A native of Budapest, Hungary, Bela has been at Gettysburg College since 1993. His favorite courses to teach include Abstract Mathematics (where he uses his own materials) and Research in Mathematics (where small groups of students work on unsolved questions). He spent his last sabbaticals at Cornell University (Ithaca), at the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute (Berkeley), and at Pomona College (Claremont). Bela has publications in areas such as spherical designs and codes, additive combinatorics in abelian groups, the Boolean lattice, extremal graph theory, approximation theory, and network reliability. He is on the Council of Undergraduate Research, is an associate editor of Mathematics and Informatics Quarterly, a former associate editor of Math Horizons, and a former director of the International Mathematical Talent Search. In his free time Bela enjoys being in the mountains, discussing good books and films, and exploring nearby and far-away places.

Research Interests: Algebraic and geometric combinatorics; additive number theory; finite sets.