Georg Essl holds a Ph.D. and master of arts in computer science from Princeton University. He holds a diploma from the Music Conservatory in Graz, Austria in piano, music composition and recorder as well as a master’s degree from the Technical University of Graz, Austria. Before joining the University of Michigan, Dr. Essl worked at Deutsche Telekom Laboratories, MIT Media Lab Europe, University of Florida, and HyperWave, Inc. His research has been published by the Cambridge University Press, the MIT Press, and the Journal of the Acoustical Society of America.

Dr. Essl’s current research is in mobile phones as musical instruments. He has systematically developed the field, exploring expressive ways to use and augment mobile technology for artistic expression. His contributions include camera, accelerometer, and magnetic-field sensing based solo and networked mobile music performance. He is co-inventor, with Ananya Misra and Michael Rohs, of the use of microphone as wind sensor in mobile phones. He advised the successful iPhone startup company Smule during its formative year. Ocarina, Sonic Lighter, Leaf Trombone among many other applications now use the microphone in this fashion. He is interested in using mobile phones as generic music platforms and is the author of SpeedDial, a general mobile music instrument design environment for Symbian Mobile Phones. He works on extending and augmenting existing mobile technologies which has led to pressure-based mobile interaction research, joint with Michael Rohs and Sven Kratz.

He founded and directs the Michigan Mobile Phone Ensemble (Michigan MoPho) and is also co-founder and co-director of the Stanford Mobile Phone Orchestra (MoPho), with Ge Wang, and is founding director of the Berlin Mobile Phone Orchestra (Berlin MoPho).

PebbleBox, a tactile musical interface he co-designed with Sile O'Modhrain, was exhibited at Victoria and Albert Museum in London. He is also working on expressive real-time sound synthesis and the performer-technology interface.

Dr. Essl’s research is motivated by his belief that the joy of music-making should be accessible to all people and that understanding how people interact as well as inventing new expressive technologies are key in this goal.