Research
Communication acoustics, Music informatics, Machine learning and AI, Computational Creativity, Human-computer interaction, Computational social science
Interests
I am currently Lecturer in digital signal processing at QMUL's School of Electronic Engineering and Computer Science. Within EECS, I am member of the
Centre for Digital Music,
Centre for Multimodal AI,
Centre for Human-Centred Computing,
Digital Environment Research Institute , and I lead the
Communication Acoustics Lab.
My lab's research approach blends machine learning and AI with experimental (hypothesis-led) and creative (discovery-led) research practices to understand different modalities of experience and interaction between the digital music “user” (listeners, performers, producers) and music/sound as a multimodal semiotic system. We conduct cutting-edge research into the ways people experience sound and technologies to understand, model and enhance musical communication between humans and between humans and machines.
On academic service, I am currently Vice Chair of the
European Acoustics Association (EAA) Technical Committee on Musical Acoustics (TCMA). I am a founding member and currently chair of the
International Conference on Timbre. Within QMUL, I am a member of the EECS Equalities Committee and the QMUL Racial Equality Action Group, and Chair of the EECS Devolved School Research Ethics Committee.
My most recent CV and complete publication list can be found
here.
Publications

Publications of specific relevance to the Centre for Human-Centred Computing
2025
Evaluating Foundation Models on Timbre-Related Cognitive TasksVelissaridis G Athwal R Musharaf M Fazekas G Saitis C
1st Workshop on Large Language Models for Music & Audio (LLM4MA).
20-10-2025
Assessing the Alignment of Audio Representations with Timbre Similarity RatingsTian H Lattner S Saitis C
In
Arxiv 10-07-2025
Predicting Moral Values in Lyrics Through AudioSaitis C Heyderman B Preniqi V Kalimeri K Pauwels J
IEEE International Conference on Content-Based Multimedia Indexing.
01-07-2025
(De)Constructing Timbre at NIME: Reflecting on Technology and Aesthetic Entanglements in Instrument DesignSaitis C Reed CN Noel-Hirst A Lepri G Mcpherson A
International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression.
24-06-2025
Audio synthesizer inversion in symmetric parameter spaces with approximately equivariant flow matchingHayes B Saitis C Fazekas G
In
Arxiv 08-06-2025
Mamba-Diffusion Model with Learnable Wavelet for Controllable Symbolic Music GenerationZhang J Fazekas G Saitis C
In
Arxiv 06-05-2025
Designing Neural Synthesizers for Low-Latency InteractionCaspe F Shier J Sandler M Saitis C McPherson A
In
Arxiv 14-03-2025
Hybrid Losses for Hierarchical Embedding LearningTian H Lattner S McFee B Saitis C
2025 IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing (ICASSP 2025).
07-03-2025
Hybrid Losses for Hierarchical Embedding LearningTian H Lattner S McFee B Saitis C
In
Arxiv 22-01-20252024
A multimodal understanding of the role of sound and music in gendered toy marketingMarinelli L Lucht P
Plos One,
Public Library of Science (Plos) vol. 19 (11)
06-11-2024
Composer Style-specific Symbolic Music Generation Using Vector Quantized Discrete Diffusion ModelsZhang J Saitis C
IEEE International Workshop on Machine Learning for Signal Processing (MLSP) 22 Sep 2024 - 25 Sep 2024.
22-09-2024
Timbre Tools: Ethnographic Perspectives on Timbre and Sonic Cultures in Hackathon DesignsSaitis C Del Sette BM Shier J Tian H Zheng S Skach S Reed CN Ford C
Audio Mostly 2024 - Explorations in Sonic Cultures., 229-244.
18-09-2024
Building Sketch-to-Sound Mapping with Unsupervised Feature Extraction and Interactive Machine LearningZheng S Del Sette BM Saitis C Xambo Sedo A Bryan-Kinns N
New Interfaces for Musical Expression Utrecht, The Netherlands 4 Sep 2024 - 6 Sep 2024.
04-09-2024
MoralBERT: A Fine-Tuned Language Model for Capturing Moral Values in Social DiscussionsPreniqi V Ghinassi I Ive J Saitis C
Proceedings of the 2024 International Conference on Information Technology for Social Good., 433-442.
04-09-2024
Foundation Models for Music: A SurveyMa Y Øland A Ragni A Del Sette BM Saitis C Donahue C Lin C Plachouras C et al.
In
Arxiv 26-08-2024
Timbral brightness perception investigated through multimodal interferenceSaitis C Wallmark Z
Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics,
Springer Nature vol. 86 (6), 1835-1845.
