Yannis Vasilakis

Yannis Vasilakis is currently studying for a PhD in Computer Science and is a member of C4DM.

What’s your thesis title?

Enhancing compositionality in joint audio-text models for music.

Can you summarise your research in one sentence?

Humans tend to understand the meaning of a sentence through the interplay of the sentence’s word semantics and I’m trying to make machines follow this principle, focusing on music applications.

Why did you choose to do your doctoral research at QMUL?

The Centre for Digital Music (C4DM) established that technology and music are intertwined and the Artificial Intelligence for Music programme further provided the opportunity for a funded position.

How does your research group support you?

Having 50+ PhD students surrounding you can only give you a creative rush. Each and every discussion with another expert of a highly similar domain as yours is gold. As well as being colleagues, I’m very happy and fortunate to call a lot of them my friends. We usually socialise, have similar hobbies and interests and can rely on each other during difficult or lonely times.

What’s a typical research day like for you?

Usually I wake up at 8am, have a morning stretching or treadmill session. Get to the office by 9am and have a distraction-free session, eliminating everything that can distract me from emails, phone calls, music etc. Then, I follow along with 1-2 hours of ‘social chores’, checking my inboxes, sending messages or having meetings. I continue in a more relaxed pace, usually reading papers to be well informed about my domain or organising my projects or ideas. Finally and to wash away the day's research dust, I finish my day with training: I either do Muay Thai or Brazilian Jiu Jitsu.

What’s been your most exciting research experience so far?

Attending the International Society for Music Information Retrieval conference made me realise that my “weird” mix of researcher, tech enthusiast, and musician isn’t so rare after all. For the first time, I was surrounded by more than 50 people who shared the same passions and it felt like finding my community.

Any advice for anyone about to start their PhD journey?

Trust the process and try to be as consistent as possible. Everything will fall into place if you give it enough time. Find a hobby that will help your body follow along the strenuous pace of research. Make sure to have proper time to recover and don’t feel ashamed or unworthy of it.