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Robert Brignall

Robert Brignall

Senior Lecturer In Combinatorics

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mathematics-and-statistics

Professional biography

I'm a Senior Lecturer in Combinatorics in the School of Mathematics and Statistics, having joined the OU as a Lecturer in 2010. Prior to moving to the OU, I was a Heilbronn Research Fellow at the University of Bristol from 2007.  You should visit my personal page if you would like to read more.

At the OU and beyond, I'm involved in a number of different activities relating to the impact of AI on the mathematical sciences, both in our teaching & assessment, and in research. I am an "AI Ambassador" within the university, and a member of the Network of AI Leads of the Academy for Mathematical Sciences.

Education

  • 2003 BA in Mathematics, University of Cambridge
  • 2004 MSc in Mathematics, University of St Andrews
  • 2007 PhD in Combinatorics, University of St Andrews

Research interests

My research interests lie in enumerative and structural combinatorics, more specifically on permutation patterns, graph theory, and well-quasi-ordering. You should visit my personal page if you would like to read more, including access to my preprints, papers, and slides of talks that I have given.

Latest publications

Displaying 10 of 40 publications

  • Brignall, R. and Vatter, V., 2026, ‘Digit Party: Three Years of Lying About High Scores’, Math Horizons (In Press)., https://oro.open.ac.uk/110418/.
  • Bevan, D., Brignall, R. and Ruškuc, N., 2026, ‘On cycles in monotone grid classes of permutations’, Combinatorial Theory, 6(2), https://oro.open.ac.uk/108527/.
  • Brignall, R. and Vatter, V., 2026, ‘Uncountably many enumerations of well-quasi-ordered permutation classes’, Combinatorial Theory, 6(1), https://oro.open.ac.uk/106561/.
  • Bóna, M., Bouvel, M., Brignall, R. and Pantone, J., 2024, ‘Mini-Workshop: Permutation Patterns’, Oberwolfach Reports, 21(1), pp. 273–308., https://oro.open.ac.uk/100279/.
  • Brignall, R., 2024, ‘Labelled Well-Quasi-Order in Juxtapositions of Permutation Classes’, The Electronic Journal of Combinatorics, 31(2), https://oro.open.ac.uk/97245/.
  • Brignall, R. and Cocks, D., 2023, ‘A framework for minimal hereditary classes of graphs of unbounded clique-width’, SIAM Journal on Discrete Mathematics, 37(4), pp. 2558–2584., https://oro.open.ac.uk/92525/.
  • Brignall, R. and Cocks, D., 2022, ‘Uncountably Many Minimal Hereditary Classes of Graphs of Unbounded Clique-Width’, Electronic Journal of Combinatorics, 29(1), https://oro.open.ac.uk/82488/.
  • Brignall, R. and Vatter, V., 2022, ‘Labelled well-quasi-order for permutation classes’, Combinatorial Theory, 2(3), https://oro.open.ac.uk/85232/.
  • Atminas, A., Brignall, R., Lozin, V. and Stacho, J., 2021, ‘Minimal classes of graphs of unbounded clique-width defined by finitely many forbidden induced subgraphs’, Discrete Applied Mathematics, 295 pp. 57–69., https://oro.open.ac.uk/75508/.
  • Atminas, A. and Brignall, R., 2020, ‘Well-quasi-ordering and finite distinguishing number’, Journal of Graph Theory, 95(1), pp. 5–26., https://oro.open.ac.uk/68077/.
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