Dr. Lior Arbel

I am a designer, electrical engineer and musician. I'm currently a research associate at the Industrial Design program at the Faculty of Architecture and Town Planning at the Techion - Israel Institute of Technology, where I'm a member of Prof. Ezri Tarazi's Design Tech lab.

The Industrial Design program is also where I got my PhD, supervised by Prof. Yoav Schechner (Technion) and Dr. Noam Amir (Tel-Aviv University), while I got my BSc at the Technion's Faculty of Electrical Engineering. After my PhD I did a postdoctoral research at Laboratoire d'Acoustique del'Université du Maine (LAUM), Le Mans University, France, supported by the Chateaubriand Fellowship, awarded by the French embassy in Israel. In my post-doc research, under the supervision of Prof. François Gautier, I developed modular musical instruments for sound design prototyping and musical acoustic education. 

In parallel to my position at the Technion, I'm working in Prof. Boaz Rafaely's Acoustics Lab, in Ben Gurion University/Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering. I research virtual and spatial audio in collaboration with Meta (Facebook) Reality Labs at Redmond, Washington.

My goal as a researcher is to use design and technology to expand the boundaries of music and sound and to create novel musical experiences. Specifically, I'm interested in musical instruments (software, acoustic, electroacoustic), music and sound computing, signal processing of music and audio, and applications of ML/DL/AI.

My PhD consists of the research and development of a new family of musical instruments combining musical wine glasses and strings. At the center of the research is a novel active instrument - The Symbaline, which uses electromagnetic actuation and signal processing to interface musical wine glasses to any other musical instrument.

As a designer and engineer, my interests and skills include signal processing, acoustics, sound design, musical instrument design, woodworking, software, analog circuit design, signal integrity, electro-optics and optimization algorithms.
As a musician, I play the clarinet, tenor saxophone, classical and electric guitar, compose and build electric guitars.
I enjoy literature, philosophy, art, field running, Indian food and all kinds of chocolate.