Naresh Vempala, PhD

Naresh Vempala is a Mitacs Elevate Postdoctoral Fellow at the SMART Lab, Department of Psychology, Ryerson University. He is working on a collaborative research project with waveDNA, an Ontario-based music software development company. His work involves developing a cognitively-based analysis engine for musical similarity in accord with human judgments. Naresh completed his M.Sc. in Computer Science and obtained his Ph.D. in Cognitive Science from the Institute of Cognitive Science at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. He has a combination of industry and academic experience spanning over 12 years. Because of his multidisciplinary background and experience with academic and industry projects, Naresh has acquired a unique blend of skills in information technology, computer science and music cognition. As a certified CompTIA Project+ professional, he has been involved in all phases of the Software Development Life Cycle of projects and project process groups, in time-sensitive environments.