Hi! I’m Alex, a first-year PhD student in the Human-Computer Interaction Institute (HCII) at Carnegie Mellon University. I work with Professors David Lindlbauer (Augmented Perception Lab) and Chris Donahue (Generative Creativity Lab).

My research envisions a future where media adapts intelligently to the context of its consumption. To achieve this, my current work focuses on three complementary areas: (1) Understanding human perception and engagement with media across different consumption contexts to shape opportunities for media to adapt and enhance user experience, (2) developing AI-driven methods for media generation and transformation to open up a design space for media adaptation, and (3) building design tools that enable creators to author adaptive content. My work in adaptive music has been published in premier HCI conferences including ACM CHI and UIST, with a best paper honorable mention award at CHI 2024.

Previously, I worked with Professor Dhruv Jain as a visiting researcher at the Soundability Lab, University of Michigan. I hold an MS in Music and Technology from Carnegie Mellon University, and a BS in Interactive Media Arts🎨 from NYU Shanghai, where I also minored in Computer Science💻, Game Design🎮, and Music🎼.

Selected Publications

RISE: Music Rearrangement for Realtime Intensity Synchronization With Exercise

(PDF) | (Video)
Alexander Wang, Chris Donahue, Dhruv Jain
ISMIR 2025: Proceedings of the 26th International Society for Music Information Retrieval Conference

Towards Music-Aware Virtual Assistants

(PDF) | (Video)
Alexander Wang, David Lindlbauer, Chris Donahue
UIST 2024: Proceedings of the 37th Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology

MARingBA: Music-Adaptive Ringtones for Blended Audio Notification Delivery

(PDF) | (Video)
Alexander Wang, Yi Fei Cheng, David Lindlbauer
CHI 2024: Proceedings of the 2024 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
Best Paper Honorable Mention (top 5%)