Masatoshi Hamanaka received a Ph.D. in Engineering from the University of Tsukuba, Japan, in 2003. He is currently a leader of the Music Information Intelligence team at Center for Advanced Intelligence Project, RIKEN. His research interest is in music information technology and biomedical and unmanned aircraft systems. He received the Journal of New Music Research Distinguished Paper Award in 2005, SIGGRAPH2019 Emerging Technologies Laval Virtual Revolution Research Jury Prize in 2019, IJCAI-19 Most Entertaining Video Award in 2019, Augmented Human International Conference Best Poster Paper Award in 2021, and International Conference on Multimedia Modeling Best Demonstration Award in 2024.

Yucong Jiang is Assistant Professor of Computer Science at the University of Richmond. Her research crosses multiple fields including music, software engineering, audio processing, AI, and data science. Dr. Jiang has been an awardee of a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA) European Fellowship, hosted at the University of Music and Performing Arts, Vienna, Austria, and the principal investigator of a Digital Humanities Advancement Grant (DHAG) from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Dr. Jiang earned her Ph.D. at Indiana University Bloomington, where she was a member of an interdisciplinary lab researching Music Informatics.

Konstantina Orlandatou studied composition, music theory, piano and accordion in the Conservatory of Athens (Greece) and multimedia composition (M.A.) at the University of Music and Drama in Hamburg. In 2014 she completed her doctoral dissertation with the title “Synaesthetic and intermodal audio-visual perception: an experimental research” in the University of Hamburg (Department of Systematic Musicology).

Since 2018 she leads the project “Moving Sound Pictures” at the University of Music and Drama in which she uses VR technologies for art mediation mixing music with visual arts. As a multimedia artist and VR developer, she turns paintings of well-known artists, such as Kandinsky or Mondrian, into immersive 3D spaces, where users can interact with the objects of the paintings and generate music through playful actions. Her VR installations have been presented in numerous festivals, conferences and exhibitions and she collaborates with museums, such as the Hamburger Kunsthalle in Germany. Since 2023 she is Head of the XR Lab of the ligeti center.

Riccardo Mazza is a composer and sound artist specializing in experimental sound research, algorithmic composition, and spatial audio. He teaches at APM (High Perfection Music School) in Saluzzo, Italy.

In 2001, Mazza created the first Dolby Surround sound effects and field recordings library (Renaissances SFX), and in 2003, he presented his object-based spatialization software SoundBuilder at the AES conference (www.soundbuilder.it).

He founded Interactive Sound in Turin in 2001, where he designed immersive exhibitions and museum experiences until 2016. In 2015, Mazza co-founded Project-TO (www.project-to.com) with Laura Pol, exploring contemporary approaches such as Live Coding and algorithmic composition, with performances at notable festivals.

In 2018, he established the Experimental Studios, one of Europe’s advanced facilities for Dolby ATMOS technology (www.experimentalstudios.it). His current research focuses on the intersection of environmental data, algorithmic composition, and real-time sound synthesis, developing new methodologies for translating natural phenomena into musical structures.

Victor Shepardson
I am a doctoral researcher in the Intelligent Instruments Lab at the University of Iceland. Previously I worked as a machine learning engineer on neural models of speech, and before that I studied Digital Musics at Dartmouth College and Computer Science at the University of Virginia. My interests include machine learning, artificial intelligence, electronic and audiovisual music, and improvisation. In my current research, I approach the lived experience of people with AI via design of, and performance with, new musical instruments. My projects include the Living Looper, which reimagines the live looping pedal through neural synthesis algorithms, and Notochord, a probabilistic model for MIDI performances.

Thor Magnusson
I’m a research professor at the University of Iceland and a professor of future music in the Music Department at the University of Sussex. I’ve recently served as an Edgard-Varèse guest professor at the Technische Universität Berlin. My research interests include musical performance, improvisation, new technologies for musical expression, live coding, musical notation, artificial intelligence and computational creativity. My research has roots equally in practice and theory and recent books include ‘Sonic Writing: Technologies of Material, Symbolic and Signal Inscription’ and ‘Live Coding: A User’s Manual’, published by Bloomsbury Academic and MIT Press respectively.

Michael Clarke is professor of music at the University of Huddersfield, England, where he is director of the project Digital Playgrounds for Music (DPfM). He is a composer, music analyst and software developer for music. His compositions and software have won a range of international awards. Since 2006, he has pioneered an interactive aural approach to music analysis in which software is used to place emphasis on aural experience in analysis and to engage readers more interactively, enabling them to play with and manipulate sounds. Working together with Frédéric Dufeu and Peter Manning, this approach was used in the study of nine key works from the computer music repertoire for the book Inside Computer Music (OUP, 2020) and its associated software. Subsequently, the IRiMaS project (Interactive Research in Music as Sound, 2017-2023), funded by an ERC Advanced Grant, expanded this approach to a wider repertoire of music. DPfM’s goal is to develop the educational potential of the interactive aural approach in a wide range of contexts.

