Clifford Smyth

head-shot

Associate Professor
Department of Mathematics and Statistics
University of North Carolina Greensboro
cdsmyth at uncg dot edu

Research

I have worked on topics in theoretical computer science, discrete geometry, combinatorial probability, enumeration, algebraic combinatorics, topological data analysis and machine learning.

Here is my CV and links to my profiles on Google Scholar, ResearchGate, Semantic Scholar, and Scopus.

My work has been supported by the Simons Foundation and the National Security Agency.

Here's a partial list of the venues my research has been published in:

-The Proceedings of the AMS
-Journals of Combinatorial Theory, Series A and B
-Combinatorica
-Combinatorics, Probability, and Computing
-Discrete and Computational Geometry
-Electronic Journal of Combinatorics
-Random Structures and Algorithms
-Discrete Math
-Order
-Transactions on Computation Theory
-Journal of Symbolic Logic

and the proceedings of the:

-IEEE International Conference on Big Data
-IEEE International Symposium on Information Theory
-IEEE Symposium on Foundations of Computer Science (FOCS)
-ACM Symposium on the Theory of Computing (STOC)
-Symposium on Computational Geometry (SOCG)
-IEEE Conference on Computational Complexity (CCC)

History

Here is my CV.

2014-now: University of North Carolina at Greensboro: Associate Professor.
2008-2014 : University of North Carolina at Greensboro: Assistant Professor.
2005-2008: M.I.T., Instructor in Applied Mathematics.
2002-2005: Carnegie Mellon University, Zeev Nehari Visiting Assistant Professor.
2001-2002: Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, NJ, Member, School of Mathematics.
1993-2001: Rutgers University, Ph.D. in Mathematics, advisor Mike Saks.
1988-1993: Stevens Institute of Technology: B.Sc., M.Sc. in Mathematics, Minor in English and American Literature.

Grants

2015-2020: Simons Foundation: Collaborations in Combinatorics.
2013-2015: National Security Agency: Correlation Inequalities.
2012-2017: Simons Foundation: Collaborations in Combinatorics (award declined in favor of NSA award).

Recent talks

2020

-Combinatorics Seminar, Washington University in St. Louis, 11/16
-Combinatorics and Graph Theory Seminar, Michigan State University, 10/21

2019

-AMS Sectional Meeting, Special Session on Extremal and Probabilistic Combinatorics, University of Florida, 11/2
-Carnegie Mellon University, ACO Seminar, 2/14

2018

-UNCG International Conference on Advances in Interdisciplinary Statistics and Combinatorics
-AMS Sectional Meeting, University of Michigan, Special Session
-National Taiwan University, Algebra and Combinatorics Seminar

2017

-NC State, Algebra and Combinatorics Seminar
-Rutgers University, Mike Saks and Eric Allender are 60
-University of South Carolina, Combinatorics Seminar
-Atlanta Lecture Series, Georgia State University
-Wake Forest University, Discrete Math Seminar

Conference Organization

-2021 UNCG Summer School: Applications of Expander Graphs to Number Theory and Computer Science
go.uncg.edu/expanders
Speakers: Irit Dinur (Weizman Institute of Science), Alex Kontorovich (Rutgers University), Emmanuel Kowalski (ETH Zurich)

-20th Triangle Lectures in Combinatorics, UNCG, Fall 2020
Speakers: Sara Billey (University of Washington, Seattle), Hao Huang (Emory University), Igor Pak (University of California, Los Angeles), and Nathan Williams (University of Texas, Dallas)
Organized with Cynthia Vinzant and Thomas McConville.

-2020 UNCG Summer School: Ergodic Theory with Applications to Continued Fractions
Conference website
Lecture notes
Lecture-6-Computational-Experiments-with-Mathematica.nb (Mathematica notebook)
Organizing a Short Online Math Program Successfully (to appear in the Notices of the AMS, June 2021)
Speakers: Daniel Glasscock (University of Massachussetts at Amherst), Claire Merriman (Ohio State University), Donald Robertson (University of Manchester), and Clifford Smyth (University of North Carolina at Greensboro).

