Karthik is a musician, producer, and engineer originally from Fremont, California, whose research dives into the perception of musical complexity and the factors driving individual preferences for it. His research interests encompass cognitive and mathematical models of music, the relationship between music and emotion, and human aesthetic responses to musical stimuli. He completed a Capstone project with Heesuk Son, Yuri Wu, and Yihan Zhang that focuses on music generation from poetry through machine learning analysis of emotion from text and emotion-music generative models. Karthik’s musical background includes experience as a pianist, guitarist, and composer in a wide range of genres including pop, jazz, soul, and experimental works. He also currently works at Hook, a music tech startup developing a social media platform where users can create and share legally produced short-form remixes and mashups.