We invite the CIRMMT community to participate in this workshop that will bring together experts from academia and industry to explore the challenges and rewards of collaboration in the field of music technology. This workshop will feature presentations from invited guests as well as a roundtable discussion.
Description
This workshop brings together experts from academia and industry to explore the challenges and rewards of collaboration in the field of music technology. Through concise presentations, speakers will showcase how partnerships between academic institutions and industry players can drive innovation and create lasting impact. A roundtable discussion will examine strategies for overcoming collaboration hurdles and aligning the goals of both sectors.
This session offers practical insights for participants from all backgrounds—students, researchers, and professionals alike.
Registration
We invite members of the community to register as an attendee by filling in this MS Form: Challenges and rewards of building academic-industrial collaborations
We invite you to share this event on Facebook when it becomes available.
Schedule
The talks will be 15 minute long with 5 minutes for Q&A. Following this, there will be a roundtable session for further questions and discussion.
09:30-09:50 — Takuto Yudasaka: Collaborative Innovation Sparked by Serendipity and Its Three Key Factors - Through a two-year collaborative research project with McGill University and CIRMMT, Takuto Yudasaka identified key factors that shape the sound of electric guitars, drawing inspiration from prior studies at CAML. Separately, a chance encounter in Montreal with Yamaguchi—a researcher and professional drummer affected by dystonia—led to the creation of “VXD,” a voice-triggered drum system developed using Yamaha’s proprietary technologies. These cases demonstrate how innovation can emerge from the serendipitous convergence of clear needs and unique technologies. Three key factors underpinning successful collaboration were identified: the creation of opportunities, the building of trust, and mutual understanding and commitment.
09:50-10:10 — Olivier Robin: The second edition of CIRMMT@UdeS happened on March 14, 2025, and was tagged AGORA2025 (Arts Guitare Ondes Recherches Acoustique). This symposium aimed to bring together different professions around a central theme, the guitar. It included arts/engineering visits, demonstrations, and talks featuring invited researcher/artist Carolina Espinoza from Chile. Luthiers from Quebec, professional musicians, and acoustics and structural radiation or music technology specialists met for a day devoted to scientific and technical exchanges. The presentation will summarize AGORA2025 and the lessons learned to plan AGORA2026.
10:10-10:30 — Marc-Pierre Verge: Over the years, Applied Acoustics Systems has had the opportunity to work on different projects in collaboration with academic institutions. Some of these projects led to concrete results, while others did not yield the expected outcomes. Reflecting on these experiences, we will describe what we think works well and less well in the context of a small company.
10:30-10:50 — Gary Scavone: My students and I have had the pleasure of collaborating with several different companies over the past 15 years or so, including with Yamaha Corp., Godin Guitars, Applied Acoustics, Légère Reeds, D'Addario and Audiokinetic. I will discuss the various experiences and challenges with each and summarize the types of collaborations that I think have the highest likelihood of being successful from both academic and company perspectives.
10:50-11:10 — Maximilien Simard Poirier: The games industry in under 15 minutes: The journey of making a game - Through this (very) short presentation, we will go through a fictional game development process. By exploring this narrative arc, we will be going through the process of creating a game from funding to release (and, dare I say, maybe even post-launch content release).
Along the way, we will learn about the 'business' and 'creative' aspects of this process and how each walks hand-in-hand with the other on the path to the ever glorious ship date! Funding, game design, team composition (hiring), marketing, platforms, game development milestones (terminology), and much, much more!
Who said making games is hard? If we can cover this in under 15 minutes, it can't be that hard? Can it? (foreshadowing).
11:10-11:30 — COFFEE BREAK
11:30-12:30 — Roundtable event: The workshop will conclude with a round table discussion on the topic of technology’s role in the creation, performance, and capture of music. We invite CIRMMT members, collaborators, and the wider community to participate in this discussion.
Biographies
Maximilien Simard Poirier
Maximilien Simard Poirier is a Montreal-based interactive audio designer with over a decade of experience in gaming and immersive media. Since 2012, he has freelanced for indie to AAA teams, with a focus on spatial audio, psychoacoustics, and dynamic mixing. One of the first people in VR audio (for games), Max joined Audiokinetic in 2017 as a Product Expert, supporting developers worldwide using the Wwise audio middleware. In 2019, he founded Interactive Audio Montreal (IAM), a recurring meetup and conference series that draws leading voices from studios like Electronic Arts and Ubisoft. A passionate educator and speaker, Max has presented at major industry events including Game Sound Con, ComicCon and MIGS, and regularly lectures in academia.
Olivier Robin
Olivier is an assistant professor in Mechanical Engineering at Université de Sherbrooke. He is a regular member of (1) Center of Research for Acoustics-Signal-Human at Sherbrooke and (2) CIRMMT (co-leader of Research Axis 1: Instruments, devices & systems). He also specializes in science communication, especially using comics.
Gary Scavone
Gary Scavone is a professor of music technology in the Schulich School of Music (SSM) of McGill University, where he has taught and directed the Computational Acoustic Modeling Laboratory since 2003. He is currently serving as Chair of the Music Research Department of the SSM. Dr. Scavone received PhD (1997) and MSc (1995) degrees (Music and Electrical Engineering) from Stanford University and BSc and BA (1988) degrees (Electrical Engineering and Music) from Syracuse University. From 1997-2003, he was Technical Director and Research Associate at the Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics at Stanford University. Dr. Scavone is a Fellow of the Acoustical Society of America.
Dr. Scavone's music technology research includes acoustic modeling, analysis, and synthesis of musical systems and sound processing software development. He is also a saxophonist specializing in the performance of contemporary concert music.
Marc-Pierre Verge
Marc-Pierre Verge co-founded Applied Acoustics Systems in 1998. Since then, AAS has been dedicated to the development and marketing of software synthesizers based on physical modeling. Verge holds a PhD from the Eindhoven University of Technology (The Netherlands), completed in collaboration with IRCAM and the Université du Maine in Le Mans. Prior to founding AAS, Verge worked as a researcher at the CNRS, at LAM (Laboratoire d’Acoustique Musicale) in Paris, on projects related to sound synthesis.
Takuto Yudasaka
Studied musical acoustics at the University of Tsukuba, followed by joining Yamaha Corporation in 2013 to engage in research and development of digital musical instruments and electric guitars. Since September 2023, based in Montreal to conduct collaborative research with the Computational Acoustic Modeling Laboratory (CAML) at the Schulich School of Music, McGill University, and the Center for Interdisciplinary Research in Music Media and Technology (CIRMMT).