Frédéric Dufeu is Senior Research Fellow in Music and Music Technology at the University of Huddersfield, where he is currently working on the Digital Playgrounds for Music project (2023-2026) with Michael Clarke and Maria Sappho. A musicologist, composer, and software developer, Frédéric primarily dedicates his research to the study of electroacoustic music and the application of digital technologies to research into creative arts and music. He is the author, with Michael Clarke and Peter Manning, of the book Inside Computer Music (Oxford University Press, 2020), investigating nine significant works of the repertoire. Frédéric also authored or co-authored over 30 research articles on electroacoustic music, digital tools for music analysis and creation, artists such as Christian Marclay, Sébastien Roux, Fabien Lévy, Hans Tutschku, and the collaboration between Christian Fennesz, Mika Vainio and Christian Zanési. He has been a member of the editorial board of Musurgia since 2018, of the editorial committee of the IRCAM Analyses project since 2017, and of the reading committee of the Journal of Creative Music Systems (JCMS) since its creation in 2015; he has also been a reviewer for the Computer Music Journal (since 2023) and Leonardo Music Journal (since 2020).

Maria Sappho is an artist and researcher exploring techno-social communities, instrument-building, and AI in creative practice. Her work navigates diaspora, cultural memory, and postcolonial histories through posthuman feminist and techno-moral lenses. She is Postdoctoral Fellow on Digital Playgrounds for Music (DPfM) at the University of Huddersfield, where she also completed her PhD with the ERC-funded IRiMaS project. She teaches free improvisation at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland and supervises postgraduate research at the Institute for Contemporary Music Performance (London). Maria is currently leading an AHRC Immersive Arts UK funded project exploring XR-based ecological storytelling and she is the current Composer-in-Residence with the Bahué Duo (USA), developing a new work on diaspora and land. She co-founded Chimere Communities, establishing grassroots AI art hubs across Lesotho, South Africa, and Switzerland. Internationally recognised as a composer and performer, she has worked with Mogwai, the International Contemporary Ensemble (USA), and is a long serving member of the Glasgow Improvisers Orchestra. Her awards include the BBC Daphne Oram Award (UK), AiiA AI Prize (CH), and the MANE Emerging Composer Prize (AU). She is the co-author of New Directions in Musical Collaborative Creativity (Oxford University Press, 2025), and her research has been published in leading journals across music, technology, and critical theory.

Born in Taiwan, Yu-Tung Cheng is currently a PhD candidate in Composition and Music Theory at Brandeis University, studying with Eric Chasalow, Yu-Hui Chang, and David Rakowski. She holds a master’s degree in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies from Brandeis University, as well as degrees in composition and music theory from Boston University (MM) and Taipei National University of the Arts (BA), where she studied with Joshua Fineberg, Ming-Hsiu Yen, and Tsung-Hsien Yang. She also studied electronic music at National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University with Yu-Chung Tseng.

Yu-Tung’s music has been performed in Taiwan, China (Musicacoustica-Beijing), France (CNSMDL), and the United States (TAK Ensemble, Lydian String Quartet, Splinter Reeds, Ekmeles, Hub New Music, Hypercube, Lamnth Duo, Talea Ensemble, loadbang, and Yarn/Wire). She enjoys creating music and sound that challenge the audience’s auditory senses, bringing discomfort to their experience as social commentary.

Dr. Hugo Chateau-Laurent is a researcher and entrepreneur at the intersection of artificial intelligence, cognitive neuroscience, and music technology. He is the co-founder of Allendia, a startup supported by Inria Startup Studio, which develops creative tools for musicians based on unconventional neural network applications. Hugo is a former postdoctoral researcher at CNRS in Toulouse, working on the ERC-funded GLoW project under the supervision of Rufin VanRullen. His research focused on implementing the Global Workspace Theory in deep learning systems to enhance sequential reasoning and cognitive flexibility. He earned his Ph.D. in Mathematics and Computer Science from the Université de Bordeaux in 2024, where he was affiliated with the Mnemosyne team at Inria and the Institute for Neurodegenerative Diseases. His doctoral research explored bio-inspired strategies for episodic reinforcement learning.

Dr. Tara Vanhatalo is an audio technology researcher specializing in machine learning for real-time audio processing. She co-founded Allendia in April 2025, a company focused on innovative audio applications. Previously, she was a postdoctoral researcher at Queen Mary University of London, where she worked on automatic mixing style transfer. Her doctoral research at Université de Bordeaux (2021–2024) centered on machine learning methods for real-time audio effects modeling, in collaboration with Orosys SAS. Tara’s expertise encompasses digital signal processing, artificial intelligence, and audio effects modeling.

