The SoMA Team
Here are past and present members of the team.
Present Members
Dr Jason Hockman
ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR - HEAD
Jason is an associate professor of audio engineering at Birmingham City University. He is a member of the Digital Media Technology Laboratory (DMTLab), in which he leads the Sound and Music (SoMA) Group for computational analysis of sound and music and digital audio processing. Jason conducts research in music informatics, machine listening and computational musicology, with a focus on rhythm and metre detection, music transcription, and content-based audio effects. As an electronic musician, he has had several critically-acclaimed releases on established international record labels, including his own Detuned Transmissions imprint.
Dr Islah Ali-MacLachlan
SENIOR LECTURER - PHD
Islah is a Senior Lecturer and subject lead for acoustics, covering musical, environmental and building acoustics. He has a PhD in Music Research (Birmingham City University), PGDip (IOA) in Acoustics and Noise Control (Derby University) and BSc(Hons) Industrial Design (Technology) (Napier University of Edinburgh). He is a member of the Institute of Acoustics and sits on their board of education. His research interests are in computational ethnomusicology, concentrating on the use of signal analysis techniques applied to musical playing styles. He also researches in the field of acoustics, with an interest in projects involving product, environmental and building acoustics. He is an active musician and live engineer, and education director of a major UK folk festival.
Dr Sean Enderby
LECTURER - PHD
Sean is a lecturer in the School of Computing and Digital Technology. He completed his PhD in the DMT Lab in 2017, developing semantic distortion effects. Since then he has done research in multimedia processing for online detection of terrorist material as well as being one of the founders of Semantic Audio Labs (creators of faders.io). Also, he likes beer.
Dr Tychonas Michailidis
LECTURER - PHD
Tychonas is a lecturer and researcher in digital media technology at the School of Computing and Digital Technology. His research interests focus on human-computer interaction, gesture interaction, interactive systems, user experience, sensor technologies, electronic music performance and new media compositions. In particular, his research examines how vibrotactile and haptic feedback experience can advance interactive systems in the arts and real-world applications.
Matthew Cheshire
PHD STUDENT
Bio coming soon.
Maciek Tomczak
PHD STUDENT
Maciek is a PhD student in the SoMA group. His work focuses on automated music transformations using deep learning, notably on neural drum synthesis, with an emphasis on introducing control over rhythmic manipulation of percussion recordings.
Jake Drysdale
PHD STUDENT
Jake is currently a PhD student in the SoMA Group at Birmingham City University. His research focuses on expanding the breadth of knowledge associated with machine learning based approaches to music information retrieval. Jake aims to bring in his perspective as an electronic music producer and DJ to help towards the development of data driven music production tools that can push the boundaries imposed by current technology.
Alastair Jamieson
ASSOCIATE LECTURER - PHD STUDENT
Alastair is an associate lecturer on the sound courses at BCU as well as a producer and recording studio owner. His work seeks to offer a recommendation system for multi-channel drum microphones investigating balance, position, and array technique.
Ben West
LECTURER - MSc
Ben is a Lecturer in Audio Engineering teaching on the acoustic modules. He has worked in acoustics within the automotive industry for almost ten years and holds a MSc in Acoustics with Audio Applications from the University of Salford. His industry experience covered a wide range of acoustic measurement, analysis, and simulation methods. Ben’s research interests include sound quality, sound perception and acoustics.
William Wilson
PHD STUDENT
Will is a PhD student at Birmingham City University, working as part of the Sound and Music Analysis (SoMA) group within the Digital Media Technology Laboratory (DMTLab). His research intends to combine gestural and audio based approaches towards computational analysis of traditional fiddle playing
Christina Karpodini
PHD STUDENT
Christina is a PhD student at the Soma group at Birmingham City University. Her research focusing in designing and developing novel accessibility tools for processing and experiencing information through haptics in music production. The research challenges current human computer interaction paradigms and machine learning techniques with the aim to devise new ways, in which visually impaired users can process information, navigate, interact and collaborate.Past Members
Dr Ryan Stables
ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR
Blob of mobile carbon to convert caffeine into weird audio programs.
Nick Jillings
PHD STUDENT
Blob of mobile carbon to convert caffeine into weird audio programs.
Dr Niccolò Granieri
LECTURER - PHD
Niccolò Granieri was a lecturer and researcher in Digital Media Technology within the School of Computing and Digital Technology. His PhD focused on the application of hand tracking for the creation of augmented piano instruments, with a specific focus on the use of pre-existing musical gesture nuances. Niccolò now focuses on the application of hand tracking in various areas including computational ethnomusicology and VR/AR applications.
Dr Dominic Ward
PHD
Dominic completed his PhD in the DMT Lab in 2016, developing novel audio systems driven by computational hearing models for applications in mixing multichannel musical audio.
Dr Spyridon Stasis
PHD
Spyridon completed his PhD as a member of the DMT lab in 2019, where he was directly involved with the SAFE project. Through his research, Spyridon primarily focused on the area of intelligent music production, mainly applying machine learning methods to create novel, intelligent audio effects. After completing his PhD, Spyridon moved to the industry, working as a machine learning engineer.