Rising up in Mexico and Texas, Mariano Salcedo ’25 couldn’t readily indulge his ardour for creating music. “There aren’t any bands in Mexican public faculties,” he says. Whereas some households may pay for devices and classes, others, like Salcedo’s, have been much less lucky.
“I’ve all the time beloved music,” he continues. “I used to be a listener.”
Salcedo, the Alex Rigopulos (1992) Fellow in Music Expertise and Computation, earned an BS in Synthetic Intelligence and Resolution Making from MIT, the place he explored sign processing in machine studying and the way a classical understanding of alerts can inform how we perceive AI. Now he’s one among 5 grasp’s college students within the Music Expertise and Computation Graduate Program’s inaugural cohort.
This system, directed by professor of the observe in music know-how Eran Egozy ’93, MNG ’95, is a collaboration between the Music and Theater Arts Part within the College of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences (SHASS), and the College of Engineering. It invitations practitioners to check, uncover, and develop new computational approaches to music. It additionally features a speaker sequence that exposes college students and the broader MIT group to music business professionals, artists, technologists, and different researchers.
Rigopulos ’92, SM ’94 is a online game designer, musician, and former CEO of Harmonix Music Programs, an organization he co-founded with Egozy in 1995. Harmonix is now part of Epic Video games, the place Rigopulos is the director of sport improvement music.
“MIT is the place I used to be first capable of pursue my ardour for music know-how a long time in the past, and that have was the springboard for an extended and fulfilling profession,” says Rigopulos. “So, when MIT launched a sophisticated diploma program in music know-how, I used to be thrilled to fund a fellowship to assist propel this thrilling new program.”
Salcedo’s analysis focuses on neural mobile automata (NCA), which merges classical mobile automata with machine studying strategies to develop pictures that may regenerate. When paired with a stimulus like music, these pictures can “present” sounds in motion.
“This strategy permits anybody to create music-driven visuals whereas leveraging the expressive and typically unpredictable dynamics of self-organized methods,” Salcedo says. By way of the net interface Salcedo designed, customers can alter the connection between the music’s power and the NCA system to create distinctive visible performances utilizing any music audio stream.
“I need the visuals to enrich and elevate the listening expertise,” he says.
Egozy is obsessed with Salcedo’s work and his dedication to additional exploring its potentialities. “He’s a lovely instance of a multidisciplinary researcher who thinks deeply about how you can greatest use know-how to boost and develop human creativity,” he says.
Salcedo has been chosen to ship the coed deal with on the 2026 Superior Diploma Ceremony for SHASS. “It’s an honor, and it’s daunting,” he says. “It seems like an enormous accountability,” although one he’s wanting to embrace. His choice additionally pleases Egozy. “I’m tremendous excited that Marino was chosen to ship this yr’s keynote,” he enthuses.
Altering gears
Salcedo started his MIT journey as a mechanical engineering (MechE) scholar, making use of to MIT by way of the Questbridge program. “I heard in the event you like engineering and science that attending MIT could be an incredible alternative,” he remembers. “Nerds are welcomed and embraced.” Whereas he dutifully labored towards finishing his MechE curriculum, music and know-how got here calling after an opportunity encounter with a big language mannequin (LLM).
“I used to be launched to an LLM chatbot and was blown away,” he remembers. “This was one thing that was chatting with me. I used to be each awed and frightened.” After his encounter with the chatbot, Salcedo switched his main from mechanical engineering to synthetic intelligence and decision-making.
“I mainly began over, after being two-thirds of the way in which by way of the MechE curriculum,” he says. He realized in regards to the potentialities obtainable with AI but in addition confronted a few of the challenges bedeviling researchers and builders, together with its potential energy, guaranteeing its accountable use, human bias, restricted entry for folks from underrepresented teams, and a scarcity of variety amongst builders. He determined he may be capable to change that image.
“I believed, yet one more particular person within the discipline may make a distinction,” he says.
