TR2026-041

ProxiCBO: A Consensus-based Method for Composite Optimization

    •  Zhang, H., Ma, Y., Kitichotkul, R., Rapp, J., Boufounos, P.T., "ProxiCBO: A Consensus-based Method for Composite Optimization", IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing (ICASSP), May 2026.
      BibTeX TR2026-041 PDF
      • @inproceedings{Zhang2026may,
      • author = {Zhang, Haoyu and Ma, Yanting and Kitichotkul, Ruangrawee and Rapp, Joshua and Boufounos, Petros T.},
      • title = {{ProxiCBO: A Consensus-based Method for Composite Optimization}},
      • booktitle = {IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing (ICASSP)},
      • year = 2026,
      • month = may,
      • url = {https://www.merl.com/publications/TR2026-041}
      • }
  • MERL Contacts:
  • Research Areas:

    Computational Sensing, Data Analytics, Optimization, Signal Processing

Abstract:

This paper presents an interacting-particle optimization method for composite optimization problems. The proposed approach combines ideas from consensus-based optimization (CBO) with proximal gradient descent. We establish theoretical convergence guarantees for the continuous-time finite-particle dynamics and introduce an alternating update scheme for practical implementation. Finally, we validate the effectiveness of our method across several signal processing problems, demonstrating its advantages over proximal gradient de- scent, CBO, and their variants.

 

  • Related News & Events

    •  EVENT    MERL Contributes to ICASSP 2026
      Date: Monday, May 4, 2026 - , May 8, 2026
      Location: Barcelona, Spain
      MERL Contacts: Wael H. Ali; Petros T. Boufounos; Chiori Hori; Jonathan Le Roux; Yanting Ma; Hassan Mansour; Yoshiki Masuyama; Joshua Rapp; Anthony Vetro; Pu (Perry) Wang; Gordon Wichern
      Research Areas: Artificial Intelligence, Computational Sensing, Computer Vision, Machine Learning, Optimization, Signal Processing, Speech & Audio
      Brief
      • MERL has made numerous contributions to both the organization and technical program of ICASSP 2026, which is being held in Barcelona, Spain from May 4-8, 2026.

        Sponsorship

        MERL is proud to be a Silver Patron of the conference and will participate in the student job fair on Thursday, May 7. Please join this session to learn more about employment opportunities at MERL, including openings for research scientists, post-docs, and interns. MERL Distinguished Research Scientists Petros T. Boufounos and Jonathan Le Roux will also present a spotlight session on MERL’s research in signal processing on Tuesday, May 5 at 13:05.

        MERL is also pleased to be the sponsor of two IEEE Awards that will be presented at the conference. We congratulate Prof. Nasir Ahmed, the recipient of the 2026 IEEE Fourier Award for Signal Processing, and Dr. Alex Acero, the recipient of the 2026 IEEE James L. Flanagan Speech and Audio Processing Award.

        Technical Program

        MERL is presenting 7 papers in the main conference on a wide range of topics including source separation, spatial audio, neural audio codecs, radar-based pose estimation, camera-based airflow sensing, radar array processing, and optimization. Another paper on neural speech codecs will be presented at the Low-Resource Audio Codec (LRAC) Satellite Workshop. MERL researchers will also present two articles published in IEEE Open Journal of Signal Processing (OJSP) on music source separation and head-related transfer function (HRTF) modeling. Finally, Speech and Audio Team members Yoshiki Masuyama and Jonathan Le Roux co-organized a Special Session on Neural Spatial Audio Processing, which will feature six oral presentations.

        About ICASSP

        ICASSP is the flagship conference of the IEEE Signal Processing Society, and the world's largest and most comprehensive technical conference focused on the research advances and latest technological development in signal and information processing. The event attracts more than 4000 participants each year.
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  • Related Publication

  •  Zhang, H., Ma, Y., Kitichotkul, R., Rapp, J., Boufounos, P.T., "ProxiCBO: A Provably Convergent Consensus-Based Method for Composite Optimization", arXiv, April 2026.
    BibTeX arXiv
    • @article{Zhang2026apr,
    • author = {Zhang, Haoyu and Ma, Yanting and Kitichotkul, Ruangrawee and Rapp, Joshua and Boufounos, Petros T.},
    • title = {{ProxiCBO: A Provably Convergent Consensus-Based Method for Composite Optimization}},
    • journal = {arXiv},
    • year = 2026,
    • month = apr,
    • url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.09789}
    • }