The Inagural Music Technology Research Showcase celebrates the work of the first students of the new program | MIT News

The MIT Music Technology and Computation (MTC) Graduate Program – launched in the fall of 2024 as a collaboration between the Department of Music and Theater Arts in the School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences (SHASS), and the School of Engineering (SoE) – presented its first MIT Music Technology Research Showcase on May 13. The event was played in the standing room and the house of Edward Concer and Joyce Lindé of Edward’s Music only at the Edward Tundell Music Hall. diverse and engaging research presentations and musical performances.

The celebration featured the first five students enrolled at the MTC (all former MIT students), as well as several PhD students and faculty. Each scholar presented inspiring examples of creative engineering that reflect the broad and growing music technology landscape at MIT.

The 90-minute event featured a wide array of research projects, including a real-time visualization of what a collaborative AI agent would play on the piano; audio art installations based on audio networking; a hip-hop dance party where music is produced by dancing; and the use of electroencephalogram (EEG) signals to identify the musical patterns our brains think.

“A new space for exploration and understanding”

A combination of technical presentation and live performance, the show began with remarks from SHASS Dean and professor of philosophy Agustín Rayo, SOE Dean and professor of chemical engineering Paula Hammond, and MTC Director and professor of music practice Eran Egozy.

Rayo began, “The goal of this program is simple – for MIT to lead the world in music technology theory and application,” adding that “it’s not just about making music with technology; it’s about working across disciplines to help better shape the future of speech in an AI-driven world, all the while showing MIT at its best.”

Rayo noted that the graduate program was made possible in part by the opening of the Edward and Joyce Linde Music Building in 2025, which provided new classrooms, studios, practice spaces, and a dedicated music technology lab. He also praised the MIT Schwarzman College of Computing for its support of the graduate program.

Hammond continued: “As those in this room already know, music and engineering have common roots. Both depend on mathematical precision and are informed by defined structures, rhythms, and frequencies. Both require hard work and technical knowledge, coupled with inspiration and imagination, to create something completely new. Given those parallel equations, it’s no surprise that many students, MIT and many members are accomplished in all fields. Musicians and musicians.”

He continued, “Our music program is invaluable. Only at MIT can we bring together top professionals and top musicians to create unique opportunities for collaboration. Here we have brought together faculty and students who identify strongly with music and engineering to create a new space for exploration and understanding. It is a strong example of the collaborative culture that defines the Institute.”

Egozy called the event a “harmonious mix of concert and series,” and recalled, “it’s mind-blowing to see what our students achieve in just one short and fast year. Although we initially argued about the trade-off between a one-year and a two-year program, I think this group can do it and show us great skills in the study period and show us great research skills. time.”

Student research on display

One of those students is Claire Southard ’25, SM’26, who developed a machine learning model used to identify musical notes hidden in EEG signals.

Southard explains, “Every year, musicians are diagnosed with movement disorders such as Parkinson’s disease and dystonia, or they suffer injuries that prevent them from controlling their hands and bodies in the ways necessary to play their instruments. In doing this, I trained machine learning models to predict the music a person is thinking from their brain activity measured using EEG, and many of the predicted pieces were found to be visual representations of what the user was thinking. By designing a system that allows musicians to make music regardless of their physical abilities, I hope this project helps bring a more accessible future for music performance closer to reality.

Before joining MTC, Southard was initially unaware of the scope, breadth, and depth of what the program could provide to further pursue his interests. “The MIT Music Technology and Computation Graduate Program taught me a lot about the possibilities of STEM and the arts,” she said. “When I started this program, I honestly wasn’t sure what counted as ‘musical expertise.’ Through classes, research, and conversations with teachers, guest speakers, and peers, I learned that this field was much broader and more interesting than I had previously thought.”

He continues, “coming from a neuro- and computer science background, many of my undergraduate projects were entirely mechanical.

