The WiMIR mentoring program connects women students, postdocs, early-stage researchers, industry employees, and faculty to more senior women and men in MIR who are dedicated to increasing opportunities for women in the field. Mentors share their experiences and offer guidance to support mentees in achieving and exceeding their goals and aspirations. By connecting individuals of different backgrounds and expertise, this program strengthens networks within the MIR community, both in academia and industry.
The ninth round of the WiMIR mentoring program will begin in February 2024! Signups are open through December 17, 2023. Click here for more details on the edition of this year.
Mentoring is a two-way street. You get out what you put in. (Steve Washington)
Testimonials
Mentees about the program
“This program encourages us, and helps broadening the MIR network.”
“Having an exchange with people strongly involved in MIR is a great help for someone like me who is starting in the field and is full of doubts.”
“This is a great opportunity to connect with others more established in the field.”
“It is great to get an outsider perspective on your career and opportunities.”
“… enriching experience to receive a different point of view on things that are an important part of my life.”
“It’s a great program. And congratulations to all the organizers for the success of the program.”
“The WiMIR mentoring program was truly a great experience. My mentor holds an important job at a leading MIR-related company, and I look up to him in many ways for that. It was amazing to be matched with someone with similar academia and industry interests as mine, as I felt I could ask them about nearly anything! The advice that he gave me about choosing a summer internship was very helpful and I’m confident that I made the right choice because of him.”
“The gender disproportionality somehow to me brings fear of not choosing a secure career option. The mentorship program has been a confidence booster to me.”
“The WiMIR mentoring program clearly helps to create a better network among the members of the field, because it introduces people that otherwise would probably have never met.”
“It is encouraging to see so many senior members of the MIR community actively promoting diversity by volunteering to be WiMIR mentors.”
“I saw possibilities and perspectives of people who ‘know better’ about that world in which I’m moving towards to but not quite there.”
“I have a new contact in the field. It helped me cope with some insecurities and doubts about the career decisions I had to make this year.”
“It is a wonderful program. To me, it turned out to be a blessing.”
Blog post by mentee Iris Yuping Ren on her personal experience after signing up for the program.
Blog post by mentee Magdalena Fuentes on the role of the program for her transitioning from Uruguay to Paris and starting a PhD in MIR.
Blog post by mentee Stefanie Acevedo on the role of cross-disciplinary mentorship.
Mentors about the program
“It gave me a better understanding of challenges faced by women like my mentee. Very rewarding.”
“I definitely felt good about being actively involved in something that had such a clear positive motivation.”
“WiMIR breaks barriers between generations!”
“I was very much surprised by how much I took away from our conversations; I hope that my mentee also benefitted!”
“Our talks have re-energized my research and given me a new direction to take on an upcoming research project.”
“It has helped me develop a much broader perspective on gender issues and challenges in academia.”
“I felt like my mentee was a younger version of myself and I gave the guidance I wish I had when I started being part of the field.”
“I got to know brilliant people whom I wouldn’t have a chance to know otherwise.”
“This is not only a great way to contribute to the community, but an enriching experience that can help you become a better mentor, whether in academia or industry.”
“There are few things during my academic work day that take less time and has such immediate and longer-term impacts.”
“It was exciting to me to see my mentee being eager to proudly tell me about new accomplishments and insights and me being proud on these accomplishments as well. I got the feeling that I may have had a positive impact on the mentee and that both sides actually likewise benefited from the mentoring program.”
Blog post by mentor Ryan Groves on getting to know gender issues faced by women in the workplace.
Resources
The WiMIR-mentoring program has been developed with material from mentoring programs at Utrecht University and Stanford University. We thank both universities for sharing their material and for allowing us to share it with other initiatives, such as the new mentoring program for female engineering students at Universitat Pompeu Fabra. Please refer to this website when you reuse material, and inform us so that we can refer to your initiative on the WiMIR website.
Editions
- The eight round of the program ran from February to September 2023, with 69 mentor-mentee pairs.
- The seventh round of the program ran from February to September 2022, with 66 mentor-mentee pairs.
- The sixth round of the program ran from January to June 2021, with 83 mentor-mentee pairs.
- The fifth round of the program ran from January to September 2020, with nearly 80 mentor-mentee pairs.
- The fourth round of the program ran from January to June 2019, with nearly 70 mentor-mentee pairs.