-17th Triangle Lectures in Combinatorics, Wake Forest University, Spring 2019
Speakers: James Haglund (University of Pennsylvania), Adam Marcus (Princeton University), Jennifer Morse (University of Virginia), Nathan Reading (North Carolina State University)
Organized with Sarah Mason (chair), Ed Allen, and Patricia Hersh.

-Topics in Graph Theory, Hypergraphs and Set Systems, University of Michigan
AMS Sectional Meeting Special Session, October 20-21, 2018
Organized with John Engbers and David Galvin.

-Recent results in combinatorics, UNC Greensboro
Session at the International Conference on Advances in Interdisciplinary Statistics and Combinatorics - October 5-7, 2018

-Graphs, hypergraphs, and set systems. North Carolina State University
AMS Sectional Meeting Special Session, 2016.
Organized with David Galvin.

-13th Triangle Lectures in Combinatorics, UNC Greensboro, Feb 27, 2016
Speakers: Penny Haxell (U. Waterloo), Jeff Kahn (Rutgers), Greta Panova (U. Penn), Peter Winkler (Dartmouth).
Organized with David Galvin and Patricia Hersh.

-Recent Developments in graph theory and hypergraph theory, UNC Greensboro
AMS Sectional Meeting Special Session, 2014.
Organized with David Galvin.

-New developments in graph theory and hypergraph theory. Wake-Forest University
AMS Sectional Meeting Special Session, 2011.

Publications

Determinental formulas with major indices
Proceedings of the American Mathematical Society, accepted, (2021)
with Thomas McConville and Donald Robertson.

On a rank unimodality conjecture of Morier-Genoud and Ovsienko,
Discrete Mathematics, accepted (2021)
with Thomas McConville and Bruce Sagan.

Certified evaluations of Holder continuous functions at roots of polynomials
Communications in Computer and Information Science, accepted (2021)
with Parker Edwards and Jonathan Hauenstein.

The Noncrossing Bond Poset,
Electronic Journal of Combinatorics Volume 27, Issue 4 (2020)
with Joshua Hallam and Matt Farmer.

Organizing a Short Online Math Program Successfully,
Notices of the AMS, to appear in June 2021
with Daniel Glasscock, Claire Merriman, and Donald Roberston.

Restricted Stirling and Lah number matrices and their inverses,
Journal of Combinatorial Theory, Series A, 161 (2019) p. 271-298.
with David Galvin and John Engbers.

Topological approaches to skin disease image analysis
2018 IEEE International Conference on Big Data
with Yu-Min Chung, Chuang-Shen Hu, and Austin Lawson.

Weighted persistent homology
Involve, Vol. 12, No. 5, p.7, (2018).
with Greg Bell, Austin Lawson, Joshua Martin, and James Rudzinski.

A probabilistic characterization of the dominance order on partitions,
Order, 35(2) (2018), 393-402.

Equivalent Formulations of the Bunk Bed Conjecture,
North Carolina Journal of Mathematics and Statistics, Vol 2 (2016) pages 23-28,
with James Rudzinski.

Symmetric Polynomials and Symmetric Mean Inequalities,
Electronic Journal of Combinatorics, Volume 20, Issue 3 (2013), P34.
with Karl Mahlburg.

The BKR inequalities on finite distributive lattices,
Combinatorics, Probability and Computing, Volume 22, Issue 04, (2013) pages 612--626.

Equilateral sets in $\ell_p^d$,
Thirty Essays in Geometric Graph Theory, Janos Pach ed. Algorithms and Combinatorics Series, Springer, (2013).

Revolutionaries and spies on trees and unicyclic graphs,
Journal of Combinatorics, Volume 3, Number 2 (2012) pages 195--206.
with Dan Cranston and Douglas West.