01-08-2024
Automatic Detection of Moral Values in Music LyricsPreniqi V Ghinassi I Ive J Saitis C
25th International Society for Music Information Retrieval Conference 10 Nov 2024 - 14 Nov 2024.
26-07-2024
Deep Learning-based Audio Representations for the Analysis and Visualisation of Electronic Dance Music DJ MixesWilliams A Tian H Lattner S Barthet M Saitis C
AES International Symposium on AI and the Musician Boston, MA, USA 6 Jun 2024 - 8 Jun 2024.
06-06-2024
Explainable Modeling of Gender-Targeting Practices in Toy Advertising Sound and MusicMarinelli L Saitis C
ICASSP 2024 Workshop XAI-SA Seoul 14 Apr 2024 - 19 Apr 2024.
14-04-2024
MoralBERT: A Fine-Tuned Language Model for Capturing Moral Values in Social DiscussionsPreniqi V Ghinassi I Ive J Saitis C Kalimeri K
In
Arxiv 12-03-2024
Timbral effects of col legno tratto techniques on bowed cello soundsPàmies-Vilà M
The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America. vol. 155 (3), a60-a60.
01-03-2024
Composer Style-Specific Symbolic Music Generation using Vector Quantized Discrete Diffusion ModelsZhang J Fazekas G
2024 IEEE 34th International Workshop on Machine Learning for Signal Processing (MLSP). vol. 00, 1-6.
25-01-2024
A review of differentiable digital signal processing for music and speech synthesisHayes B Shier J Fazekas G McPherson A Saitis C
Frontiers in Signal Processing,
Frontiers vol. 3
11-01-20242023
Soundscapes of morality: Linking music preferences and moral values through lyrics and audioPreniqi V Kalimeri K Saitis C
Plos One,
Public Library of Science (Plos) vol. 18 (11)
29-11-2023
Gender-Coded Sound: Analysing the Gendering of Music in Toy Commercials via Multi-Task LearningMarinelli L FAZEKAS G
24th International Society for Music Information Retrieval Conference Milan 5 Nov 2023 - 9 Nov 2023.
05-11-2023
Composer Style-specific Symbolic Music Generation Using Vector Quantized Discrete Diffusion ModelsZhang J Fazekas G Saitis C
In
Arxiv 21-10-2023
Fast Diffusion GAN Model for Symbolic Music Generation Controlled by EmotionsZhang J Fazekas G Saitis C
In
Arxiv 21-10-2023
Sound of Care: Towards a Co-Operative AI Digital Pain Companion to Support People with Chronic Primary PainDel Sette BM Carnes D Saitis C
Computer Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing., 283-288.
14-10-2023
Differentiable Modelling of Percussive Audio with Transient and Spectral SynthesisShier J Caspe F Robertson A Sandler M Saitis C McPherson A
In
Arxiv 12-09-2023
Differentiable Modelling of Percussive Audio with Transient and Spectral SynthesisShier J Caspe F Robertson A Sandler M Mcpherson A Saitis C
10th Convention of the European Acoustics Association (Forum Acusticum) 11 Sep 2023 - 15 Sep 2023.
11-09-2023
A Review of Differentiable Digital Signal Processing for Music & Speech SynthesisHayes B Shier J Fazekas G McPherson A Saitis C
In
Arxiv 29-08-2023
Sinusoidal Frequency Estimation by Gradient DescentHayes B Saitis C
ICASSP 2023 - 2023 IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech and Signal Processing (ICASSP). vol. 00, 1-5.
10-06-2023
Rigid-Body Sound Synthesis with Differentiable Modal ResonatorsDiaz R Hayes B Saitis C Fazekas G Sandler M
ICASSP 2023 - 2023 IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech and Signal Processing (ICASSP). vol. 00, 1-5.
10-06-2023
Interactive Neural ResonatorsDiaz Fernandez R Saitis C Sandler M
International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression.
31-05-2023
Interactive Neural ResonatorsDiaz R Saitis C Sandler M
In
Arxiv 24-05-2023
The Responsibility Problem in Neural Networks with Unordered TargetsHayes B Fazekas G
International Conference on Learning Representations.
19-04-2023
The language of sounds unheard: Exploring musical timbre semantics of large language modelsSiedenburg K Saitis C
In
Arxiv 16-04-2023
Timbre Semantic Associations Vary Both Between and Within InstrumentsReymore L Noble J Saitis C
Music Perception: An Interdisciplinary Journal,
University of California Press vol. 40 (3), 253-274.
