Matt Caren
mcaren [at] stanford.edu
Research
At Stanford, I research the interfaces between communication, language, sound, and creative expression. I spend my time between the Cognitive Tools Lab, Maneesh Agrawala's group, and Stanford CCRMA.
My work is supported by a Hertz Fellowship and a Steve Jobs Archive Fellowship.
At MIT, I researched how people communicate about sound. I was advised by Joshua Tenenbaum and Jonathan Ragan-Kelley, and lucky enough to be mentored by Kartik Chandra and Karima Ma.
I helped found 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. Some of my work lives on in Apple Intelligence and the Health app.
Sound & Color
Melia
A bespoke digital instrument searching for expressiveness in the failures of audio-to-audio AI models.
> Performance
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 Scoring - 2021 Marvin Hamlisch International Music Awards.
> WatchLast updated September 2025