- The third edition of the program ran from January to June 2018, with nearly 80 mentee-mentor pairs.
- The second edition of the program ran from January to June 2017, with four remote sessions between mentor and mentee. Participant numbers have more than doubled since the pilot program, with around 50 mentees and mentors in 2017.
- The pilot program ran in 2016 (March-June) with three remote sessions between mentor and mentee.
Participants
2023 edition
Mentoring Program Committee
- Yun-Ning Hung, Music.AI
- Zafar Rafii, Audible Magic
- Francesca Ronchini, Politecnico di milano, Italia
- Michael Mandel, Brooklyn College, CUNY, USA
2022 edition
Mentoring Program Committee
- Johanna Devaney, Brooklyn College, US
- Lamtharn Hantrakul, Tik Tok
- Francesca Ronchini, Politecnico di milano, Italia
- Michael Mandel, Brooklyn College, CUNY, USA
2021 edition
Mentoring Program Committee
- Johanna Devaney, Brooklyn College, US
- Eva Zangerle, University of Innsbruck, Austria
- Michael Mandel, Brooklyn College, CUNY, USA
2020 edition
Mentoring Program Committee
- Johanna Devaney, Brooklyn College, US
- Ryan Groves, Melodrive, Germany
- Blair Kaneshiro, Stanford University, US
- Eva Zangerle, University of Innsbruck, Austria
- Michael Mandel, Brooklyn College, CUNY, USA
2019 edition
Mentoring Program Committee
- Johanna Devaney, Brooklyn College, US
- Ryan Groves, Melodrive, Germany
- Blair Kaneshiro, Stanford University, US
- Anja Volk, Utrecht University, the Netherlands
Peer Mentoring Coordinators
- Hendrik Vincent Koops, Utrecht University, the Netherlands
- Vincent Lostanlen, New York University, US
Our mentees reside in Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, India, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, Nigeria, Norway, Singapore, South Korea, Spain, Taiwan, Turkey, United Kingdom, and United States. They represent a diverse field of interests and backgrounds, such as artificial intelligence, signal processing, natural language processing, musicology, applied mathematics, computer science, audio signal processing, psychoacoustics, human computer interactive performance, computational musicology, music perception and cognition, data science, complex system, acoustics, physics, machine learning, software engineering, ethnomusicology, composition, music therapy, neuroscience, and psychology.
We thank our generous mentors from Europe, North and South America, Asia and Oceania for dedicating their time to this program:
Kat Agres, IHPC (A*STAR), Singapore
Steinunn Arnardottir, Native Instruments GmbH, Germany
Thomas Arvanitidis, MUSIC Tribe, United Kingdom
Andreas Arzt, Johannes Kepler University, Austria
Ana M. Barbancho, Universidad de Málaga, Spain
Isabel Barbancho, Universidad de Malaga, Spain
Dogac Basaran, IRCAM, France
Christine Bauer, Johannes Kepler University Linz, Austria
Amy Beeston, University of Leeds, UK (Scotland)
Brian Bemman, Aalborg University, Denmark
Francesco Bigoni, Aalborg University – Copenhagen, Denmark
Rachel Bittner, Spotify, United States
Tom Butcher, Microsoft, USA
Marcelo Caetano, Freelance, Argentina
Mark Cartwright, Apple, UK
Doga Cavdir, CCRMA, Stanford University, United States
JOe Cheri Ross, Linkedin, India
Srikanth Cherla, Jukedeck, Sweden
Orchisama Das, Stanford University (CCRMA), United States
Matthew Davies, INESC TEC, Portugal
Andrew Demetriou, TU Delft, Netherlands
Chris Donahue, UC San Diego, US
Jonathan Driedger, Chordify, Germany/The Netherlands
Andrew Elmsley, Melodrive, Germany
Philippe Esling, IRCAM – Sorbonnes Universités, France
Sebastian Ewert, Spotify, UK
Ichiro Fujinaga, McGill University, Canada
Fabien Gouyon, Pandora, UK/Portugal
Ryan Groves, Melodrive Inc., Germany
