Thomas Powell Home ⚬ Papers ⚬ Events ⚬ CV

I am a Reader in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Bath, and a member of the Mathematical Foundations of Computation group. I work in the field of mathematical logic, with a focus on proof theory and its applications.

Before coming to Bath, my research took me to a several different places, including the Logic Group at TU Darmstadt and the Institut des Hautes Études Scientifiques.

My email address is: trjp20 AT bath DOT ac DOT uk

For some alternative pictures of me see the Oberwolfach Photo Collection.

research interests

My background is in pure mathematics, and I began my career specialising in proof theory and computability theory. Like many mathematicians with a predisposition towards logic, I eventually found a home in a computer science department. Most of my research revolves around the application of logic to different areas of mathematics and computer science, ranging from analysis and probability to the theory of programming languages. For more information, see my publications.

current work

In the last few years, my research has been dominated by applications of proof theory in probability and stochastic optimization. I am increasingly interested in automated reasoning in these areas. Here are three recent papers that give some indication of what I'm thinking about at the moment:

• My paper on martingale convergence (doi, arXiv), one of the first in a series of applications of proof theory in probability by me and others (joint with Morenikeji Neri, Transactions of the American Mathematical Society, 2025).
• A case study in proof mining (doi, pdf), which contains some speculation on how proof assistants and automated reasoning could be utilised in the context of applied proof theory and stochastic optimization (Bulletin of Symbolic Logic, to appear, 2026+).
• A recent preprint (arXiv) presenting a general framework for establishing the convergence of stochastic processes in metric spaces (joint with Nicholas Pischke, submitted).

some activities and roles

I am currently Deputy Head of Department (Research) in Computer Science at Bath, and Head of the Mathematical Foundations of Computation group.

I co-founded and continue to organise the Southern and Midlands Logic Seminar, currently a collaboration between Bath, Birmingham, Queen Mary, Sussex and UCL. We have been supported by the London Mathematical Society since we began in early 2023, and we are now also supported by the British Logic Colloquium.

With Nicholas Pischke I am organising the Second Workshop on Proof Mining in Bath on 7–9 September 2026.

phd students and postdocs

• Ben Langton – PhD student, started October 2024
  Co-supervisor with James Davenport
• Alex Wan – PhD student, started October 2023
  Main supervisor
• Davide Barbarossa – former postdoc, now a postdoc in ENS Lyon
  Funded through the EPSRC project Imperative Programs from Proofs
• Morenikeji Neri – former PhD student, now a postdoc in the Logic Group at TU Darmstadt
  Thesis: Applications of Proof Theory to Limit Theorems and Stochastic Processes (defended March 2025)
  Main supervisor

contact

trjp20 AT bath DOT ac DOT uk

+44 (0) 1225 384085

1 WEST 4.61
Department of Computer Science
University of Bath
Bath BA2 7AY
United Kingdom

Webpage last modified June 2026