Miya is a multitalented individual who recently graduated from the University of British Columbia with a dual BSc. in Statistics and BMus. in Piano, studied under Professor Amanda Chan. She is now pursuing a Master's in Music Technology at New York University, where she continues her research in Music Information Retrieval using deep learning tools.

       

        She began her musical journey at age four with her first piano teacher, Li Zhuo, and achieved Level 10 certification by the age of 12. During her undergraduate studies, she excelled academically and musically, earning the Outstanding International Student Entrance Scholarship and the School of Music International Student Scholarship four times, among 15 other awards. As the only undergraduate approved to be a Private Piano Instructor by the UBC School of Music since 2019, she has also earned recognition as a Steinway Teacher. In 2022, she hosted the New Year Recital in collaboration with Tom Lee in Vancouver, celebrating her students' achievements. Miya's teaching philosophy combines rigorous technique with expressive musicality, enabling her students to express themselves through music.

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        In the summer of 2019, Miya worked as a Research Assistant on Dr. Ève Poudrier's "Rhythmic Computation and Cognition" project at the UBC School of Music. By the winter of 2020, she served as a full-time undergraduate teaching assistant in the Department of Statistics at UBC. In the summer of 2021, she collaborated with Dr. James V. Zidek and Dr. Jiahua Chen in the Forest Product Modelling Group, developing an R package to calculate lumber strength for a long-term monitoring program. Her interdisciplinary initiative with Dr. Leigh VanHandel bridged data science and music, exploring how machine learning models can identify key musical features in tempo determination. This work culminated in a poster presentation at the 2022 Society of Music Perception and Cognition Conference in Portland, where she discovered her passion for Music Information Retrieval. Since then, she has been collaborating with a resonating cohort from NYU.

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      Last but not least, she is also a Duke of Edinburgh's Silver Award recipient, and a Gold Five-Star Level Latin Dancer. Her hobbies range widely from going to a Hackathon to learning the flute. Passion above all else is what motivates her and keeps her focused.

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