FEEDBACK
1. 48 people responded to the survey, including 8 speakers.2. Students mainly learned about our workshop through emails (sent by org.
committee to their departments and circulated). Two respondents learned about
the workshop from the American Biophysics Society website, and two from ORNL
website.
3. The level of scientific program:
Excellent - 22, Good - 23, Average -3, Low -0, Poor -0.
4. Overall, the presentations were:
Very Interesting - 15, Interesting - 26,
Average - 5, Not Interesting - 1, Poor - 0, one did not answer.
5. The amount of information that you learned at the workshop was:
More than I expected - 22, As much as I expected - 22, Less than I expected - 4.
6. Difficulties understanding presentations containing too much (check
all that apply):
Biology - 11, Chemistry - 9, Physics - 4, Computer Science - 8, Mathematics - 5,
All presentations were at the correct level - 23.
7. The scope of the workshop was:
Too narrow - 9, Right on target - 33, Too wide - 5.
8. Your background is (check all that apply):
Physics - 22, Mathematics - 0, Chemistry - 11, Biochemistry - 11, Biology - 12,
Computer Science - 8.
Other backgrounds were specified by respondents as: Biophysics,
Bioengineering, GST program (UT), Computational Chemistry/Biochemistry/
Biophysics, and Material Science.
9. If your background includes little or no biology, describe the effect
the Summer School in Biophysics had on your thoughts regarding possible
career in bio-sciences:
12 people answered. Of these answers, rephrased as
Inspired to consider the career in bio-sciences - 3
May be will consider career in bio, want to learn more first - 1
It was interesting - 4
Unsure - 1
Will not consider career in bio-sciences - 3.
10. For the current workshop participants, do you think that the program
was helpful for (check all that apply)
Improving the interface between bio- and computational- background
specialists - 42
Developing new contacts - 37
Educating biologists on computational methods - 23
Other helpful - was introduced by respondents as: exposing students
to new research challenges, and advertising and promoting ORNL and UT
research programs for bioscience community.
11. If the future program contained tutorials on specific methods of data
analysis, followed by a graded exam and the certificate of completion, would
you be interested to take such course?
Yes - 26, No - 21, did not answer - 1.
Optional - suggest a topic for a tutorial - drew the following responses:
computational drug design, computational analysis programs for users that
are experimentalists, Spectroscopy modeling/computational methods, data
analysis, revision of concepts in physics, chemistry, and biology, "how
to make programs scaling above 150K CPUs", Amber/Ptraj tutorial.
12. What did you like the most about the program?
Respondents liked the high level, the interdisciplinary nature, and the breadth
of the expertise of the speakers, professionalism in the layout of the
presentations, interesting discussions that often followed talks, the
opportunity to talk to prominent scientists at the "Meet the Prominent"
session, diversity of backgrounds, the atmosphere at the workshop,
connection between the talks despite wide variety of topics.Many speakers
were specifically mentioned as outstanding by the respondents.
13. What changes do you suggest for future workshops like this:
Tutorials, more experimental talks, more student-speaker interaction,
extend the program and start from tutorials, shorten the program, include
a social activity,reduce the lengths of talks, increase the lengths of talks
and reduce the amount to four per day, include imaging technology, add
a section for student presenters, advertise the workshop better, declare
the theme of the year, change the format to parallel tracks, specific proteins,
more diverse topics, tour of ORNL.
14. Comments about the poster session: Enjoyable; should last longer, students
were enthusiastic about their presentations, informative, relaxed stimulating
discussions environment, more faculty should be present, move dinner past the
poster session as opposed to during, give best poster award, right amount of
posters, good that is was held on the first day so that people could get
acquainted according to their interests, move it to earlier time of the day,
high average poster quality, nice setting, move poster boards farther apart,
have posters on display at the same building where the lectures take place
so that people come to the poster session prepared with choices what posters
they want to see, well organized.
15. Comments about the "Meet the Prominent" session:
Continue with this good idea, all speakers should show up, prepare the
"prominent" better for the session as it was difficult on them, make a
few shorter such sessions instead of one long and schedule speakers who
already had given talks, the best part of the meeting, have the session
in a few dinners format, great opportunity for the students was provided,
too much outlining of background by the Prominent for the student who did
not have it - that was boring for the students who had the background, for
some students it was the first opportunity to ever informally talk to an
expert outside of their area/university. Many comments on how great and
successful this session was.
16. Other organizational comments:
Very well organized, too cold in the Auditorium, shorten the meeting,
extend the meeting and shorten the sessions, add a trip or social activity
site-specific, very good food and wine at the poster session, too much
molecular dynamics, add more experimental connection to the theory. Many
comments with thanks and congratulations on successful organization.
17. Should the program be continued:
Yes - 48, No - 0.
