Dr Samuel Aaron

School of Computer Science

Visiting Scholar

Sam Aarons
Profile picture of Sam Aarons
Profile

Dr Sam Aaron is the creator of Sonic Pi, an internationally renowned live coding performer, public speaker and science communicator.  Sam has a PhD in Computer Science from Newcastle University and held a research position at the University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory where he initially developed Sonic Pi. 

Sam has been an active community builder for 20 years starting and running the Newcastle and Amsterdam Ruby user groups, Amsterdam Clojure group and more recently the international Sonic Pi community of educators, programmers and artists. 

Sam regularly engages audiences of all ages and backgrounds with the creativity of code through keynotes, workshops and performances.  He has live coded internationally featuring in the Royal Albert Hall, Berlin Warehouses, Music Festivals, on the BBC and many school assemblies. Sam has received two Google prizes for his Open Source work and The Rolling Stone magazine described his Moogfest performance as “transcending the present”.

Research interests

Programming Languages - particularly expressivity, liveness, concurrency and semantics for real-time interaction.
 

Research group

Speech and Hearing (SpandH) research group