Tolson H. Bell

Email: thbell at cmu dot edu

I am a Ph.D. student in the Algorithms, Combinatorics, and Optimization program at Carnegie Mellon University. I am grateful to be funded by the National Science Foundation's Graduate Research Fellowship and advised by Alan Frieze.

Research Interests:

• Discrete Mathematics, especially Probabilistic Combinatorics

• Theoretical Computer Science, especially Randomized and Average-Case Algorithms

Preprints:

• Tolson Bell and Alan Frieze.
  "Solving a Random Asymmetric TSP Exactly in Quasi-Polynomial Time w.h.p".
  Arxiv: 2308.02946. 20 pages.

Peer-Reviewed Publications:

• Tolson Bell and Alan Frieze.
  "Giant Rainbow Trees in Sparse Random Graphs" (2025).
  European Journal of Combinatorics, to appear.
  Arxiv: 2308.14141. 9 pages.

• Tolson Bell and Alan Frieze.
  "O(1) Insertion for Random Walk d-ary Cuckoo Hashing up to the Load Threshold" (2024).
  Foundations of Computer Science (FOCS), 2024 Proceedings: Pages 106-119.
  Invited to FOCS Special Issue of SIAM Journal on Computing (SICOMP).
  Arxiv: 2401.14394. 22 pages.

• Tolson Bell, Alan Frieze, and Trent Marbach.
  "Rainbow Thresholds" (2024).
  SIAM Journal on Discrete Mathematics (SIDMA), Vol. 38: Issue 3, Article 18.
  Arxiv: 2104.05629. 10 pages.

• Tolson Bell and Alan Frieze.
  "Rainbow Powers of a Hamiltonian Cycle in G(n,p)" (2024).
  Journal of Graph Theory, Vol. 105: Issue 4, Article 1.
  Arxiv: 2210.08534. 9 pages.

• Tolson Bell.
  "The Park-Pham Theorem with Optimal Convergence Rate" (2023).
  Electronic Journal of Combinatorics, Vol. 30: Issue 2, Article 25.
  Arxiv: 2210.03691. 8 pages.

• Tolson Bell, Jerrell Cockerham, Clayton Mizgerd, Melita Wiles, and Christian Scullard.
  "Critical Points of the Random Cluster Model with Newman-Ziff Sampling" (2022).
  Journal of Physics A, Vol. 55: Issue 4, Article 1.
  Arxiv: 2102.12716. 10 pages.

• Tolson Bell, Suchakree Chueluecha, and Lutz Warnke.
  "Note on Sunflowers" (2021).
  Discrete Mathematics, Vol. 344: Issue 7, Article 7.
  Arxiv: 2009.09327. 3 pages.

• Tolson Bell, David Luo, Luke Seaton, and Samuel Serra.
  "Gordian Adjacency for Positive Braid Knots" (2020).
  Rose-Hulman Undergraduate Math Journal, Vol. 21: Issue 2, Article 5.
  Arxiv: 1910.02933. 23 pages.

Teaching Assistant:

• Spring 2025: Matrices and Linear Transformations (21-241), Carnegie Mellon

• Fall 2024: Matrix Theory (21-242), Carnegie Mellon

• Fall 2022: Graduate Combinatorics (21-701), Carnegie Mellon

• Spring 2021: Differential Calculus (Math 1551), Georgia Tech

• Fall 2020: Introduction to Linear Algebra (Math 1553), Georgia Tech

Other Mathematical Activities:

• Organizer, 2024 Graduate Student Combinatorics Conference

• Assistant Coach, Western PA Math Circle/ARML

• Random Run Organizer, 2023 Random Structures & Algorithms Conference

• Refereed for five journals in combinatorics

Education and Experience:

• MS in Algorithms, Combinatorics, and Optimization, Carnegie Mellon University, December 2022

• BS in Mathematics, Georgia Institute of Technology, May 2021

  • Concentration in Discrete Mathematics

  • Minor in Computer Science

    • Focus in Artificial Intelligence

• National Science Foundation-funded summer research experiences

  • Institute for Pure and Applied Mathematics (UCLA), 2021

  • Georgia Tech, 2020

  • Michigan State, 2018

• Numerous conference presentations

• Full CV available upon (email) request

Non-mathematical:

• I like to run long-distance. Some results here.