Jeffrey “Skunk” Baxter is an American guitarist, known for his stints in the rock bands Steely Dan and The Doobie Brothers during the 1970s and Spirit in the 1980s. More recently, he has worked as a defense consultant and advised U.S. members of Congress on missile defense. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of The Doobie Brothers in 2020.

Jonathan Wyner is an audio technologist, educator, mastering engineer, and author whose career bridges creativity and innovation. Over the past four decades, he has guided artists, students, and companies in shaping how music is produced, experienced, and understood. He is currently a professor of music production and engineering at Berklee College of Music and head of artistic technology initiatives for BEATL, Berklee’s artist-first innovation lab for music technology.

Anirudh Mani is the Chief Science Officer at BeatStars (previously Co-founder/CSO at Lemonaide AI), where he leads technology and innovation at the intersection of artificial intelligence and music. He focuses on building ethical, creator-first AI tools, pioneering generative music models trained with consent, attribution, and compensation at their core. Lemonaide’s work is focused on shaping a new paradigm for how AI can amplify human creativity while preserving ownership and rights in the music ecosystem.

As VP of Applied AI Research at Splice, Alejandro Koretzky leads the company’s AI strategy and R&D division, developing proprietary Machine Learning & Audio technologies, co-driving product vision and ideation for creation tools, while managing a high-performing team of researchers and ML engineers that he built from the ground up. Alejandro spearheaded the vision for transformative products and features like Create, Similar Sounds, Search with Sound, Recommended For You, while co-inventing the underlying technology and securing multiple patents. Before Splice, he was the founder of tuneSplit and a Fulbright scholar at USC.

Manaswi Mishra is a Computational Sound Artist and PhD researcher in the Opera of the Future group at the MIT Media Lab. His research explores strategies and frameworks for a new creative age of composing, performing and learning music using A.I. centered around bespoke human and cultural intent. Manaswi’s research on creating novel A.I. Lutherie can be seen in the development and performance of Operas like VALIS (2023), FLOW Symphony (2024, premiered in Seoul Arts Center) and exhibitions across the world (IFA Stuttgart ‘24, Burning Man ‘23, Boston tech poetics, Algorave India, Ljubljana Biennale 2025, Harvard Kirkland Art Gallery ‘24, Copyright Society ’23 / ’24, Audio Developer Conference ’24 etc.). He also holds an MS in Media Arts and Sciences (MIT, 2021), MS in music technology (UPF, Barcelona) and a BTech (IITM, India). He is the founding instigator of the Music Tech Community in India organizing curricula, workshops, hackathons, conferences and community events across India.

Shahan Nercessian is a Senior Applied ML Researcher at Splice. He received his B.S., M.S. and Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from Tufts University in 2007, 2009, and 2012 respectively. In 2012, he became a member of Technical Staff at MIT Lincoln Laboratory. In 2017, he joined iZotope, ultimately becoming their Principal Research Scientist upon merging with Native Instruments. He embarked on his current journey at Splice in 2025, where he develops generative models to bolster Splice’s emerging line of creator-centric AI capabilities. He is also an avid jazz musician and continues to produce and play his own genre-bending original music.