01-02-2023
Modelling Moral Traits with Music Listening Preferences and DemographicsPreniqi V Kalimeri K Saitis C
In
Music in The AI Era,
Springer Nature 183-194.
01-01-20232022
Rigid-Body Sound Synthesis with Differentiable Modal ResonatorsDiaz R Hayes B Saitis C Fazekas G Sandler M
In
Arxiv 27-10-2022
Sinusoidal Frequency Estimation by Gradient DescentHayes B Fazekas G
In
Arxiv 26-10-2022
More Than Words: Linking Music Preferences and Moral Values Through LyricsPreniqi V Kalimeri K
International Society for Music Information Retrieval Conference.
02-09-2022
Timbre Transfer with Variational Auto Encoding and Cycle-Consistent Adversarial NetworksBonnici RS Benning M
2022 International Joint Conference on Neural Networks (IJCNN). vol. 00, 1-8.
23-07-2022
Disembodied Timbres: A Study on Semantically Prompted FM SynthesisHayes B Saitis C
Journal of The Audio Engineering Society,
Audio Engineering Society vol. 70 (5), 373-391.
11-05-2022
Deep Embeddings for Robust User-Based Amateur Vocal Percussion ClassificationDelgado A Demirel E Subramanian V Saitis C Sandler M
In
Arxiv 10-04-2022
Deep Conditional Representation Learning for Drum Sample Retrieval by VocalisationDelgado A Saitis C Benetos E Sandler M
In
Arxiv 10-04-2022
PrefaceSaitis C Farkhatdinov I
01-01-2022
Deep Embeddings for Robust User-Based Amateur Vocal Percussion ClassificationDelgado A Demirel E Subramanian V Saitis C Sandler M
19th Sound and Music Computing Conferences., 123-130.
01-01-2022
timbre.fun: A gamified interactive system for crowdsourcing a timbre semantic vocabularyHayes B Saitis C
Proceedings of the International Congress on Acoustics.
01-01-20222021
Neural Waveshaping SynthesisHayes B Saitis C
Proceedings of the 22nd International Society for Music Information Retrieval Online 8 Nov 2021 - 12 Nov 2021.
07-11-2021
Learning Models for Query by Vocal Percussion: A Comparative StudyDelgado A McDonald S Xu N Saitis C Sandler M
In
Arxiv 18-10-2021
Timbre Transfer with Variational Auto Encoding and Cycle-Consistent Adversarial NetworksBonnici RS Saitis C
In
Arxiv 05-09-2021
A Modulation Front-End for Music Audio TaggingVahidi C Fazekas G
The International Joint Conference on Neural Networks 18 Jul 2021 - 22 Jul 2021.
18-07-2021
Neural Waveshaping SynthesisHayes B Saitis C
In
Arxiv 11-07-2021
Modelling Moral Traits with Music Listening Preferences and DemographicsPreniqi V Kalimeri K
In
Arxiv 01-07-2021
20 NIMEs: Twenty Years of New Interfaces for Musical ExpressionFasciani S Goode J
NIME 2021.
01-06-2021
A Modulation Front-End for Music Audio TaggingVahidi C Saitis C
In
Arxiv 25-05-2021
Phoneme Mappings for Online Vocal Percussion TranscriptionDelgado A Saitis C Sandler M
151st Audio Engineering Society Convention 2021., 129-138.
01-01-2021
The Timbre Explorer: A Synthesizer Interface for Educational Purposes and Perceptual StudiesLam JR Saitis C
International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression.
01-01-2021
Learning Models for Query by Vocal Percussion: A Comparative StudyDelgado A McDonald ST Xu N Saitis C Sandler M
Icmc 2021 Proceedings of the International Computer Music Conference 2021., 166-171.
01-01-20212020
Brightness perception for musical instrument sounds: Relation to timbre dissimilarity and source-cause categoriesSaitis C Siedenburg K
The Journal of The Acoustical Society of America,
Acoustical Society of America vol. 148 (4), 2256-2266.
21-10-2020
Timbre Space Representation of a Subtractive SynthesizerVahidi C Fazekas G Saitis C
In
Arxiv 24-09-2020
Spectral and Temporal Timbral Cues of Vocal Imitations of Drum SoundsDelgado Luezas A Saitis C Sandler M
2nd International Conference on Timbre.
04-09-2020
Timbre Space Representation of a Subtractive SynthesizerVahidi C Fazekas G Saitis C
International Conference on Timbre (Timbre 2020) 3 Sep 2020 - 4 Sep 2020.
