WORKSHOP: Think Tank (Graduate Consortium) at ISMIR 2016

New York University, New York NY

Investigators

Abstract

This is funding to support a Think Tank (workshop) for up to 25 promising graduate students along with a panel of up to 6 distinguished research faculty as mentors (including one from Europe). The event will take place in conjunction with the 2016 International Society of Music Information Retrieval Conference (ISMIR 2016), to be held at New York University in New York City from August 7-11, with the Think Tank on the Thursday and Friday before (August 4-5). ISMIR is the premier international forum for presenting research on the modelling, creation, searching, processing and use of musical data. As the term Music Information Retrieval (MIR) indicates, this research is motivated by the desire to provide music lovers, music professionals and the music industry with robust, effective and usable methods and tools to help them locate, retrieve and experience the music they wish to have access to. MIR is a truly interdisciplinary area, involving researchers from the disciplines of musicology, cognitive science, library and information science, computer science, electrical engineering and many others. More information is available online at https://wp.nyu.edu/ismir2016/. The Think Tank is open to graduate students at all stages of their educational program, including both Master's and PhD students; exceptional undergraduates who have demonstrated interest in pursuing this field in their graduate careers may also be considered. To enable the Think Tank to provide an interdisciplinary atmosphere similar to that of ISMIR itself, students will be selected to span a range of research interests. In addition, the organizers will be proactive in promoting diversity among attendees along dimensions such as gender and disability status. And to ensure institutional diversity, the organizers have made a commitment to invite no more than two student participants from any one institution, and if two are invited from the same institution then at least one of them will be a woman. The goals of the Think Tank are: to develop a group of promising young researchers dedicated to music information retrieval, as well as universal access and universal usability, and to provide them with a global network of colleagues from academia and industry to mentor their professional development; to offer each participant fresh perspectives and comments on his/her work from researchers at other institutions, including both faculty and other students; to provide a supportive setting for mutual feedback on participants' current research and guidance on future research directions; and to allow the students to learn of potential career paths within academia and industry. All student participants supported by NSF money will be from institutions of higher learning in the United States. Up to 15 Think Tank Scholars will have their attendance heavily subsidized, and if possible, completely supported; an additional 10 Think Tank Scholars local to the greater New York City area will have their attendance (but not accommodation) subsidized. Industry partners will collaborate with RealIndustry.org to prepare an online mini-course orienting accepted graduate students to current industry best-practices, challenges, and development platforms. Selected student participants will take this course prior to the meeting and provide the other members of the Think Tank with a short write-up of their own work-in-progress. At the Think Tank, students will make brief formal presentations of their work after which small group discussions that include students, faculty, and industry mentors will take place in which all participants provide constructive feedback to help students understand how their work relates to other relevant research, whether their dissertation or master's thesis topics are appropriately focused, whether their methods are correct for the given topic, and whether their analyses are appropriate with well-articulated results. In addition, two panels of industry researchers will give presentations on job opportunities and on the day-to-day work of industry researchers. The Think Tank will be evaluated, and the results made available to the organizers of future such events.