Matt Caren

mcaren [at] stanford.edu

Matt Caren

I'm interested in human expression—and how technology can understand, enable, and augment it.

My interests include AI for sound and natural language, computational cognitive science, signal processing, jazz, poetry, and musical instrument design.

I'm currently a PhD student at Stanford University. I was previously an undergraduate at MIT, where I studied computer science, mathematics, and music.


Research

At Stanford, I research the interfaces between expression, communication, language, and sound.

I currently spend much of my time living between the Cognitive Tools Lab, and Maneesh Agrawala's graphics group.

At MIT, I developed computational models of how people use their voices to communicate sounds. I was advised by Joshua Tenenbaum and Jonathan Ragan-Kelley, and was lucky enough to be mentored by Kartik Chandra and Karima Ma.

I was a founding member of the Voxel Lab, and led undergraduate committees on AI and interdisciplinary computing at the Schwarzman College of Computing.

I spent several summers at Apple developing multimodal LLM systems and bioinformatics algorithms for Apple Intelligence and the Health app.


Sound & Color

Melia instrument

Melia

A bespoke digital instrument searching for expressiveness in the failures of audio-to-audio AI models.

> Performance
KeyWI instrument

KeyWI

A next-generation electronic wind instrument.

Developed at Stanford's CCRMA, played by Grammy award-winning artists on international stages.

Etude

Original music composed for short film.

Winner, Film/Media Scoring, 2021 Marvin Hamlisch International Music Awards.

> Watch


Last updated August 2025