03-09-2020
There’s more to timbre than musical instruments: semantic dimensions of FM soundsHayes B Saitis C
Timbre 2020 Thessaloniki (Online) 3 Sep 2020 - 4 Sep 2020., 69-72.
03-09-2020
Evidence for timbre space robustness to an uncontrolled online stimulus presentationZACHARAKIS A Hayes B Saitis C
Timbre 2020 Thessaloniki (Online) 3 Sep 2020 - 4 Sep 2020., 129-132.
03-09-2020
Musical dynamics classification with CNN and modulation spectraMarinelli L Weinzierl S Saitis C
17th Sound and Music Computing Conference Torino 24 Aug 2020 - 26 Aug 2020.
24-08-2020
Timbre semantics through the lens of crossmodal correspondences: A new way of asking old questionsSaitis C Weinzierl S von Kriegstein K Ystad S
Acoustical Science and Technology,
Acoustical Society of Japan vol. 41 (1), 365-368.
01-01-20202019
Timbre: Acoustics, Perception, and CognitionSiedenburg K Saitis C Popper AN
15-05-2019
The Semantics of TimbreSaitis C
In
Timbre: Acoustics, Perception, and Cognition,
Springer Nature 119-149.
01-01-2019
Audio Content Descriptors of TimbreCaetano M Saitis C
In
Timbre: Acoustics, Perception, and Cognition,
Springer Nature 297-333.
01-01-2019
The Present, Past, and Future of Timbre ResearchSiedenburg K Saitis C
In
Timbre: Acoustics, Perception, and Cognition,
Springer Nature 1-19.
01-01-20192018
Multimodal Classification of Stressful Environments in Visually Impaired Mobility Using EEG and Peripheral BiosignalsSaitis C
In
Arxiv 25-11-2018
Multimodal Classification of Stressful Environments in Visually Impaired Mobility Using EEG and Peripheral BiosignalsSaitis C
IEEE Transactions on Affective Computing 22-08-2018
Musical HapticsPapetti S
14-05-2018
Musical Haptics: IntroductionPapetti S Saitis C
In
Musical Haptics 1-7.
03-05-2018
The Role of Haptic Cues in Musical Instrument Quality PerceptionSaitis C Fritz C
In
Musical Haptics 73-93.
03-05-2018
Cognitive Load Assessment from EEG and Peripheral Biosignals for the Design of Visually Impaired Mobility AidsSaitis C Parvez MZ
Wireless Communications and Mobile Computing vol. 2018
28-02-20182017
Concepts of timbre emerging from musician linguistic expressionsSaitis C
The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America. vol. 141 (5), 3799-3799.
01-05-2017
Perceptual evaluation of violins: A psycholinguistic analysis of preference verbal descriptions by experienced musicians.Saitis C Fritz C Scavone GP Dubois D
J Acoust Soc Am,
Acoustical Society of America vol. 141 (4), 2746-2757.
19-04-2017
Fractal Art: Closer to Heaven? Modern Mathematics, the Art of Nature, and the Nature of ArtSaitis C
In
Aesthetics of Interdisciplinarity: Art and Mathematics,
Springer Nature 153-163.
01-01-20172016
Exploring multimodal biosignal features for stress detection during indoor mobilityKalimeri K
Proceedings of the 18th ACM International Conference on Multimodal Interaction., 53-60.
31-10-2016
Model-based obstacle sonification for the navigation of visually impaired personsSpagnol S Johannesson OI Kristjansson A Unnthorsson R Kalimeri K Bujacz M
Proceedings of the International Conference on Digital Audio Effects Dafx., 309-316.
01-01-2016
Sound of Vision - Spatial Audio Output and Sonification ApproachesBujacz M Kropidlowski K Ivanica G Moldoveanu A Saitis C Csapo A Wersenyi G Johannesson OI
In
Computers Helping People With Special Needs,
Springer Nature 202-209.
01-01-2016
Identifying Urban Mobility Challenges for the Visually Impaired with Mobile Monitoring of Multimodal BiosignalsSaitis C Kalimeri K
In
Universal Access in Human-Computer Interaction. Users and Context Diversity,
Springer Nature 616-627.
01-01-20162015
Post-Classification of Nominally Identical Steel-String Guitars Using Bridge AdmittancesMansour H Fréour V Saitis C
Acta Acustica,
European Acoustics Association vol. 101 (2), 394-407.
