Matt Caren
mcaren [at] mit [dot] edu
I'm interested in human expression—and how we can build technology to understand, enable, and augment it.
I believe this work must be deeply interdisciplinary—my research interests include generative AI for expressive music and natural language, computational cognitive science, HCI, digital signal processing, and musical instrument design.
I'm currently an undergrad at MIT, where I study computer science, mathematics, and music.
At MIT, I have two lines of research:
- Developing computational models of communication using the human voice. Joint project between Joshua Tenenbaum's Computational Cognitive Science group and Jonathan Ragan-Kelley's group at MIT CSAIL; mentored by Kartik Chandra and Karima Ma.
- Researching real-time machine listening systems under Eran Egozy in the MIT Music Technology lab.
I also help run the MIT Voxel Lab, and lead undergraduate committees on AI and interdisciplinary computing at the MIT Schwarzman College of Computing.
Previously, I spent several summers developing multimodal LLM systems and bioinformatics algorithms for Apple Intelligence and the Health app. I also spent time at Stanford's CCRMA designing new expressive digital instruments under Romain Michon.
I'm also a jazz pianist, internationally-recognized film composer, and avid culinary adventurer.
