Kat R. Agres

Dr. Kat Agres is an Assistant Professor at the Yong Siew Toh Conservatory of Music at the National University of Singapore (NUS), where she teaches courses on the Psychology of Music, and Music and Health. She is also the Director of the Centre for Music and Health (CMH), which she founded in February 2023. Prior to joining NUS, Kat led the Music Cognition group at the Institute of High Performance Computing at A*STAR in Singapore.

She received her PhD in Psychology with a graduate minor in Cognitive Science from Cornell University in 2013, and subsequently conducted postdoctoral research in Music Cognition and Computational Creativity at Queen Mary University of London. She also holds a bachelor’s degree in Cello Performance and Cognitive Psychology from Carnegie Mellon University.

Kat has received numerous grants to support her research, including Fellowships from the National Institute of Health (NIH) and the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) in the US, postdoctoral support from the European Union, research funding from Singapore’s Ministry of Education (MOE), and others. Her research explores music interventions and technologies for healthcare and well-being, music perception and cognition, and computational creativity. One of her large-scale projects, in collaboration with local partners, involves developing a music-based brain-computer interface (BCI) that leverages automatic music generation and neurofeedback for emotion self-regulation in listeners.

Kat has presented her work in over twenty countries, has more than 50 peer-reviewed journal and conference papers, has played cello professionally, and still loves playing music in her free time.