Wei-Tung Pan is a UI designer and developer with a background in mechanical engineering and cognitive science. During her internship at Inria Bordeaux, she contributed to the ReMi project by implementing real-time visualizations of neural network activity using JUCE and C++. She is currently completing a Master’s in Cognitive Science at Université de Bordeaux (as an exchange student) and a Master’s in Mechanical Engineering at National Taiwan University. Her interests lie at the intersection of interactive systems, neural networks, and user-centered design.

Dr. Xavier Hinaut is a research scientist at Inria Bordeaux, France, where he has been part of the Mnemosyne team since 2016. His interdisciplinary work spans computational neuroscience, bio-inspired machine learning, and developmental robotics, focusing on modeling sequence processing and language acquisition. He earned his Ph.D. in computational neuroscience in 2013 from the University of Lyon, conducting research at INSERM 846 under Peter Ford Dominey. He later held postdoctoral positions at the University of Hamburg (Marie Curie Fellow) and NeuroPSI Paris-Saclay. Dr. Hinaut’s research centers on Echo State Networks within the Reservoir Computing framework to model neural dynamics of the prefrontal cortex and basal ganglia. These models have been used to study grammar learning in humans and robots, as well as the syntax of birdsong, particularly in canaries. In 2022, he completed his Habilitation à Diriger des Recherches (HDR) at the University of Bordeaux, presenting his thesis “Reservoir SMILES: Towards Sensorimotor Interaction of Language and Embodiment of Symbols with Reservoir Architectures.” He also contributes to open science through ReservoirPy, a Python library for Echo State Networks, and has organized workshops such as SMILES on sensorimotor integration and embodied language in artificial systems.

Xiaosha Li (Evelyne Ehevler) is a versatile artist. She is a composer, an electronic music producer, a vocalist, a DSP/ML engineer, and a simultaneous interpreter. Her music revolves around serious music composing methods and modern electronic music production techniques. Her music shuttles between blurred boundaries, sometimes clear and sometimes obscured.

Neil Leonard is a composer, saxophonist/clarinetist, and transdisciplinary artist. Leonard’s work includes concerts for ensembles with live electronics, audio/visual installations, and multimedia performances. He maintains active collaborations in Canada, Cuba, China, Brazil, Burundi, Italy, Israel, Japan, Taiwan, and across the U.S. Leonard works with artists from film, video, installation, dance, and theater to create and perform music, often using immersive multichannel audio configurations.

Whether performing classical, jazz, or folk music – or writing innovative works with electronics – Greg Bruce is an artist who defies convention. Based in St. John’s, NL, Canada, he is constantly searching for his own musical truth, breaking down genre barriers and creating new fusions on saxophone, clarinet, effects units, and tape media.

A pluralistic performer, improviser, composer, and technologist, Greg holds a Doctor of Musical Arts from the University of Toronto. Currently, he brings his interdisciplinary skills to the fore as a postdoctoral scholar at McGill University, where he is developing hardware for the saxophone that conjures and manipulates acoustic feedback.

Greg has also built a successful career as a freelancer and bandleader, best known for fronting the award-winning “folk-funk-jazz” group, Ouroboros. He has taught privately for 20 years, served as a full-time instructor at the College of the North Atlantic, worked as a per-course instructor at Memorial University, and has given numerous workshops and masterclasses.

Michele Zaccagnini is an audiovisual programmer. Coming from a classical contemporary background, he has invented and developed several algorithmic practices such as the Nonlinear Sequencer (NLS) and the Cross Sequencer (XSeq) that were released as software packages in MaxMSP and as plugins in the VCV Rack digital modular synthesizer.

In his creative work, he focuses on the perceptual connection of music and visual generation, translating his compositional algorithmic practices in a synchronous multimedia environment. He is currently developing interactive and immersive musical applications using virtual reality in the Unity game engine.

Joseph Butch Rovan is a composer, media artist, and performer on the faculty of the Music and Multimedia Composition (MMC) program at Brown University. From 2013-16 he was chair of Music and from 2016-19 he was the inaugural faculty director of the Brown Arts Initiative.

Prior to Brown, Rovan was a compositeur en recherche with the Real-Time Systems Team at IRCAM in Paris, and a faculty member at Florida State University and the University of North Texas, where he directed the Center for Experimental Music and Intermedia. Rovan worked at Opcode Systems before leaving for Paris, serving as Product Manager for Max, OMS and MIDI hardware.

Rovan has received prizes from the Bourges International Electroacoustic Music Competition, first prize in the Berlin Transmediale International Media Arts Festival, and has contributed writing to numerous books and journals. His music appears on Wergo, EMF, Circumvention, and SEAMUS labels. Rovan’s research includes sensor hardware design and wireless microcontroller systems.

In 2019 Rovan received two patents with Peter Bussigel for a new electronic musical instrument design. Among his most recent projects are the TOSHI, a new conductor interface for orchestral synthesis, and a new accessible technology that allows non-sighted composers to program interactive computer music.