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Drew Edwards

Drew Edwards

Founding Engineer at Happenstance | PhD candidate in AI & Music

drew
London, England, United Kingdom
1.4K connections
Joined March 2024

Summary

Researcher in music informatics and ML: Drew's PhD research at Queen Mary (C4DM / AIM CDT) focuses on deep learning for piano/guitar transcription and generative modelling for jazz piano. He has produced datasets (PiJAMA) and multiple peer-reviewed/preprint papers analyzing robustness and domain adaptation in transcription systems; this work includes a brief SOTA evaluation on the MAPS piano transcription dataset and contributions to SOTA guitar transcription (with Riley et al.). ac+2
Bridges academia and industry: Drew has combined industry placements and applied‑ML engineering with academic research — a Yamaha industry placement during his PhD, several years as an ML engineer at Apple and Lighthouse A.I., and now a founding engineer role at Happenstance. Yamaha also partially sponsors his PhD. This background shows experience shipping ML systems and collaborating with commercial research teams. almostimplemented+2
Dataset and tooling builder: Through projects like PiJAMA and the re‑performed MAESTRO experiments, Drew has built and released datasets, code, and benchmarks to support more robust automatic music transcription research and downstream tasks (performer ID, generative modelling). github+1
Experienced ML engineer with applied product experience: Prior roles at Apple, Lighthouse A.I., and earlier software-engineering positions at IBM indicate a decade of engineering experience spanning core software, applied machine learning, and early-stage ML product work. almostimplemented+1

Work

Education

Projects

Hobbies

Piano performance, music listening and music informatics (avid student of music and the piano). almostimplemented+1

Mathematics and quantitative problem-solving (background includes honors calculus TA work). almostimplemented

Notes

PMPavlos Morossaid they would trust
DEDrew Edwards
to lead the engineering on a technically challenging project.

Nov 3, 2025

PMPavlos Morossaid
DEDrew Edwards
is one of the most innovative people they know in music tech.

Nov 3, 2025

PMPavlos Morossaid
DEDrew Edwards
has stood out to them for their dedication and impact as a PhD student in their field.

Oct 30, 2025

ISIshan Shahsaid that if they needed a key collaborator for a challenging research project,
DEDrew Edwards
would be one of their top choices among PhD students.

Oct 23, 2025

ISIshan Shahsaid
DEDrew Edwards
has stood out to them for their dedication and impact as a PhD student in their field.

Oct 22, 2025

DBDaniel Byshkinsaid
DEDrew Edwards
is one of the most impressive PhD students they've worked with or known.

Oct 22, 2025

PMPavlos Morossaid they’ve seen
DEDrew Edwards
make a major impact on their team or company by applying advanced machine learning skills at a high growth company.

Oct 14, 2025

PMPavlos Morossaid they would trust
DEDrew Edwards
to lead the technical development for a new startup’s product.

Oct 10, 2025

ATAlex Teichmansaid
DEDrew Edwards
is one of the most impressive machine learning engineers they've worked with in a high growth company setting.

Oct 10, 2025

PMPavlos Morossaid they've seen
DEDrew Edwards
excel at both engineering and driving product direction in a startup setting.

Oct 8, 2025

JFJosh Faustsaid
DEDrew Edwards
is one of the most impressive AI engineers they've seen make an impact at a high-growth startup.

Oct 3, 2025

ATAlex Teichmansaid they've seen
DEDrew Edwards
drive key AI initiatives that helped a startup grow fast.

Sep 26, 2025

ISIshan Shahsaid they would be excited to have
DEDrew Edwards
on a software development team for a challenging project.

Sep 26, 2025

ISIshan Shahsaid they would be excited to work with
DEDrew Edwards
again if they were building an AI team at an ambitious startup.

Sep 26, 2025

ATAlex Teichmansaid
DEDrew Edwards
is one of the top software developers they've worked with.

Sep 19, 2025

ATAlex Teichmansaid that if they needed someone to tackle a complex software challenge,
DEDrew Edwards
would be one of their top picks.

Sep 11, 2025

ATAlex Teichmansaid
DEDrew Edwards
is one of the strongest founding AI engineers they've collaborated with.

Sep 4, 2025

ISIshan Shahsaid
DEDrew Edwards
is one of the strongest founding AI engineers they've collaborated with.

Sep 4, 2025

ISIshan Shahsaid
DEDrew Edwards
is one of the most technically impactful engineers they've worked with on AI infrastructure.

Jul 4, 2025

ISIshan Shahsaid
DEDrew Edwards
is one of the most exceptional founding engineers they've worked with in AI infrastructure.

Jul 2, 2025

ATAlex Teichmansaid
DEDrew Edwards
is one of the most exceptional founding engineers they've worked with in AI infrastructure.

Jun 28, 2025

ISIshan Shahsaid they've seen
DEDrew Edwards
deliver outstanding work in real-time audio or music processing using machine learning.

Jun 13, 2025