Thomas Lidy

Vienna University of Technology
Institute of Software Technology and Interactive Systems
Information and Software Engineering Group

room: HE 04 10
phone: +43 (1) 58801 - 188 632
e-mail: lidy@ifs.tuwien.ac.at

Favoritenstraße 9-11/188
A-1040 Wien
Austria

Background

Master of Science (Diplom-Ingenieur) in Informatics (Computer Science) at Vienna University of Technology
since 2004: Research Assistant at the Institute of Software Technology and Interactive Systems, Information and Software Engineering Group (IFS), Vienna University of Technology
since 2008: Founder and CEO of Spectralmind - intelligent audio technology, a company providing innovative solutions for audio search, music recommendation and visual music discovery

Awards

Nomination for Austrian State Prize in Consulting 2010 (Spectralmind)
Winner APA-IT Challenge 2010 (Spectralmind)
Western Europe Finalist, Intel Challenge 2010 (Spectralmind)
3rd rank Constantinus IT Award 2010 (Spectralmind)
Top #18 of the Top 100 Young Entrepreneurs of Austria, GEWINN magazine 2010
Idea of the Year, GEWINN magazine 2009
Top #21 of the Top 100 Young Entrepreneurs of Austria, GEWINN magazine 2009
Microsoft Sponsorship Award 2007
Distinguished Young Alumnus Award 2007 (best Master's Thesis at the Faculty of Informatics)
Winner of the Rhythm Classification Contest (Team Thomas Lidy, Andreas Rauber, Andreas Pesenhofer) within the Audio Description Contest during ISMIR 2004 (International Conference on Music Information Retrieval)

Projects and Activities

Research Activities

My research focus is on Music Information Retrieval (MIR):

semantic audio analysis (rhythm, timbre, ...)
music feature extraction algorithms for digital audio signals
machine learning and classification (supervised learning)
automatic music classification (e.g. by genre, mood)
unsupervised learning techniques (Self-Organizing Map - SOM)
automatic organization and clustering of audio/music archives
development of applications for visualization of and intiutive interaction with music libraries
interfaces and application of music retrieval methods on mobile devices
information management
digital preservation of multimedia objects

participation in the Music Information Retrieval Evaluation eXchange (MIREX)
co-organization of European Conference on Research and Advanced Technology for Digital Libraries (ECDL 2005)
co-organization of International Conference on Music Information Retrieval (ISMIR 2007)
co-organization of International Conference on Preservation of Digital Objects (iPRES2010)

Projects

European research projects I have been involved with:

CHORUS+ EU FP7 coordinated action on advancing search technology for audio-visual content
IMPACT (Improving Music genre classification Performance by a novel Approach of Combining audio and symbolic music descriptors using a Transcription system), a bilateral project, funded by the Austrian Academic Exchange Service, with Pattern Recognition and Artificial Intelligence Group (GRFIA) at the University of Alicante, Spain
PLANETS EU Integrated Project (Permanent Long-term Access through Networked Services)
MUSCLE EU Network of Excellence on Multimedia Understanding

Teaching

I teach about Music Information Retrieval in the Information Retrieval lecture:

188.412 Information Retrieval (Summer term, VU 3.0h)

I also supervise practical works, Bachelor and Master theses:

see Topics for practical works and theses in the Music Information Retrieval domain

Publications

Over 30 publications at international conferences and in international journals:

Full list of publications