National & Kapodistrian University of Athens

Greece

The National and Kapodistrian University of Athens (NKUA) is a public university in Athens, Greece, founded in 1837. It is the oldest higher education institution of the modern Greek state and the first contemporary university in the Eastern Mediterranean. Today it is one of the largest universities by enrolment in Europe, with about 12,5000 undergraduate and postgraduate students, over 2,000 members of academic staff approximately 1,300 administrative and secretarial staff and specialized personnel.

The Department of Music Studies has a strong research profile in all scientific disciplines pertinent to music and musicology. The coexistence of various scientific disciplines in the department creates an academic environment conducive to music studies, adhering to current international academic standards. Its curriculum treats the following scientific fields: Systematic and Historical Musicology, Byzantine Musicology, Ethnomusicology and Cultural Anthropology, Music Education, and Music Acoustics and Technology.

The Laboratory of Music Acoustics and Technology (Lab MAT) fulfils the educational, research and artistic undergraduate and post graduate needs of the Music Department, in the areas of Music Acoustics and Technology, Electroacoustic and Computer music, Music informatics (computational musicology) and Music perception and cognition. The laboratory is involved in several national and European research projects related to music acoustics, music technology, music informatics, psychoacoustics, computational musicology, arcaeomusicology, voice signal analysis, composition and artistic creativity, performance, and sound installations.

Role in SONICOM

The Laboratory of Music Acoustics and Technology (LabMAT) of the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens (NKUA) will lead the work of WP4 (Evaluation). In addition, it will be involved in the research conducted in WP1, WP2, and WP4, looking at the development and evaluation of a perceptually informed HRTF database matching system and on the design and evaluation of the Audio-first remote social interaction scenario focusing on remote music education.

Team members

Areti Andreopoulou is an Assistant Professor in Music Technology at the Department of Music Studies, NKUA and a leading researcher at the Laboratory of Music Acoustic and Technology (LabMAT). She holds a bachelor’s degree in musicology from the University of Athens, and a Master’s and PhD degrees in Music Technology from NYU. Her research evolves around audio signal processing, virtual and augmented reality auditory perception, acoustics, and psychoacoustics. Currently, Dr Andreopoulou is conducting research as part of the Greek national funded project ASMA (Assistance for Singing and Music Aesthetics), which focuses on the development of educational tools complementing vocal pedagogy in elementary school education, and of the Greek national funded project TRACCE (TRavelogue with Augmented Cultural & Contemporary Experience), focusing on the design of historically informed immersive soundscapes and their evaluation.

Anastasia Georgaki is a Professor in Music Technology at the Department of Music Studies NKUA. She is the Director of the Department of Music Studies and Head of the Laboratory of Music Acoustic and Technology (LabMAT). She studied Physics (NKUA) and Music (Hellenic Conservatory of Athens), and holds a Master’s and PhD degrees in Music Technology and Musicology of the 20th Century at IRCAM/EHESS, Paris. Dr Georgaki has participated in several national and European funding projects both as a PC as well as a PI. Her research projects focus on the analysis of the Greek singing voice, development of tools in music creation, education and research, aspects on the impact of technology in contemporary music creation, acoustic ecology, and virtual soundscapes.

Maria Pachnisti is a graduate of the Department of Music Studies and of the Master’s program in “History, Theory, Composition, and Interpretation of Art Music” from NKUA. She also holds a degree in pedagogy from the same university and is a professional flute player and instructor. She is a sustaining collaborator of LabMAT and will be involved in the development and execution of the Music Education related tasks in WP4. Pachnisti is also serving as administrative staff of the “Music Technology and Contemporary Practices” MA program of the Department of Music Studies and will assist our institution with the administrative task of the project.

Konstantinos Bakogiannis is an accomplished engineer, musicologist, musician, and sound and music computing researcher. He holds a Ph.D. and an M.Eng. from the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the National and Technical University of Athens (NTUA) as well as an M.A. from the Department of Music Studies at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens (NKUA). Currently, he is a Research Fellow at the Department of Music Studies (NKUA) and a fixed-term Lecturer at the Department of Digital Arts and Cinema (NKUA), having previously served as a research fellow at the Department of Informatics and Telecommunications (NKUA). His research interests encompass a wide range of topics, including the physical modeling of musical instruments, 3D audio and immersive sound, computer music, interactive multimedia, and music for contemporary dance.

Eleni Tavelidou is a PhD researcher at the Department of Music Studies, NKUA. She is a graduate of the aforementioned department and holds a Master’s degree in Applied Acoustics from Solent Southampton University, UK. Her main interests lie in the fields of music, audio and acoustics as well as their applications in Virtual Reality Environments. She has experience in projects associated with sound and vibration as well as structural appraisals and acoustics 3D modeling software, gained whilst working as an acoustics consultant in the UK. Her current research involves the investigation of the impact of Extended Reality (XR) technologies on remote music instruction from the perspective of professional music instructors.

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