The 7th International Conference on Difference Equations and Applications (ICDEA) took place in the city of Changsha, the capital of China's Hunan province, between Monday, August 12, and Saturday August 17, 2002.

This successful conference was sponsored by various institutions, including the Hunan University of Changsha and the Ministry of Education of China. Participants benefited from talks by well-known researchers in the field of difference equations and discrete dynamical systems. Many participants also contributed to the conference by giving talks on their significant new results, and by taking part in various activities in the conference, including an "Open Problems and Conjectures" session. Many thanks to the members of the Organizing Committee!



The conference location was in the modern Feng Lin Hotel, near the campus of Hunan University (the above photograph, showing many of the participants, was taken in front of the hotel). This well-planned organization proved to be very helpful, since by using the same place both for talks/meetings and for lodging/meals, the need for local transportation or for understanding the local language was eliminated.

Aside from the learning opportunity that it provided to all of its participants, the conference's other goal of bringing mathematicians with similar interests together was accomplished successfully. In particular, it provided a valuable opportunity for the non-Chinese participants to interact with their Chinese colleagues. Occasions such as the excursion to Mt. Yuelu and the millenium-old Yuelu Academy there, were both fun sightseeing events as well as good opportunities for social intereactions among the conference participants.

The warmth and hospitality of the conference hosts, especially the officials of Hunan University who did the local organizing is hereby gratefully acknowledged, especially by those participants who were in China for the first time. For a full list of names of both organizers and participants, please see the conference's official website listed below. The organizers were ably assisted by students and staff who unassumingly and diligently performed various duties, which among other things included attending to the many needs of the non-Chinese participants who had difficulties with the Chinese language.

H. Sedaghat, August 2002

More conference pictures...
Official ICDEA 2002 site
About Changsha
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