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I’m currently a post-doctoral researcher at Laboratorio di Informatica Musicale at University of Milan, Italy. My current research project is the same as my Ph. D. studies: Development and testing of accessible Digital Musical Instruments dedicated to quadriplegic users.

Ph. D. degree

I had my Ph. D. degree in 2022 in Computer Science from the University of Milan, Italy. I had my studies in the Laboratorio di Informatica Musicale . My research project was about Development and testing of accessible Digital Musical Instruments dedicated to quadriplegic users. Thus, instruments playable hands-free, exploiting unconventional interaction channels such as eye tracking, mouth position tracking, breath pressure, head movement. My Thesis, titled “Accessible Digital Musical Instruments for Quadriplegic Musicians - Analysis, design theory, development and testing of hands-free digital musical instruments” is available for free download from AIR Unimi or directly here:

Nicola Davanzo - Accessible Digital Musical Instruments for Quadriplegic Musicians.pdf

Master degree

I’ve got my Master Degree in Computer Engineering (2018) at University of Pavia, Italy, following a course entitled Computer Science and Multimedia. My Master Thesis project is entitled Development and testing of graphical Interfaces for gaze-controlled musical instruments: a study and the development of virtual Digital Musical Instruments (DMI) operated through an eye tracker and a switch. The main focus of the project was developing an instrument suitable for those who cannot use their hands (useful both for disabled people and for musicians who want to play more than one instrument at a time). The instrument Netytar was born from this project. From this thesis work, a paper was extracted and presented at ETRA COGAIN 2018 (Warsaw, June ‘18).

Bachelor degree

I’ve got my Bachelor Degree in Ingegneria Elettronica/Informatica (2015) at University of Pavia, Italy. My Bachelor Thesis project is entitled Development of a software for writing using an eyetracker.

Publications

Davanzo N., Dondi P., Mosconi M. & Porta M. (2018). «Playing Music with the Eyes through an Isomorphic Interface». In Proc. of the Workshop on Communication by Gaze Interaction, 1–5. Warsaw, Poland: ACM Press, 2018. Link (DOI)
Davanzo N. & Avanzini F. (2020). «Hands-Free Accessible Digital Musical Instruments: Conceptual Framework, Challenges, and Perspectives». IEEE Access 8 (2020): 163975–95. Link (DOI)
Davanzo N. & Avanzini F. (2020). «A Dimension Space for the Evaluation of Accessible Digital Musical Instruments». In Proc. 20th Int. Conf. on New Interfaces for Musical Expression (NIME ’20). NIME ’20, 2020. Link (NIME)
Davanzo N. & Avanzini F. (2020). «A Method for Learning Netytar: An Accessible Digital Musical Instrument». In Proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Computer Supported Education, 620–28. Prague, Czech Republic: SCITEPRESS - Science and Technology Publications, 2020. Link (DOI)
Davanzo N. & Avanzini F. (2020). «Experimental Evaluation of Three Interaction Channels for Accessible Digital Musical Instruments». In Proc. ’20 Int. Conf. on Computers Helping People With Special Needs, 437–45. Online Conf.: Springer, Cham, 2020. Link (DOI)
Davanzo N., De Filippis M., Avanzini F. (2021). «Netychords: an Accessible Digital Musical Instrument for playing chords using gaze and head movements». In In Proc. ’21 Int. Conf. on Computer- Human Interaction Research and Applications (CHIRA ‘21). Online Conf. Link (DOI)
Davanzo N., Avanzini F. (2021). «Resin: a Vocal Tract Resonances and Head Based Accessible Digital Musical Instrument». In Proc. 2021 AudioMostly conf.. Trento, Italy. Online Conf.. Link (DOI)
Davanzo N., Avanzini F. (2022). «Design Concepts for Gaze-Based Digital Musical Instruments». In Proc. 2022 Sound and Music Computing conf., Saint-Étienne, France. Link (DOI).
Moreno, D., Azevedo, J., Lima, B., & Davanzo, N. (2023). «Music for All: An Intervention Project in an Artistic School in Portugal». The Qualitative Report, 28(10), 2953-2979. Link (DOI)

Personal interests

Computer science
Knowledge management
Music (see the page Music)
Tabletop Role Playing Games (TTRPGs), like D&D, Vampire The Masquerade, or the one… that I made ;)
Historical fencing (HEMA and related)
Nature, hiking, montain biking
Buddhism
Capoeira and other martial arts
Motorsports and racing sim
Cooking
History

Curriculum Vitae

Here you can download my CV, in PDF format (last updated 2024-06-07):

Nicola Davanzo - CV (English).pdf

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