Willie Payne
Assistant Professor at UNC-Chapel Hill
Interests
Creative Expression • Accessibility • CS Ed
Comics • Coffee • Running • New Music • New Fiction
Reach Me
william [dot] payne [at] unc [dot] edu
Chapel Hill, NC
About Willie
I study how technology can facilitate creative expression and open pathways for people to express themselves on their own terms. I build accessible musical instruments and creative coding environments. I use a participatory approach to research in which I work closely with end-users throughout a design process and situate interventions in authentic learning and art making environments.
I have published work at highly selective HCI conferences. I recently won Best Technical Paper at Web4All '22 and Best Paper Honorable Mention at CHI '21. I regularly co-author with undergraduate students. My mentorship efforts received recognition at NYU, and my students won 3rd place at the NYU Engineering Research Expo.
I hold a PhD in Music Technology at NYU. From 2020–2023, I was the research assistant for Dancing Across Boundaries (DAB!) and the Accessible Music Technology Fellow at FMDG Music School. I was advised by Amy Hurst, and mentored by Yoav Bergner, Kayla DesPortes, and R. Luke DuBois.
I also hold a BS/MS in Computer Science and a BM in Music Composition from CU Boulder. I attended CU on a Boettcher Scholarship (full-ride to any Colorado university) and was the Outstanding Graduate of Engineering. At CU I performed in new-music ensembles like the Boulder Laptop Orchestra (BLOrk), studied with Shaun Kane, Clayton Lewis, and Michael Theodore, and lived in the Engineering Honors Program.
Selected Projects
SoundCells
danceON
Collaborators
Links
Cyclops
Single-Input Instruments
Links
Non-Visual Beats
TinkaMOD
BiSoN
Electromagnetic Dulcimer
Guitar Processor
Links
Publications
Mentorship is important to me. Undergraduate students who enrolled in Vertically Integrated Projects are marked with † while Masters students I mentored for thesis credit are marked with ‡.