Colin Raffel

Old Toronto, Ontario, United States

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Summary

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Rockstar

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Top School

Colin Raffel is a research-oriented machine learning engineer with 14 years of experience specializing in sequence models, audio/music signal processing, and practical tooling for ML research. He holds a Ph.D. in Electrical and Electronics Engineering and an MS in Music, Science and Technology, blending rigorous theory with hands-on audio and ML engineering. Colin has contributed core functionality to widely used open-source projects—such as librosa and pretty-midi for music analysis and T5-related repositories and Mesh TensorFlow for large-scale transformer work—demonstrating both domain depth and system-level thinking. His contributions span algorithm design, performance optimizations, evaluation pipelines, and GPU-focused implementations, reflecting a knack for turning research ideas into production-quality code. Based in Old Toronto, he combines academic rigor with prolific open-source impact across music information retrieval and modern NLP toolchains.

14 years of coding experience

Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Electrical and Electronics Engineering, Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Electrical and Electronics Engineering at Columbia University in the City of New York

Bachelor of Arts, Mathematics, Physics, Bachelor of Arts, Mathematics, Physics at Oberlin College

Master's degree, Music, Science and Technology, Master's degree, Music, Science and Technology at Stanford University

Github Skills (45)

algorithms10

debug10

scipy10

dspic10

python10

evaluation10

data-set10

pandas10

gpu-programming10

machine-learning10

audio-analysis10

numpy10

datasets10

midi10

music-information-retrieval10

Programming languages (8)

C++CTeXJavaScriptHTMLJupyter NotebookPythonMatlab

Github contributions (5)

craffel/pretty-midi

Aug 2013 - Feb 2022

Utility functions for handling MIDI data in a nice/intuitive way.

Role in this project:

Back-end Developer

Contributions:13 releases, 21 reviews, 231 commits in 8 years 8 months

Contributions summary:Colin primarily worked on implementing the core functionality for the pretty-midi library. They focused on adding and refining features like piano roll generation, chroma calculations, and synthesis methods. Their work involved the addition of instrument and note containers, as well as code to handle and incorporate pitch bends and control changes. The user also implemented functionality for MIDI file writing and beat tracking.

utility-functionsmidiintuitivehandlingmusic

mir-evaluation/mir_eval

Aug 2013 - Apr 2022

Evaluation functions for music/audio information retrieval/signal processing algorithms.

Role in this project:

Back-end Developer

Contributions:6 releases, 17 reviews, 479 commits in 8 years 9 months

Contributions summary:Colin's contributions primarily involved implementing and refining evaluation functions for music and audio information retrieval algorithms. Their commits focused on developing metrics for beat tracking and onset detection, demonstrating a strong understanding of the project's core domain. The user translated and refactored code, fixed bugs, and ensured their functions worked as intended within the project's evaluation framework.

signalmlsevaluationaudiosignal-processing

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