It is widely accepted that international cooperation in science and technology is crucial in dealing with many of today’s challenges which are of a global and transborder nature, such as environmental and health concerns. Enabling researchers to be mobile and to cooperate with each other across national borders is a key factor in tackling these challenges successfully.
International cooperation including researcher mobility is a key element of the European Unions’ current Research & Innovation Programme Horizon 2020 (H2020) which welcomes top-class researchers of any nationality to work on projects in and with Europe. Included in the "Excellent Science" pillar of Horizon 2020 are the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCAs) which are dedicated to the career development and training of researchers – with a focus on innovation skills – in all scientific disciplines through worldwide and cross-sector mobility. For this, the MSCA provide grants at all stages of researchers' careers, from PhD candidates to highly experienced researchers, and encourage transnational, intersectoral and interdisciplinary mobility.
Endowing researchers with new skills and a wider range of competences, while offering them attractive working conditions, is a crucial aspect of the MSCA. In addition to mobility between countries, the MSCA also seek to break the real and perceived barriers between academic and other sectors, especially business. The MSCA follow a "bottom-up" approach, i.e. individuals and organisations working in any area of research can apply for funding. Several MSCA initiatives promote the involvement of industry etc. in doctoral and postdoctoral research.
Many of the highly talented young researchers who have benefited from this prestigious fellowship scheme are active in Southeast Asia. EURAXESS ASEAN regularly invites Marie Curie Fellows who are based here in ASEAN to share their experience with our readership. This month we caught up with Belgian researcher Dr Dorien Herremans who works as an Assistant Professor at Singapore University of Technology and Design.
Dr Herremans, you are expert in a rather unusual research field. Can you tell us a little about what you do?
My work focuses on novel applications of optimization / machine learning in the domain of digital music and audio. More concretely, I’ve worked on projects that involve automatic music generation, hit prediction, calculating optimal piano fingerings, and more. My passion is leveraging cutting-edge technologies for less explored fields such as digital music.
You were involved in a research project that developed a tool to successfully predict whether a pop or dance song would become a hit. How did your team come up with this idea? I guess you must be getting lots of calls from aspiring musicians?
Indeed, we developed a tool to predict dance hit songs. The idea came when I was taking an advanced data mining course during my PhD and wanted an exciting topic to work on. I decided to explore whether a machine learning algorithm can predict hits based on audio features. The model we built worked surprisingly well! Since then, we have a few producers using the tool, and are currently working with some companies to explore commercial implementations.
EURAXESS is an EU-funded initiative that supports mobile researchers. Can you share with us the different stops of your research career so far? What are the motivating factors for you to move between different institutions and countries?
After getting my degree in Business Engineering at the University of Antwerp in Belgium I moved to Switzerland to be an IT Lecturer at Les Roches University. I’ve always been drawn to explore new countries and living in the Alps was definitely a perk. The experience brought more than just amazing landscapes, as it was extremely stimulating for me to be in an international institute. After four years I went back to Antwerp to do my PhD, during which I did a short research visit in San Sebastian, Spain. Upon completion of my PhD, I started at Queen Mary University of London, where I was at the Centre for Digital Music, a perfect environment to stimulate my research. Currently, I’m an assistant professor in Singapore.
You were a Marie Curie Fellow at the Queen Mary University of London. What encouraged you to apply for this specific grant?
One of my colleagues and good friends at the University of Antwerp, Prof. Kaliopi Mylona (now at Imperial College, London), was a MSCA fellow. She had told me only good things about the fellowship, such as the opportunity to relocate to a foreign university with experts of your field and the strong focus on international travel / networking.
I wanted to move to Queen Mary University as the Centre for Digital Music (C4DM) is situated there. This is the largest academic research centre on digital music in the world. I had visited the centre before to give an invited talk and had started collaborating with Prof. Elaine Chew there. The next logical step was to apply for an MSCA so that I could join C4DM and continue my research.
Can you tell us a little about the research you conducted as a MSCA Fellow? How has this mobility experience helped with your career development?
My time as an MSCA fellow has been some of the most productive of my whole career. I worked on hybrid machine learning methods for automatically composing music and C4DM offered me an ideal environment to further the state-of-the-art in this area of research. Thanks to the fellowship, I was able to present my work across Europe, in the US, and Asia. My MSCA supervisor even performed the generated music in concerts in Stanford, Cambridge, and London.
What is next up in your research career plan?
After my MSCA I started work as a tenure-track assistant professor at Singapore University of Technology and Design, which was co-founded by MIT. At SUTD I am also Director of Game Lab, a research institute focused on AI, VR and gamification. I currently have projects to further my MSCA research, as well as other stimulating projects such as emotion prediction from music and video.
Thank you Dr Herreman!
Dorien Herremans is an Assistant Professor at Singapore University of Technology and Design, where she is also Director of Game Lab. Dorien has a joint-appointment at the Institute of High Performance Computing, A*STAR and works as a certified instructor for the NVIDIA Deep Learning Institute. Before going to SUTD, she was a Marie Sklodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellow at the Centre for Digital Music at Queen Mary University of London, where she worked on the project: ``MorpheuS: Hybrid Machine Learning – Optimization techniques To Generate Structured Music Through Morphing And Fusion''. She received her Ph.D. in Applied Economics on the topic of Computer Generation and Classification of Music through Operations Research Methods. She graduated as a commercial engineer in management information systems at the University of Antwerp in 2005. After that, she worked as a Drupal consultant and was an IT lecturer at the Les Roches University in Bluche, Switzerland. She also worked as a mandaatassistent at the University of Antwerp, in the domain of operations management, supply chain management and operations research. Dr. Herremans' research interests lie at the intersection of machine learning/optimization and novel applications such as music/audio.
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