Curtis Bright

Wel­come! This is the web­site of Cur­tis Bright, a math­e­mati­cian, com­puter sci­en­tist, as­sis­tant pro­fes­sor at the Uni­ver­sity of Wind­sor, and ad­junct re­search pro­fes­sor at Car­leton Uni­ver­sity. I re­ceived my PhD from the Uni­ver­sity of Wa­ter­loo for demon­strat­ing the ef­fec­tive­ness of com­bin­ing sat­is­fi­a­bil­ity check­ing and sym­bolic com­pu­ta­tion for solv­ing math­e­mat­i­cal prob­lems such as the Williamson con­jec­ture. In 2020, I pro­duced the first com­puter-cer­ti­fi­able res­o­lu­tion of Lam's prob­lem.

News: The Al­go­rithms & Math­e­mat­ics group at Wind­sor is ac­cept­ing ap­pli­ca­tions for open re­search po­si­tions.

Research

My re­search fo­cuses on com­puter-as­sisted proofs, au­to­mated rea­son­ing, sym­bolic com­pu­ta­tion, and dis­crete math­e­mat­ics. I am the lead de­vel­oper of the Math­Check pro­ject for ver­i­fy­ing and find­ing coun­terex­am­ples of math­e­mat­i­cal con­jec­tures. See my aca­d­e­mic web­page for my pub­li­ca­tions and my cur­ricu­lum vitae for a sum­mary of my aca­d­e­mic ca­reer. I have also put to­gether a show­case ex­plain­ing ap­pli­ca­tions of my re­search.

Mathematics

A life­long lover of math­e­mat­ics, I have a well-versed back­ground in the sub­ject. I'm the kind of guy who thinks that putting an un­ab­bre­vi­ated copy of the quar­tic for­mula on a poster is a re­ally awe­some idea—es­pe­cially when you un­der­stand the math­e­mat­ics be­hind the for­mula. I have an Erdős num­ber of 2 and my writ­ings have been ref­er­enced by gi­ants such as Noam Elkies and Ian Stew­art.

Teaching

I've been an in­struc­tor of six un­der­grad­u­ate com­puter sci­ence courses (and one grad­u­ate course) where I was re­spon­si­ble for as­sign­ment and exam prepa­ra­tion. I also de­signed and pre­sented many tu­to­ri­als with a focus on data struc­tures, al­go­rithms, and logic. I re­ceived a TA award for out­stand­ing per­for­mance as a teach­ing as­sis­tant in 2013.

Writing

I enjoy the chal­lenge of writ­ing and ex­plain­ing things clearly. I some­times blog about ideas of in­ter­est to me but these days most of my writ­ing ef­fort is spent on ad­vanc­ing my re­search pro­gram.

Programming

I've had a fas­ci­na­tion with com­put­ers and pro­gram­ming for as long as I can re­mem­ber. I love the free­dom that comes with it, whether that means au­tomat­ing truth table gen­er­a­tion, writ­ing an AI for the game of Ataxx, find­ing min­i­mal prime num­bers, or play­ing a ran­dom game of Go. In high school I de­vel­oped my own ver­sion of the game Minesweeper with video record­ing ca­pa­bil­i­ties; it is still in use by peo­ple who play com­pet­i­tively.

Hobbies

Be­cause I have such a dom­i­nant ‘left-brain’ per­son­al­ity, I have de­lib­er­ately made a point to en­gage in counter-bal­anc­ing ac­tiv­i­ties. In early 2013 I started danc­ing salsa and it has since be­come my pri­mary hobby. I have taught salsa for three uni­ver­sity clubs, danced in Ro­ma­nia, Ger­many, Eng­land, Hawaii, and New York, and per­formed in Mon­treal, Toronto, and Ot­tawa.

Contact

If you feel like dis­cussing one these top­ics in more depth, give me a shout!