Hi, I am Nithya Shikarpur! I am a musician and a computer scientist. I am constantly looking for ways to combine music and technology for the purpose of creative exploration of music. I am currently doing my PhD at MIT EECS under the supervision of Dr. Cheng-Zhi Anna Huang . I am interested in human-AI interaction for music creation with both pedagogy and creative exploratory purposes in mind. Previously, I did my masters at Mila and Université de Montréal . Prior to this, I was a research assistant at Digital Audio Processing Lab, IIT Bombay where I worked with Dr. Preeti Rao , mostly on projects involving music information retrieval and computational analysis for Hindustani classical music.

I have been learning Hindustani classical vocal music since the age of 4 under the guidance of Smt. Geeta Hegde, Sri Dhananjay Hegde and am currently recieving training from Dr. Ruchira Kedar . I finished my undergraduate degree in Computer Science and Engineering from BITS Pilani, K.K. Birla Goa Campus in December 2019. I also had the opportunity to learn Bharathanatyam from Guru P. Praveen Kumar for over 10 years.

Apart from work, I enjoy reading, singing, exploring new styles of music, cracking terrible jokes and hanging out with my neighbour’s dog to name a few. Feel free to drop in a mail at snnithya[at]gmail[dot]com if you would like to discuss ideas or have a chat!