People

PIs

Julian McAuley
Julian McAuley
Professor
Julian McAuley is a Professor at UC San Diego, where he works on applications of machine learning to problems involving personalization, and teaches classes on personalized recommendation. He likes bicycling and baroque keyboard.
Website
Taylor Berg-Kirkpatrick
Taylor Berg-Kirkpatrick
Professor
I'm an associate professor in CSE. My lab works on natural language processing, music processing, and machine learning.
Website
Shlomo Dubnov
Shlomo Dubnov
Professor
Shlomo Dubnov is a Professor in Music and Computer Science Departments, mostly known for his work on Machine Improvisation and Music Information Dynamics. He occasionally composes music, mostly using AI, and likes the circus.
Website
PhDs

Jingwei Liu
Jingwei Liu
PhD Candidate
My name is Jingwei Liu, a 5th year Ph.D. candidate in Computer Music at UCSD. My work focuses on AI music generation, deep active inference, and neural machines.
Website
Tornike Karchkhadze
Tornike Karchkhadze
PhD Candidate
With over 15 years of experience in music, audio, and data science, I am an audio machine learning researcher and a computer music Ph.D. candidate at UC San Diego. My research includes music & sound synthesis using deep learning.
Website
Zachary Novack
Zachary Novack
PhD Student
Hi! I'm a 3rd year PhD student co-advised by Julian McAuley and Taylor Berg-Kirkpatrick. I'm broadly interested in all things controllable and efficient audio/music generation, and I'm a big proponent of open, ethical AIxMusic research. In my free time, I play volleyball and teach indoor drumline at POW Percussion Ensemble.
Website
Ilana Shapiro
Ilana Shapiro
PhD Student
I am a second year PhD student in UCSD's Progsys Group, advised by Sorin Lerner. I also work closely with Taylor Berg-Kirkpatrick and Shlomo Dubnov. I'm currently interested in investigating how we can integrate the complimentary strengths of PL, AI, and HCI to develop human-interpretable structural constraints on generative models for the controllable generation of structurally coherent music.
Website
Junda Wu
Junda Wu
PhD Student
I am a second-year PhD student advised by Prof. Julian McAuley. My research spans NLP, multimodality, and music recommendation. I love classical music and opera, and I have a growing collection of CDs and vinyl.
Website
Xin Xu
Xin Xu
PhD Student
Hi, I'm Xin Xu, a CSE Ph.D. student at UCSD, advised by Prof. Julian McAuley. My interests include NLP and Musician-oriented AI Assistant. I love to interpret music pieces and play the piano. Art is my life.
Website
Eduardo Escoto
Eduardo Escoto
PhD Student
I'm Ed! I'm a first-year PhD student advised by Julian McAuley, focusing on Recommender Systems and Generative Music. In my free time, I enjoy surfing, playing JRPGs, and learning music production.
Website
Jingyue Huang
Jingyue Huang
PhD Student
I am a first-year PhD student in Computer Science at UC San Diego, advised by Prof. Julian McAuley. My research focuses on Controllable Music Generation and Music Understanding. I love playing guitar and traveling to explore beautiful nature spots.
Website
Haven Kim
Haven Kim
PhD Student
I'm a first-year PhD student working with Professor Julian McAuley, exploring the intersection of music and ML.
Website
Masters

Daniel Zhao
Daniel Zhao
Master's Student
I'm Daniel Zhao, a 1st year Master's student here at UCSD. I'm currently interning under Zachary Novack and my current project is on the acceleration of inference time of autoregressive music generation models. I'm generally interested in research within NLP, ML & systems, and multimodal ML! Some of my hobbies include golf, photography, and playing the cello.
Website
Qihui Yang
Qihui Yang
Master's Student
Hi there! I am currently a first-year master student here at UCSD. My research interests lie in Music Generation with Fine-Grained Artistic Control and Machine Learning Theories. My goal is to integrate cutting-edge technology into the music production workflow, empowering musicians to craft their unique sound for today’s era. I'm currently working on audio style transfer and causal structure analysis of motives in music creation.
Website
Undergraduates

Amit Namburi
Amit Namburi
Undergraduate Researcher
I am Amit Namburi, an undergraduate researcher working under the guidance of Professor Julian McAuley. My research centers on Recommender Systems, LLMs, and Music Information Retrieval. In my free time, I stay active by playing sports and going on long scenic drives.
Website
Phillip Long
Phillip Long
Undergraduate Researcher
Hi! My name is Phillip Long. I’m a second-year undergraduate student in the McAuley Lab mentored by Zachary Novack. I am interested in symbolic music generation and data-centric approaches to music processing. In my free time, I play the trumpet and piano, which sparked my interest in AI-Music.
Website
Affiliates

Matthew Rice
Matthew Rice
Research Engineer
Hey, I'm Matthew. I'm a graduate of UCSD and currently work at Output as a research engineer, designing tools for music producers. In my spare time, I enjoy playing piano and sports.
Website
Milan Gupta
Milan Gupta
High School Junior
Hello! I’m Milan Gupta, a Junior at Francis Parker High School with a passion for generative AI and its applications in music and signal processing. In my free time, I enjoy producing EDM music and playing lacrosse.
Website
Alumni

Ke Chen
Ke Chen
Research Scientist
I'm Ke Chen and currently the research scientist at Adobe Research. I have strong interests in audio representation learning, music generative model, music information retrieval, and audio source separation. I received a PhD in computer science and a master in music advised by Prof. Shlomo Dubnov and Prof. Taylor Berg-Kirkpatrick.
Website
Hao-Wen Dong
Hao-Wen Dong
Assistant Professor
I am currently an assistant professor at the University of Michigan, working on human-centered generative AI for music, audio, and video creation.
Website
Ross Greer
Ross Greer
Assistant Professor
I'm an Assistant Professor in Computer Science & Engineering at UC Merced, with research interests in multimodal machine learning and human-robot interaction to improve machines' understanding of human intentions. Outside of research, I enjoy leading orchestra rehearsals and writing music.
Website
Chris Donahue
Chris Donahue
Dannenberg Assistant Professor
I am the Dannenberg Assistant Professor in the Computer Science Department at Carnegie Mellon University. I primarily work on empowering and enriching human musical creativity with generative AI. I received my PhD from the UCSD Department of Music in 2019 and was co-advised by Miller Puckette and Julian McAuley. I am proud to be the first PhD graduate associated with the UCSD MUSAIC program.
Website