KITP

Not every scientist can afford prolonged periods of time away from a home institution.  Conferences serve the population able to commit to short-term visits.  That population includes especially experimentalists whose research necessitates presence in their laboratories or observatories, but also theorists who for one reason or another cannot afford long leaves from home.

So conferences typically attract more participants than do programs, whose proceedings, moreover, are available on line to brief those attending the shorter conferences.

Every effort is made to make the conference experience similar to the program experience in terms of encouraging interaction and collaboration.  Speakers are instructed to talk less and to take questions along the way from audience members, instead of deferring questions to the end.

In conjunction with most programs, the key purpose of conferences is to bring theory face to face (so to speak) with experiments or  in the case of astrophysics observations.

Running conferences in conjunction with programs is another example of a cost-effective use of the KITP infrastructure.  KITP conferences cost one-third of what it would cost to organize the same meetings as stand-alone events.