Another MTC graduate, and student speaker at the 2026 SHASS Advanced Graduate Ceremony, Mariano Salcedo ’25, SM ’26, presented a custom web application that allows anyone to create unique pop-up displays driven by real-time streaming music. To achieve this result, Salcedo developed algorithms that use the complex behavior of self-organizing systems as a means to the end of beauty.

In his speech at the Advanced Degree Ceremony, Salcedo expressed his gratitude and admiration for the loving people he met not only at MTC, but at MIT in general. In the proper manner of compassion, he responded sympathetically, “I think there are times like this call from us to lead the way with human-centered technology, which means we ask not only what we can build, but we also ask who will it affect, who won’t it affect? ​​Who does it help?”

Music technology is thriving at MIT

Professor Anna Huang SM ’08 of MTA and the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS, through SCC), a graduate of the MIT Media Lab, and one of the world’s leading researchers in collaborative AI music, echoed Southard and Salcedo’s sentiments with her keynote presentation, “In Search of Reason-AI Interaction in Human.” A compelling and insightful talk, his talk emphasized the importance of centering the human artist in all AI-related endeavors, while also making efforts to incorporate all world music into its discourse at every opportunity.

With many of his family members in the audience, Huang reflected, “I’m privileged to be at both MIT Music and EECS — an interdisciplinary, shared environment. What does it mean to build music technology in this context? We’re surrounded by extremely talented musicians, so we take this collaborative design approach: We work with these musicians, we go into the studio, we go into the studio with something, and every week we try the creative process. push both of these things forward, and it’s always at a high level, it benefits me the most when I feel most at home.

Huang also explained how this practice sets the stage for a new Studies in Music Technology course that she will co-teach in the fall with newly appointed Professor of Theater Arts Grisha Coleman. Class 21M.369/569 (Tuning Attention: Creative Practices in Movement, Sound, and AI) suggests that the study of sound and movement practices can inform the way we build and think about computational systems, focusing especially on our relationship with AIs. It will introduce students to a variety of musical practices in improvisation and somatics in the form of motion capture technology, critical interaction design, generative modeling, and algorithms for interpreting and learning about human response.

All things considered, the future of the MIT Music Technology and Computation Graduate Program is bright. Egozy says MTC has accepted 10 master’s students for the 2026-27 academic year from over 100 applicants. Unlike this year’s class, next year’s students will not only include recent MIT undergraduate alumni, but also new faces on campus.

“Expanding the pool to graduate students from other schools and institutions will bring an incredible wealth of ideas and experience to the program. Additionally, all three faculty members who are co-faculty between MTA and EECS – including Mark Rau, Paris Smaragdis SM ’97, PhD ’01, and Huang – are inviting new Music Technology PhD students to their labs,” said EE.CS Egozy.

Encompassing its mission, MTC proves to be an active, multidisciplinary student program that attracts a wide variety of students with diverse career goals from diverse backgrounds.

“Despite their diversity, our students all have a fundamental similarity,” says Egozy, “not just a shared love of music, but also a deep desire to nurture that love through technology in a warm, humane way.”

List of projects

Rachel Loh, Quanta Fellow in Music Technology and Computation: “Visualizing the Internal Environment of Music Models for Live AI Human Development”

Noble Harasha, Quanta Fellow in Music Technology and Computation: “Modeling Subjectivity and Multisensory Perception as Sound, Analog Communication in Feedback-Driven Networks”

Z Chen, Quanta Fellow in Music Technology and Computation: “Production Music as an Ingredient of Public Art”

Nithya Shikarpur: “The Moving Drone: Live Development of Hindustani Music Content with Human Voice, Generative Models, and Loops”

Mariano Salcedo, Alex Rigopulos (1992) Associate in Music Technology and Computation: “Neural Cellular Automata for Interactive Music Recognition”

Claire Southard, John Piscitello Fellow in Music Technology and Computation: “Neural Decoding of Imagined Music”

Stephen Brade, Suwan Kim, Valerie Chen: “Whale, Cello (where?): Musical Dialogue between Cello and a Real-Time Diffusion Model Trained on Whale Songs”