Benjamin Cowen

Last Updated: 5/19/2016

I am a mathematician and a programmer-- an engineer and a creative. I'm currently conducting doctoral research in Electrical Engineering (NYU) after completing an MS in applied mathematics (CWRU).

At NYU, we work on designing and solving optimization problems in signal processing. Our theoretical interests include convex analysis: the development of non-convex penalty terms, and signal component separation (identifying and separating distinct components within signals, using sparsity). We develop generalized thresholders (proximity operators) for these penalty terms.

We work directly with real-world applications such as detection and localization in oceanic sonar (acoustic imaging), and signal component separation in sonar, radar, and MR images. We simultaneously develop theory to support novel sparsity schemes such as exploiting non-convex regularization in conjunction with convex optimization, and pushing the limits of signal component separation (a.k.a. morphological component analysis or MCA).
At CWRU, my research was focused on developing a scheme for inverting large, ill-conditioned matrices for partially parallel compressed sensing MRI, using total generalized variation.