UK Nonlinear News, August 1999

The workshop on Bifurcations: analysis, numerical methods and software was organized in Gent (Belgium) on 24 and 25 June with the aim to foster interaction between analysts, numerical analysts and software developers interested in bifurcation methods. Organizers were W. Govaerts (Gent,B), D. Roose (Leuven,B) and A. Vanderbauwhede (Gent,B).

It was an informal meeting of experts, PhD students and postdocs with about 30 participants from many countries, including Germany, the United States and Russia. It was an occasion for friends to meet as well as to see new faces and to discuss plans for the future. Full details on the workshop are available on the web:

http://allserv.rug.ac.be/~bsijnave/workshop.html.

Invited talks were given by

• Eusebius Doedel (Montreal, CA) on the plans for PDEs in AUTO and the present prototype implementation.
• Yuri A. Kuznetsov (Utrecht, NL) on the present state of CONTENT and plans for the future.
• Wolf - Juergen Beyn (Bielefeld, D) on connecting orbits and symbolic dynamics in discrete dynamical systems.
• Mark Friedman (Huntsville, Alabama, USA) on the computation of invariant subspaces and the Multiquadric Basis Radial Function Method for the solution of PDEs and their bifurcations.

Several short contributions were also given but the program was kept light to allow time for discussions and informal talks. Most participants stayed in a hotel at walking distance from the station and the conference building and they met also during breakfast, lunch and evening walks.

On Thursday evening a discussion session and software demonstrations were organized. In the evening we met for a workshop dinner in the old city of Gent between the belfry tower and the cathedral.

It was generally felt that this is a good formula and should be repeated next year, possibly in a different place.

Willy Govaerts ( Willy.Govaerts@rug.ac.be).