Kimaya Lecamwasam

Kimaya (Kimy) Lecamwasam is a neuroscientist, singer/songwriter, and PhD student at the MIT Media Lab whose research currently focuses on investigating the applications of audio-based affective computing interventions for the treatment of mental health conditions, with anxiety and PTSD as case studies. Kimaya is a 2023 MIT Presidential Fellow and was the 2021 Harriet A. Shaw Fellow for music research. She has presented her work at venues and conferences across the world, including the Wellbeing Summit in Bilbao, Spain (2022) and the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems in Hamburg, Germany (2023). Her research interests include investigating the impact of music on mental health from both clinical intervention-based and performance/composition-based approaches. Her current projects include (1) investigating the impact of live music/concert experiences on the mental health and well-being of audience members and performers, (2) developing methods to allow clinicians to use music listening, composition, and performance as prescribable and validated interventions, in combination with psychotherapy and pharmaceutical intervention, (3) assessing and developing applications centered on rock, pop, and folk music in these spaces, and (4) investigating the emotional parameters that underlie human perception of AI-generated vs. human-composed music. During her time in Dr. Emery Brown's Neuroscience Research Statistics Lab (NSRL), she investigated methods of classifying consciousness versus unconsciousness in patients undergoing anesthesia and the use of reinforcement learning to better train brain computer interface-enabled robotic prosthetics. She received her B.A. from Wellesley College (2021) and her S.M. from MIT (2023).