MIT SUMMIT PERFORMERS

Tod Machover

Called “America’s most wired composer” by The Los Angeles Times and a “musical visionary” by The New York Times, Tod Machover is recognized as one of the most significant and influential composers active today, and he is celebrated for inventing new technologies that expand music’s potential for everyone, from famous virtuosi to musicians of all abilities. He is Muriel R. Cooper Professor of Music and Media at the MIT Media Lab where he also directs the Opera of the Future Group.Machover studied with Elliott Carter and Roger Sessions at The Juilliard School and was the first Director of Musical Research at Pierre Boulez’s IRCAM in Paris. Machover is also Visiting Professor of Composition at the Royal Academy of Music (London) and at the Curtis Institute of Music (Philadelphia). 

Machover is particularly known for his critically acclaimed, award-winning operas, from the audience-interactive Brain Opera, to the “robotic” Death and the Powers, to the critically-acclaimed Schoenberg in Hollywood that premiered with Boston Lyric Opera in November 2018 and goes to the Vienna Volksoper during the 2019-2020 season. Machover and his team are devoted to exploring musical, multisensory experiences for curing disease and promoting wellbeing, including Gamma-embedded instruments and compositions that promote mind-brain health. BrainMind Summit participants will experience an audio-visual selection from Machover’s Brain Opera entitled: Minsky Melodies.

Psyche Loui, PhD

What gives people the chills when they are moved by a piece of music? How does connectivity in the brain enable or disrupt music perception? Can music be used to help those with neurological and psychiatric disorders? These are questions that Psyche Loui tackles in the MIND (Music, Imaging, and Neural Dynamics) Lab, which studies the neuroscience of music perception and cognition. Psyche Loui is Assistant Professor of Creativity and Creative Practice in the Department of Music at Northeastern University. Loui graduated the University of California, Berkeley with her PhD in Psychology and attended Duke University as an undergraduate graduating with degrees in Psychology and Music and a certificate in Neuroscience. She has since held faculty positions in Psychology, Neuroscience, and Integrative Sciences at Wesleyan University, and in Neurology at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Harvard Medical School. Loui has published over 50 peer-reviewed journal articles and book chapters on music and the brain. Her work has been reported by the Associated Press, New York Times, Boston Globe, BBC, CNN, NBC news and CBS radio, the Scientist magazine, and other news outlets.

Alexandra Rieger

Alexandra Rieger is a cognitive neuroscientist, multi-instrumentalist musician and anti-disciplinary doctoral researcher at the MIT Media Lab in Tod Machover's Opera of The Future Lab. Her work with the MIT Aging Brain Initiative explores the intersections of human gamma applications and dynamic multisensory cognition. Before receiving a master’s degree at MIT, she received a master’s degree in Neuroscience, Synesthesia Research and Cross-Modal Sound Studies at Dartmouth College, received her Bachelor’s at Stanford University and is an Oxford University Bing Alumna. As a honorary United Nations youth ambassador, her sonic performances and social service work throughout the world (ranging from poverty alleviation, clinical music therapy to youth literacy initiatives) and myriad academic experiences, have informed some of the larger questions in her work. She is passionate about promoting neurodiversity and improving upon the human experience by creating pathways between the fields of neuroscience, music, technology and multisensory studies. Through this, she seeks to develop and deploy sustainable solutions, assistive technologies and innovations for cognitive pathologies like Alzheimer’s and other challenges facing our communities and world.

Jamie Pabst

Jamie Pabst is the founder and CEO of SpiriTune, Inc. With an education in journalism, prior to founding SpiriTune, Ms. Pabst spent 10 years in the finance industry (venture capital and asset management). During her time in finance, she began exploring her personal interest in the behavioral components and neuroscience behind music and sound. This exploration led her to start DJing in more exploratory and non-traditional formats, using sound and visualization techniques for transformative experiences. These experiments informed her bigger vision to begin a commercially viable venture using the neuro-scientific underpinnings of music to impact emotional health and improve lives.