François Pachet
François Pachet is a Civil Engineer (Ecole des Ponts & Chaussées) and got a Ph.D. and Habilitation à diriger des Recherches from the University of Paris 6. He was Assistant Professor in Artificial Intelligence and Computer Science at the Paris 6 University until 1997, the year in which he started the music research team at the SONY Computer Science Laboratory in Paris. There he developed the vision that metadata can greatly enhance the musical experience in all its dimensions, from listening to performance. His team conducts research in interactive music listening and performance and musical metadata and developed several innovative technologies and award winning systems (MusicSpace, constraint-based spatialization, PathBuilder, intelligent music scheduling using metadata, The Continuator for Interactive Music Improvization). François Pachet is the author of over 70 scientific publications in the fields of musical metadata and interactive instruments.
Frederic Kaplan
Frederic Kaplan is a researcher at the Sony Computer Science Laboratory (CSL) in Paris. He graduated as an engineer from the Ecole Nationale Supérieur des Télécommunications in Paris and received a PhD degree in Artificial Intelligence from the University Paris VI. Since 1997, he works on the emergence of cultural systems in machines and on the design of novel approaches to robot learning. In parallel with his research in artificial intelligence, Frederic Kaplan studies the psychological, sociological and ethical challenges bounded to the diffusion of such devices in society. He authored two books: La naissance d'une langue chez les robots ('The birth of a language among robots', Hermes, 2001) and Les machines apprivoisées: comprendre les robots de loisir ('Tamed machines: understanding entertainment robots', Vuibert, 2005).
Frank Nielsen
Frank Nielsen defended his PhD thesis on adaptive computational geometry prepared at INRIA Sophia-Antipolis (France). In 1997, he served in the French army as a scientific member in the computer science laboratory of the Ecole Polytechnique. In 1998, he joined Sony Computer Science Laboratories Inc., Tokyo, as a researcher. His current research interests include geometry, vision, graphics, learning, and optimization. Frank Nielsen is author of over 50 international peer-reviewed journals and conferences and recently published the book Visual computing (Charles River Media, Cambridge MA, 2005).
Luc Steels
Luc Steels is director of the Sony Computer Science Laboratory in Paris since its founding in 1996. He is also a professor of Computer Science at the University of Brussels where he directs the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. He has made major contributions to several areas of artificial intelligence including expert problem solving, natural language processing, and robotics, each time seeking out the area where breakthroughs might be possible. His most recent work focuses on semiotic dynamics and evolutionary linguistics. Steels has published numerous papers in scientific journals and edited several standard reference books.