Revolutionaries and spies,
Discrete Mathematics, Volume 312, Issue 22, (2012) pages 3384--3391.
with David Howard.

Approximate query complexity,
Association for Computing Machinery - Transactions on Computation Theory, Volume 3, Number 1 (2011), pages 3.1--3.11.

The dual BKR inequality and Rudich's conjecture,
Combinatorics, Probability, and Computing, Volume 20, Number 2, (2011) pages 257--266.
with Jeffry Kahn and Michael Saks.

Enumeration of non-crossing pairings on bit strings,
Journal of Combinatorial Theory, Series A, Volume 118, Number 1, (2011) pages 129--151.
with Todd Kemp, Karl Mahlburg, and Amarpreet Rattan.

Anti-Ramsey properties of random graphs,
Journal of Combinatorial Theory B, Volume 100, Number 3 (2010), pages 299--312.
with Thomas Bohman, Alan Frieze, and Oleg Pikhurko.

On the variance of Shannon products of graphs,
Discrete Applied Mathematics, Volume 156, Number 1 (2008), pages 110--118.
with Jozsef Balogh.

Some results in polychromatic Ramsey theory,
Journal of Symbolic Logic, Volume 72, Number 3 (2007), pages 865--896.
with Uri Abraham and James Cummings.

On randomly generated intersecting hypergraphs II,
Random Structures and Algorithms, Volume 30 (2007), pages 17--34.
with Thomas Bohman, Alan Frieze, Ryan Martin, and Miklos Ruszinko.

On the chromatic number of random graphs with a fixed degree sequence,
Combinatorics, Probability, and Computing, Volume 16, (2007), pages 733--746.
with Alan Frieze and Michael Krivelevich.

Codes identifying sets of vertices in random networks,
Discrete Math, Volume 307, Number 10, (2007), pages 1094--1107.
with Alan Frieze, Julian Moncel, Miklos Ruszinko, and Ryan Martin.

First order definability of trees and sparse random graphs,
Combinatorics, Probability, and Computing, Volume 16, (2007), pages 375--400.
with Thomas Bohman, Alan Frieze, Tomasz Luczak, Oleg Pikhurko, Joel Spencer, and Oleg Verbitsky.

The hardness of 3-uniform hypergraph coloring,
Combinatorica, Volume 25, Number 5 (2005), pages 519--535.
with Irit Dinur and Oded Regev.

Identifying codes in random networks
IEEE Proceedings. International Symposium on Information Theory, 2005. ISIT 2005
with Alan Frieze, Julian Moncel, and Miklos Ruszinko.

Long monotone paths in line arrangements,
Discrete and Computational Geometry, Volume 32, Number 32 (2004), pages 167--176.
with Jozsef Balogh, Oded Regev, William Steiger, and Mario Szegedy.

Long monotone paths in line arrangements,
Proceedings of the Symposium on Computational Geometry (DCG), Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, (2003) pages 124--128.
with Jozsef Balogh, Oded Regev, William Steiger, and Mario Szegedy.

Reimer's inequality and Tardos' conjecture,
Proceedings of the Symposium on Theory of Computing (STOC), Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, (2002) pages 218-221.

The hardness of 3-uniform hypergraph coloring,
Proceedings of the Symposium on Foundations of Computer Science (FOCS), IEEE, Los Alamitos, CA, (2002) pages 33--40.
with Irit Dinur and Oded Regev.

A dual version of Reimer's inequality and a proof of Rudich's conjecture,
Proceedings of the Conference on Computational Complexity (CCC), IEEE Computer Society, Los Alamitos, CA, (2000) pages 98-103.
with Jeffry Kahn and Michael Saks.

The Conjectures of Rudich, Tardos, and Kusner
Ph.D. Thesis, Rutgers Mathematics Department, 2001
Committee: Mike Saks (advisor), Jeff Kahn, Jozsef Beck, Daniel Ocone.