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georgesslI am a Research Professor in the Department of Mathematical Sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. I am interested in broad cross-disciplinary integration including mathematics, computer science, engineering, physics, psychology, music, and the arts.

My research interests include physically or mathematically based real-time rendering of sounds and sensory-rich human computer interaction and interfaces. In recent years I have been emphasizing interactions with mobile technologies in order to make them richer and more expressive. Mobile devices are easily accessible by a wide audience hence have great promise to be exciting to people who would otherwise not have the opportunity to explore interactive electronic music. In sound synthesis I am exploring physical and abstract mathematical systems to find fast and expressive algorithms.

Before coming to Milwaukee, I worked on the faculty of the University of Michigan – Ann Arbor where I lead the Mobile Music and Interaction Lab and directed the Michigan Mobile Phone Ensemble. I was Senior Research Scientist at the Deutsche Telekom Laboratories at the Technical University of Berlin in Germany where I co-ran the Mobile and Physical Interactions group with Michael Rohs and Matthias Rath. As post-doctoral researcher at MIT’s MediaLab Europe with Sile O’Modhrain on tangible interactions. PebbleBox, a tactile interface for sonic performance which Sile O’Modhrain, Andy Brady and I built was invited to the Touch Me exhibition at Victoria and Albert Museum, London in 2005. While at Media Lab Europe, I participated in the Enactive European Network of Excellence, which studies the role of action in interaction design. Between 2002-2003 I was Assistant Professor in Computer and Information Science and Engineering at the University of Florida, where I taught signal processing and synthesis of sound and digital production in an interdisciplinary program between computer science, fine arts and music. I got my Ph.D. in Computer Science from Princeton University in 2002 working with Perry Cook on physical simulation of musical instruments and inventing Banded Waveguides. I also worked on spatial audio technologies and beat perception. I received a Diploma Engineer’s degree from Graz University of Technology, Austria in 1996. Additionally I have worked at AT&T Research Labs on perceptual spatial audio and at HyperWave R&D on a commercial database integrated web server technology. A web management technology I co-developed at HyperWave won the European IT Grand Prize and two BYTE’s Best of CeBit awards in 1997. I have also advised the successful iPhone app startup-company Smule in its formative year.

I am recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship (2019), and a member of the IEEE, the Acoustical Society of America (ASA), the International Computer Music Association (ICMA), the American Mathematical Society (AMS), and the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). I have been technical chair for the International Computer Music Conference in 2004 and 2006. I served as Research Coordinator of the International Computer Music Association (ICMA) from 2006 to 2013 and am on the Advisory Board for New Interfaces for Musical Expression (NIME).