Blair Kaneshiro, Stanford University, USA
Thor Kell, Spotify, United States
Peter Knees, TU Wien, Austria
Hendrik Vincent Koops, Utrecht University, Netherlands
Katerina Kosta, Jukedeck, United Kingdom
Nadine Kroher, MXX Music, Spain
Robin Laney, Open University, UK
Audrey Laplante, Université de Montréal, Canada
Alexander Lerch, Georgia Institute of Technology, USA
Mark Levy, New York University, United States
Michael Mandel, Brooklyn College, CUNY, USA
Ethan Manilow, Northwestern University, USA
Matthew McCallum, Gracenote, United States
Brian McFee, New York University, United States
Blai Meléndez-Catalán, UPF / BMAT, Spain
Gabriel Meseguer Brocal, Ircam, France
Meinard Mueller, International Audio Laboratories Erlangen, Germany
Néstor Nápoles López, McGill University, Canada
Eric Nichols, Microsoft, USA
Oriol Nieto, Pandora, USA
Sergio Oramas, Spotify, United Kingdom
Ritu Patil, Cummins college of engineering, India
Johan Pauwels, Queen Mary University of London, United Kingdom
Marcelo Queiroz, University of São Paulo, Brazil
Elio Quinton, Universal Music Group, United Kingdom
Colin Raffel, Google Brain, USA
Preeti Rao, IIT Bombay, India
Christopher Raphael, Indiana Univ., USA
Justin Salamon, New York University, USA
Andy Sarroff, iZotope, USA
Bertrand Scherrer, LANDR AUDIO INC., Canada
Sertan Şentürk, Pandora, Spain
Amina Shabbeer, Amazon, United States
Ajeet Singh, India
Joren Six, IPEM, Ghent University, Belgium
Jordan Smith, United Kingdom
Mohamed Sordo, Pandora, United States
Ajay Srinivasamurthy, Amazon Alexa, India, India
Bob Sturm, KTH, Sweden
Derek Tingle, IDAGIO, Germany
Christopher Tralie, Duke University, United States
Marcelo Tuller, INESC TEC, Portugal
Doug Turnbull, Ithaca College, United States
Makarand Velankar, MKSSS’S Cummins College of Engineering, Pune, India
Gissel Velarde, Moodagent, Denmark
Christof Weiss, International Audio Laboratories Erlangen, Germany
Chih-Wei Wu, Netflix, Inc., U.S.
Gus Xia, NYU Shanghai, USA/China
2018 edition
Mentoring Program Committee
- Emilia Gómez, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Spain
- Ryan Groves, Melodrive, Germany
- Blair Kaneshiro, Stanford University, US
- Anja Volk, Utrecht University, the Netherlands
Our mentees reside in Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Singapore, Switzerland, Spain, Turkey, United Kingdom and USA. They range from high school student to university faculty members and industry employees, and represent a diverse field of interests and backgrounds, such as signal processing, machine learning, computer science, information technology, ethnomusicology, computational musicology, music theory, music composition, music perception and cognition, music performance, music and mathematics, neuroscience, library science, music education, multimedia research, sound design, data analytics.
We thank our generous mentors for dedicating their time to this program:
- Kat Agres, Institute of High Performance Computing (IHPC), A*STAR, Singapore
- Steinunn Arnardottir, Native Instruments, Germany
- Andreas Arzt, Johannes Kepler University Linz, Austria
- Jeanne Bamberger, UC Berkeley, USA
- Ana M. Barbancho, Universidad de Málaga, Spain
- Isabel Barbancho, Universidad de Málaga, Spain
- Christine Bauer, Johannes Kepler University Linz, Austria
- Juan Pablo Bello, New York University, USA
- Brian Bemman, Aalborg University, Denmark
- Tom Butcher, Microsoft, USA
- Doga Buse Cavdir, CCRMA, Stanford University, USA
- Oscar Celma, Pandora, USA
- Joe Cheri Ross, Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, India
- Srikanth Cherla, Jukedeck Ltd., UK
- Elaine Chew, Queen Mary University of London, United Kingdom
- Tom Collins, Lehigh University, USA
- Julie Cumming, McGill, Canada
