Stefan Balke

Stefan Balke is a Researcher at the AudioLabs Erlangen, Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU), focusing on wind music research and Music Information Retrieval (MIR). Previously, he held a PostDoc position at the Institute of Computational Perception, JKU Linz (2018–2019) and later worked as a Data Scientist and Team Lead in industry. He temporarily served as a professor at Hochschule Weserbergland in 2023/24.

Education: PhD (Dr.-Ing.) in MIR from FAU (2018), Electrical Engineering studies at Leibniz Universität Hannover (2008–2013).

Research Interests: Music Information Retrieval, Deep Learning, Jazz and Wind Music Analysis, Dataset Development. His work includes creating datasets like ChoraleBricks (wind music) and JSD (jazz structure analysis), and tools like trackswitch.js for audio visualization.

Grants & Projects: Secured 35k€ funding for his orchestra through the 'Engagiertes Land' program (2024). Collaborated on exhibits such as 'The Listening Machine' (Ars Electronica) and 'Con Espressione!' (mathematics of music exhibition).

Contributions: Active on GitHub with repositories for datasets (choralebricks, jsd) and tools. Co-developed web-based audio tools and contributed to open-source projects like Sonic Visualiser and librosa.