In 2005, he joined the Communications Technology Department at the IBM T. J. Watson Research Center, Yorktown Heights, NY. His research activities included CMOS circuits for high-speed communications, design for manufacturability, and circuits for the measurement of process variability. In 2007, he joined the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Concordia University in Montreal, QC, Canada, where he is a professor. At Columbia, Dr. Cowan was a 2003 recipient of Analog Device’s Outstanding Student Designer Award. He was the 2005 recipient of Columbia’s Eliahu I. Jury award for outstanding achievement by a graduate student in the areas of systems, communications, or signal processing. His current research activities include low-power mixed-signal circuits for biomedical applications and wireline communication, as well as mixed-signal computation.

Prof. Cowan brings more than 20 years of mixed-signal IC design experience for applications ranging from programmable analog VLSI computation, biomedical signal acquisition, wireline communication, and power electronics for industrial applications. His work in analog computation launched 21st century interest in VLSI analog computation. He has explored various burst-mode schemes for power reduction, equalizer-based optical receivers, high-speed inductorless designs, noise analysis and optimization and more recently, drivers for microring modulators and their thermal stabilization. His expertise in this field is captured in his recently published book, Mixed-Signal CMOS for Wireline Communication, published in 2024 by Cambridge University Press.