Chris Ick

Chris Ick

PhD Candidate at NYU CDS and MARL

Chris Ick

Hey there! You found my website! My name is Christopher-Thomas Abaya Ick, but my friends and colleagues usually just call me Chris. I work as a research scientist and educator in the domain of audio, music, and AI. I’m pretty good at building tools, models, and methods around these things.

I’m always interested in collaborations, consulting, and other gigs; if you’d like to reach out, hit me at chris(dot)ick(at)nyu(dot)edu. Here’s my CV!

I’m always happy to chat over zoom, but if you want to meet me in person, I’m mostly in the NYC Brooklyn/Lower Manhattan area.

Recent News

  • (January 2026) I’m now taking freelance work as an expert witness consultant on all things generative AI related, especially when relating to generative audio AI. The litigation work in speech & audio AI is only growing in coming years; if you’re looking for an expert in the field, please reach out!
  • (October 2025) I’ve accepted a full-time role at Zencastr as a Senior Research Scientist. I’ll be working on a variety of tasks in speech AI, including ASR, TTS, segmentation, and more! I’m excited to explore a new domain in audio AI research.
  • (June 2025) I started an internship at SonyAI for work on neural codecs for training generative models. I’m really excited about an opportunity to get my hands dirty in a new, fast-paced domain of research.
  • (May 2025) I graduated! I successfully defended my dissertation, titled Virtual Soundscapes for Machine Listening. Thanks to everyone at MARL who supported me as I pushed my way through the final stages of my PhD!

Background

I recently graduated from NYU’s Center for Data Science doing research at the Music and Audio Research Lab, advised by Prof. Brian McFee. My dissertation, Virtual Soundscapes for Machine Listening encompasses a lot of the work I did during my PhD around building tools, training models, and doing novel research around how AI models understand space and audio through the lens of spatial acoustics. It was a fun blend of signal processing, physical acoustics, machine learning, and a sprinkling of other subjects.

Before my PhD, I was examining how to estimate the periodicity of oscillations in solar flare light curves as a researcher at NYU’s Department of Physics, where I did my undergraduate degree. I have Professors David Hogg and Kyle Cranmer to thank for encouraging me to branch out into the data sciences, and for giving me the opportunity to develop some projects with them prior to beginning my work at CDS.

Personal

Outside of work, I’m an avid cyclist; I race road and cyclocross for KruisCX, and also enjoy bikepacking, touring, and bike advocacy. I’m also into snowboarding, scuba diving, and rock climbing. I love living in Brooklyn, and going to live music/dance parties, ask me about my favorite spots to dance! Finally, I’m into a lot of tech hobbies: I’m a recovering mechanical keyboard addict (let me know if you want to buy some parts), and I’m currently working on a home server for home automation, media hosting, network management, and a few other tasks. I can probably beat you in Super Smash Bros Melee.