01-03-2015
Effect of Task Constraints on the Perceptual Evaluation of ViolinsSaitis C Scavone GP Fritz C
Acta Acustica,
European Acoustics Association vol. 101 (2), 382-393.
01-03-20152014
Correcting Large-Scale OMR Data with CrowdsourcingSaitis C Hankinson A
Proceedings of the 1st International Workshop on Digital Libraries for Musicology., 1-3.
12-09-2014
Categorization and lexicon in verbal descriptions of violin quality by performersSaitis C Fritz C Scavone GP
The Journal of The Acoustical Society of America,
Acoustical Society of America (ASA) vol. 135 (4), 2214-2214.
01-04-20142013
Perceptual evaluation of violins: A comparison of intra-individual agreement in playing vs. listening tasks for the case of richnessSaitis C Scavone GP Fritz C
Proceedings of Meetings on Acoustics. vol. 19 (1)
02-06-2013
Perceptual evaluation of violins: A comparison of intra-individual agreement in playing vs. listening tasks for the case of richnessSaitis C Scavone GP Fritz C
The Journal of The Acoustical Society of America,
Acoustical Society of America (ASA) vol. 133 (5), 3365-3365.
01-05-20132012
Perceptual evaluation of violins: A quantitative analysis of preference judgments by experienced playersSaitis C Giordano BL Fritz C
The Journal of The Acoustical Society of America,
Acoustical Society of America (ASA) vol. 132 (6), 4002-4012.
01-12-20122011
Investigating the origin of inter-individual differences in the preference for violinsSaitis C Giordano BL
Proceedings of Forum Acusticum., 497-501.
01-12-2011
Aspects of experimental design for the perceptual evaluation of violin qualitiesSaitis C Giordano BL Fritz C
Canadian Acoustics Acoustique Canadienne. vol. 39 (3), 134-135.
01-09-20112010
Evaluating violin quality: How consistent are skilled players?Saitis C Scavone GP Fritz C
The Journal of The Acoustical Society of America,
Acoustical Society of America (ASA) vol. 128 (4), 2284-2284.
01-10-20102009
Physical modeling of the piano: An investigation into the effect of string stiffness on the hammer string interaction.Saitis C Orr S
The Journal of The Acoustical Society of America,
Acoustical Society of America (ASA) vol. 125 (4), 2684-2684.
01-04-2009
Designing Neural Synthesizers for Low-Latency InteractionCaspe F Shier J Sandler M Saitis C Mcpherson A
Journal of The Audio Engineering Society,
Audio Engineering Society
Designing Percussive Timbre Remappings: Negotiating Audio Representations and Evolving Parameter SpacesShier J Constanzo R Saitis C Robertson A Mcpherson A
25th International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression.
Sonicolour: Exploring Colour Control of Sound Synthesis with Interactive Machine LearningO’Flaherty TF Marino L Saitis C Xambo Sedo A
The International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression The Australian National University, Ngunnawal and Ngambri Country, Canberra, Australia 24 Jun 2025 - 27 Jun 2025.
Mamba-Diffusion Model with Learnable Wavelet for Controllable Symbolic Music GenerationZhang J Fazekas G Saitis C
International Joint Conference on Neural Networks.
Assessing the Alignment of Audio Representations with Timbre Similarity RatingsTian H Lattner S Saitis C
26th International Society for Music Information Retrieval Conference.
Leveraging RAG for a Low-Resource Audio-Aware Diachronic Analysis of Gendered Toy MarketingMarinelli L Ghinassi I Saitis C
RANLP 2025.
Audio synthesizer inversion in symmetric parameter spaces with approximately equivariant flow matchingHayes B Saitis C Fazekas G
ISMIR 2025 Daejeon, Korea 21 Sep 2025 - 25 Sep 2025.
What do people know about the senses? Understanding perceptions of variation in sensory experienceCuskley C Saitis C
In
Psyarxiv
Disembodied Timbres: a Study on Semantically Prompted FM SynthesisHayes B Saitis C Fazekas G
In
Psyarxiv
Soundscapes of morality: Linking music preferences and moral values through lyrics and audioPreniqi V Kalimeri K Saitis C
In
Psyarxiv
A Multimodal Understanding of the Role of Sound and Music in Gendered Toy MarketingMarinelli L Lucht P Saitis C
In
Psyarxiv
Real-time Timbre Remapping with Differentiable DSPShier J Saitis C Robertson A Mcpherson A
New Interfaces for Musical Expression 2 Sep 2024 - 6 Sep 2024.