Plenary and Keynote Speakers

Dr. Charles Spence
University of Oxford, UK
Plenary Speaker

Professor Charles Spence is a world-famous experimental psychologist with a specialization in neuroscience-inspired multisensory design. He has worked with many of the world’s largest companies across the globe since establishing the Crossmodal Research Laboratory (CRL) at the Department of Experimental Psychology, Oxford University in 1997. Prof. Spence has published over 1,100 academic articles and edited or authored, 16 books including, in 2014, the Prose prize-winning “The perfect meal”, and the international bestseller “Gastrophysics: The new science of eating” (2017; Penguin Viking) – winner of the 2019 Le Grand Prix de la Culture Gastronomique from Académie Internationale de la Gastronomie. His latest book Sensehacking was published in 2021.

Much of Prof. Spence’s work focuses on the design of enhanced multisensory food and drink experiences, through collaborations with chefs, baristas, mixologists, chocolatiers, perfumiers, and the food and beverage, and flavour and fragrance industries. Prof. Spence has worked extensively in the world of multisensory experiential wine and coffee and has also worked extensively on the question of how technology will transform our dining/drinking experiences in the future.

Topic of Keynote: The Art And Science Of Introducing Technology At The Dining Table, From High-End Hospitality To The Home

Dr. Peter Driessen
Universiteit Utrecht, Netherlands
Dr. Peter Driessen

Topic of Keynote: Artist Live Multimedia Performance Using the Radiodrum HCI

Dr. George Tzanetakis
University of Victoria, Canada
Keynote Speaker

George Tzanetakis is a Professor in the Department of Computer Science with cross-listed appointments in ECE and Music at the University of Victoria, Canada. He was a Canada Research Chair (Tier II) in the Computer Analysis and Audio and Music between 2010 and 2020 and received the Craigdaroch research award in artistic expression at the University of Victoria in 2012. In 2011 he was Visiting Faculty at Google Research. He received his PhD in Computer Science at Princeton University in 2002 and was a Post-Doctoral fellow at Carnegie Mellon University in 2002-2003. His research spans all stages of audio content analysis such as feature extraction, segmentation, classification with specific emphasis on music information retrieval. His pioneering work on musical genre classification received a IEEE signal processing society young author award and is frequently cited. More recently he has been exploring new interfaces for musical expression, music robotics, computational ethnomusicology, and computer-assisted music instrument tutoring. These interdisciplinary activities combine ideas from signal processing, perception, machine learning, sensors, actuators and human-computer interaction with the connecting theme of making computers better understand music to create more effective interactions with musicians and listeners (http://www.cs.uvic.ca/~gtzan).

Topic of Keynote: Blending the Physical and the Virtual: Multi-Modal Human-Computer Interaction for Music
Keynote Abstract