Whereas finishing his undergraduate research, Salcedo’s love of music resurfaced. “I started DJing at MIT and was hooked,” he says. Whereas he hadn’t realized to play a standard instrument, he found he may create partaking soundscapes with know-how. “I purchased a digital audio work station to assist me make music,” he continues.
Egozy and Salcedo met in 2024, whereas Salcedo accomplished an Undergraduate Analysis Alternatives Program rotation as a sport developer in Egozy’s lab. “He was extremely curious and has grown tremendously over a really quick time interval,” Egozy says. Egozy grew to become a casual, though necessary, mentor to Salcedo. “He brings nice power and thoughtfulness to his work, and to supporting others within the [music technology and computation graduate] program,” Egozy notes.
Salcedo additionally took a category with Egozy, 21M.385/21M.585/6.4450 (Interactive Music Programs), which additional fed his urge for food for the creativity he craved whereas additionally permitting him to indulge his fascination with music’s potentialities. By benefiting from programs within the SHASS curriculum, he additional developed his understanding of music idea and associated applied sciences.
“I took a category with professor Leslie Tilley, 21M.240 (Critically Pondering in Music), which helped set up a helpful framework for understanding music making,” he says, “whereas a category like 6.3000 (Sign Processing) helped me join instinct with science.”
Working throughout disciplines
Whereas Salcedo is captivated with his music and his analysis, he’s additionally invested in constructing relationships together with his fellow college students. He’s a member of the fraternity Sigma Nu, the place he says he “discovered a house and group.” He additionally took a MISTI journey to Chile in summer season 2023, the place he carried out music know-how analysis. Salcedo praises the tradition of camaraderie at MIT and is grateful for its affect on his work as a scholar. “MIT has taught me how you can study,” he says.
Professors inspired him to current his analysis and findings. He introduced his work — Synthetic Dancing Intelligence: Neural Mobile Automata for Visible Efficiency of Music — on the Affiliation for the Development of Synthetic Intelligence convention in Singapore in January 2026.
Salcedo believes his analysis can probably transfer past music visualization. “What if we may enhance the methods we mannequin self-organized methods?” he asks. “That’s, methods like multicellular organisms, flocks of birds, or societies that work together regionally however exhibit attention-grabbing behaviors.” Any system, Salcedo says, the place the entire is greater than the sum of its elements.
Growing the know-how used to design his utility can probably assist reply necessary moral questions concerning AI’s continued growth and development. The trail to his work’s improvement is each daunting and lonely, however these challenges feed his work ethic.
“It’s intimidating to pursue this path when the academy is at the moment centered on LLMs,” he says. “However it’s additionally necessary to clarify and discover the bottom know-how earlier than digging into extra nuanced work, which can assist audiences perceive it higher.” Understanding that he has the assist of his professors helps Salcedo preserve pleasure for his concepts. “They solely ask that we floor our pursuits in analysis,” he says.
His investigations are impacting his work as a musician. “My music has gotten extra attention-grabbing due to the courses I’m taking,” he says. He’s additionally all for understanding whose music the academy and the world hears, exploring biases towards Western music within the canon and exploring how you can cut back biases associated to which sorts of music are valued.
“The work we do as technologists is way much less subjective than we’re led to imagine,” he believes.
Salcedo is very grateful for the assist he’s obtained throughout his time at MIT. “Program college encourage a wide range of pursuits,” he says, “and ask us to advance our particular person goals, reasonably than specializing in theirs.” Throughout his time within the graduate program, he notes with enthusiasm how typically he’s been challenged to pursue his concepts.
Finally, Salcedo needs folks to expertise the enjoyment he feels working on the intersection of the humanities and the sciences. Music and know-how influence practically everybody. Inviting audiences into his laboratory as contributors within the artistic and analysis processes presents the identical sort of satisfaction he will get from crafting an incredible beat or fixing for a thorny technical problem. Serving to audiences perceive his work’s worth fuels his drive to succeed.
“I need customers to really feel motion and discover sounds and their influence extra absolutely,” he says.
