University of Illinois Professor’s Expertise in Machine Learning for Audio Benefits Creation of New Beatles Documentary

From the first time he used a synthesizer, Illinois Computer Science professor Paris Smaragdis knew that he wanted to learn how technology could make or alter music. What’s followed is a career in academia that centered his Artificial Intelligence research on the question: What does it mean to take a stream of sound and then break it down into its individual components? Nothing he’s accomplished has been more “mind-bending” than the recent work he completed with a team of engineers to boost the audio quality of director Peter Jackson’s recent documentary titled “The Beatles: Get Back.”