Prof. Carl Rohwer DSc
Dean of the School of Information Technology
Professor of Mathematics
Academic & Professional Career
Carl Rohwer is the Dean of the School of Information Technology and Professor of Mathematics. He received an MSc degree in Mathematics from Stellenbosch University, South Africa and a DSc degree in Mathematics from Potchefstroom University, South Africa. After nine years in Mathematics at the University of Zululand, his career took many interesting turns.
At the Institute for Maritime Technology as Specialist Analysis, he was involved in a variety of challenging tasks, and specifically responsible for unconventional problems. This covered a variety of fields from Mechanical Engineering to Management Consultancy. Sufficiently challenging mathematical problems, extracted from real problems kept research activity alive.
His development of Nodal Spline Spaces, the subject of his Master’s Thesis and Doctoral Thesis, was pursued in parallel with this career, in collaboration with Prof. Johan de Villiers. His success in the design, building and flying of remotely piloted helicopters, when this challenging activity was in infancy, resulted in an offer from the Bureau for Mechanical Engineering at the University of Stellenbosch, where he was appointed as Chief Scientist in the post of Manager of the Analysis Group.
A growing belief, from repeated successes in classified practical problems, that a Theory for Nonlinear Smoothers was possible and practical, later resulted in the choice to revert to an academic post at the Department of Mathematics, with contractual agreement for consultation of up to one day per week. Collaboration with Prof. de Villiers in the field of Wavelet Theory, led to the realization that the (so-called) LULU-theory for Nonlinear Smoothers could yield a Non-linear Multiresolution Decomposition of sequence into Pulses of different resolution for purposes of Analysis, Storage and Transmission of Images. He was invited to write a monogram on the subject of LULU-theory. This appeared in 2005.
Contract work for Overberg Missile Test Terrain, Electronic Development House, Integrated Sysmic Systems, and other firms usually was on related applications, but subject to confidentiality agreements.
As a result all the publications over twenty years were in Mathematical Journals, and many conference contributions generally in the field of Approximation Theory. It took a long time for the possible relevance in the field of Image Processing to sink in. Peter Hawkes asked for an article on this for his authoritive book series Advances in Imaging and Electron Physics. This was tackled with Prof. Marcel Wild, and appeared in 2007, comprising more than half the book. Prof. Dirk Laurie collaborated in introducing the Discrete Pulse Transform in the SIAM. Journal of Mathematical Analysis, and in the establishment of a fast o (N) serial algorithm for the DPT.
The possibility of this group of Mathematicians pursuing research in Image Processing Applications in a multi-disciplinary team at the International University was crucial in the decision to join the IT faculty in Bruchsal.
Research Interests include
- Approximation Theory
- Analysis
- Theory and application of Smoothers
- Special mathematical applications
Publications
- LULU-theory, Idempotent Stack Filters, and the Mathematics of Vision of Marr. Half a book of the series; Advances in Imaging and Electron Physics.Vol146, 2007. (Co-author M. Wild)
- The Discrete Pulse Transform, SIAM.JMA (Journal of Mathematical Analysis) Vol.(JMA)i.,2007.(Co-author Dirk Laurie)
- MONOGRAM: NONLINEAR SMOOTHING AND MULTIRESOLUTION ANALYSIS, Birkhäuser/Springer 2005.
- CH ROHWER, Fast One-sided approximation with spline functions, Journal of Computational and Applied Mathematics 18 (1987), 93 – 105.
- CH ROHWER, The fast computation of Dolph-Chebeychev Coefficients, ZAMM, 74 (1994) 10, 495 – 497.
- CH ROHWER, Fully Trend Preserving Operators, Quaestiones Mathematicae, 2004 27, 217 – 229.