- Sally Jo Cunningham, Waikato University, New Zealand
- Matthew Davies, INESC TEC, Portugal
- Andrew Demetriou, TU-Delft, Netherlands
- Chris Donahue, University of California, San Diego, USA
- Georgi Dzhambazov, Voice Magix, Spain
- Douglas Eck, Google, USA
- Dan Ellis, Google, USA
- Mary Farbood, New York University, USA
- George Fazekas, QMUL, UK
- Ichiro Fujinaga, McGill University, Canada
- Nick Gang, Shazam, USA
- Emilia Gómez, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Spain
- Fabien Gouyon, Pandora, USA
- Ryan Groves, Melodrive Inc., Germany
- Luciana Hamond, UDESC, Brazil
- Kate Helsen, The University of Western Ontario, Canada
- Dorien Herremans, Singapore University of Technology and Design, Singapore
- Eric Humphrey, Spotify, USA
- Thor Kell, Spotify, USA
- Anssi Klapuri, Yousician, Finland
- Peter Knees, TU Wien, Austria
- Robin Laney, Open University, UK
- Audrey Laplante, Université de Montréal, Canada
- Alexander Lerch, Georgia Institute of Technology, USA
- David Lewis, University of Oxford, UK
- Cynthia Liem, Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands
- Matthias Mauch, Queen Mary University of London, UK
- Brian McFee, New York University, USA
- Matt McVicar, Jukedeck, UK
- Emilio Molina, BMAT, Spain
- Meinard Mueller, International Audio Laboratories Erlangen, Germany
- John Neuharth, Microsoft, USA
- Oriol Nieto, Pandora, USA
- Dimitri Papageorgiou, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece
- Emilia Parada-Cabaleiro, University of Augsburg, Germany
- Geoffroy Peeters, IRCAM, France
- Aggelos Pikrakis, University of Piraeus, Greece
- Elio Quinton, Universal Music Group, UK
- Preeti Rao, IIT Bombay, India
- Iris Ren, Utrecht University, the Netherlands
- Matthias Röder, Karajan Institute, Austria
- Jimena Royo-Letelier, Deezer, France
- Spencer Russel, MIT Media Lab, USA
- Justin Salamon, New York University, USA,
- Markus Schedl, Johannes Kepler University, Austria
- Sertan Şentürk, Freelancer, Turkey
- Kitty Zhengshan Shi, Stanford University, USA
- Jordan Smith, Ircam, France
- Mohamed Sordo, Pandora, USA
- Ajay Srinivasamurthy, Idiap Research Institute, Switzerland
- Sebastian Stober, University of Potsdam, Germany
- Bob Sturm, Queen Mary University of London, UK
- Stefan Sullivan, Smule, USA
- Mi Tian, Elsevier, UK
- Derek Tingle, SoundCloud, Germany
- Douglas Turnbull, Ithaca College, USA
- George Tzanetakis, University of Victoria, Canada,
- Rafael Valle, NVIDIA and UC Berkeley, USA
- Makarand Velankar, MKSSS’S Cummins College of Engineering for Women, Pune, India
- Gissel Velarde, Consultant at Sony CSL, Germany
- Anja Volk, Utrecht University, the Netherlands
- Thomas Walther, Spotify, UK
- Christof Weiss, International Audio Laboratories Erlangen, Germany
- Tillman Weyde, City University of London, UK
- Yi-Hsuan Yang, Academia Sinica, Taiwan
- Eva Zangerle, University of Innsbruck, Austria
2017 edition
Mentoring Program Committee
- Emilia Gómez, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Spain
- Blair Kaneshiro, Stanford University, US
- Anja Volk, Utrecht University, the Netherlands
Our 50 mentees reside in Australia, China, France, Hong Kong, India, the Netherlands, South Korea, Spain, Turkey, UK, US. They range from high school student to associate professor, and represent a diverse field of interests and backgrounds, such as machine learning, digital signal processing, computer music, computer science, music theory, computational musicology, music psychology, music performance, music and mathematics, music perception and cognition, computational ethnomusicology, composition, computational neuroscience, digital media, information science and human computer interaction.
