Jiaying Li is figuring out how to inject new blood into pop music trends. A Master's student, Li identified trends in how Chinese pop music reuses chord progressions, making songs sound increasingly similar. She is currently working on a project to convert one singer's voice within a song to another's voice.

"I want to make it easier for everyone to create good songs," Li said. "I played piano as a child until my hands were injured and I couldn't play any more. But music isn't just performance, it's also production. I learned about Music Technology, connecting music with science, techniques, and technology."

"I love this program because it's more technical. A lot of our goal is to find a more technical way to set up music. When we talk about Japanese music and Chinese music and Western music, we find all the styles are different. But if we talk about music technology, there is no difference across the nations in the engineering and scientific principles."