year, the station hosts over 2000 researchers from 400 institutions in more than 30 countries who participate in over 60 different programs. BIRS represents a new level of development in North American scientific cooperation as it brought together for the very first time: NSERC, the US National Science Foundation (NSF), Alberta Innovation, and Mexico's National Council for Science and Technology (CONACYT) in a partnership of this scale, providing new and exciting opportunities for North American faculty and students giving them access to their international counterparts at the highest levels and across all mathematical disciplines. The extraordinary response to the opportunities at BIRS leads to extremely high quality competitions with almost 150 proposed activities competing for the 48 available weeks. Besides the 5-day workshops and "Research-in-Teams" programs, BIRS hosted NSF's Focused Research Groups, Canada's Collaborative Research Teams, Department Chairs meetings and other leadership retreats, gatherings for Women in Mathematics, summer schools in emerging areas, students modeling camps, training sessions for Math Olympiads teams, industrial forums, ``ateliers'' in scientific writing, as well as Bridges conferences for Mathematics, Music and Arts. BIRS has led the way in hosting workshops that address science and education issues for aboriginal people. BIRS assumes scientific leadership in moments of crisis (e.g., epidemiological issues of SARS and technological challenges of security) and reacts pro-actively to scientific opportunities and challenges (quantum computing, genomics and fuel cells). BIRS provides cost-effective access to collaborative research: The savings incurred by securing dedicated space for long term use, by achieving a substantial economy of scale, and the advantages obtained by pooling the resources of several organizations, the province of Alberta, and three federal governments, allow BIRS to greatly multiply the opportunities for researchers participating in international collaborative research.