We thank our generous mentors for dedicating their time to this program:
- Jack Atherton, CCRMA, Music Department, Stanford University, US
- Ana M. Barbancho, Universidad de Málaga, Spain
- Isabel Barbancho, Universidad de Malaga, Spain
- Juan Pablo Bello, New York University, US
- Ching-Wei Chen, Spotify, US
- Ching-Hua Chuan, University of North Florida, USA
- Andrea Cogliati, University of Rochester, US
- Tom Collins, Lehigh University, US
- Sally Jo Cunningham, Waikato University, New Zealand
- Georgi Dzhambazov, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Spain
- Douglas Eck, Google Brain, US
- Deborah Egan, DINA, UK
- Dan Ellis, Columbia University and Google, US
- Philippe Esling, IRCAM, France
- Ichiro Fujinaga, McGill University, Canada
- Mathieu Giraud, CNRS, Université de Lille, France
- Emilia Gómez, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Spain
- Fabien Gouyon, Pandora, US
- Ryan Groves, self-employed MIR Consultant, Germany
- Dorien Herremans, Queen Mary University of London, UK
- Xiao Hu, University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong
- Eric Humphrey, Spotify, US
- Berit Janssen, Meertens Insitute, Amsterdam, the Netherlands
- Blair Kaneshiro, Stanford University, US
- Thor Kell, Spotify, US
- Katerina Kosta, Queen Mary University of London/Jukedeck, UK
- Robin Laney, Open University, UK
- Audrey Laplante, Université de Montréal, Canada
- Edward Large, University of Connecticut, US
- Jin Ha Lee, University of Washington, US
- Alexander Lerch, Georgia Institute of Technology, US
- David Lewis, University of Oxford, UK
- Cynthia Liem, Delft University of Technology, the Netherlands
- Brian McFee, New York University, US
- David Meredith, Aalborg University, Denmark
- Emilio Molina, BMAT, Spain
- Meinard Mueller, International Audio Laboratories Erlangen, Germany
- Oriol Nieto, Pandora, US
- Dimitri Papageorgiou, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece
- Preeti Rao, IIT–Bombay, India
- Iris Ren, Utrecht University, the Netherlands
- Spencer Russell, MIT Media Lab, US
- Justin Salamon, New York University, US
- Markus Schedl, Johannes Kepler University Linz, Austria
- Sertan Şentürk, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Spain
- Amina Shabbeer, Amazon Music, US
- Jeffrey Smith, Smule, US
- Jordan Smith, AIST, Japan
- Ajay Srinivasamurthy, Idiap Research Institute, Switzerland
- Mi Tian, Queen Mary University of London, UK
- Derek Tingle, SoundCloud, US
- Doug Turnbull, Ithaca College, US
- George Tzanetakis, University of Victoria, Canada
- Rafael Valle, Center for New Music and Audio Technologies, US
- Makarand Velankar, MKSSS’s Cummins College of Engineering, Pune, India
- Gissel Velarde, Aalborg University, Denmark
- Vladimir Viro, Peachnote GmbH, Germany
- Anja Volk, Utrecht University, the Netherlands
- Luwei Yang, Queen Mary University London, UK
- Eva Zangerle, University of Innsbruck, Austria
2016 edition
Mentoring Program Committee
- Amélie Anglade, Freelance Data Science & MIR Consultant, Germany
- Emilia Gómez, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Spain
- Blair Kaneshiro, Stanford University, USA
- Anja Volk, Utrecht University, the Netherlands
22 mentees of the pilot program reside in Denmark, India, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Portugal, Spain, Turkey, UK, Uruguay, USA.
We thank our generous mentors for dedicating their time to this program:
- Ana M. Barbancho, University of Malaga, Spain
- Isabel Barbancho, University of Malaga, Spain
- Sebastian Böck, Johannes Kepler University, Austria
- Ching-Hua Chuan, University of North Florida, USA
- Tom Collins, De Montfort University, UK
- Sally Jo Cunningham, Waikato University, New Zealand
- Johanna Devaney, Ohio State University, USA
- J. Stephen Downie, University of Illinois, USA
- Douglas Eck, Google, USA
- Dan Ellis, Columbia University and Google, USA
- Ichiro Fujinaga, McGill University, Canada
- Ryan Groves, Music & Data Science Software Consultant, Germany
- Dorien Herremans, Queen Mary University of London, UK
- Alvin Hill, University of Michigan, USA
- Xiao Hu, University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong
- Rebecca Kleinberger, MIT Media Lab, USA
- Audrey Laplante, Université de Montréal, Canada
- Robin Laney, Open University, UK
- Jin Ha Lee, University of Washington, USA
- Cynthia Liem, TU Delft, the Netherlands
- Ewa Lukasik, Poznan University of Technology, Poland
- Oriol Nieto, Pandora, USA
- Sebastian Stober, University of Potsdam, Germany
- George Tzanetakis, University of Victoria, Canada
Women in Music Information Retrieval 