5 minute read
Synthesis
During college and beyond, Miles Aron ’13 combines scholarly passions with his love for music
Encapsulating Miles Aron’s professional career is no simple task. On the one hand, it’s barely longer than half a decade, yet, on the other, it’s already involved software engineering, ultrasound biologics, guitar instruction, and a few more disciplines thrown into the mix.
It’s been a whirlwind stretch from the time Aron crossed the Commencement stage as a summa cum laude graduate of the University of Hartford in 2013. He was awarded one of the world’s highest educational honors—a Fulbright scholarship—that led him to Switzerland to study for a year at the University of Zurich. He then traveled to England for graduate study at the prestigious Hertford College of the University of Oxford, courtesy of UHart’s highly competitive John G. Martin Scholarship, where he earned his PhD in biomedical engineering.
Aron grew up in Norwich, Connecticut, and attended UHart for several reasons: for one thing, the programs offered through the College of Engineering, Technology, and Architecture (CETA) were appealing to him; for another, the preeminence of its music instructors struck a passionate chord; finally, the vibrant jazz community in nearby Hartford. Music was just too good for him to ignore.
“My mom, dad, and uncle went to UHart, so I guess it’s a family thing,” Aron says. Even his sister, who was not a UHart student, took guitar lessons with the founder and former chair of the guitar department at The Hartt School, Dick Provost. Aron took classical guitar lessons with Rich Goldstein, a senior artist teacher of jazz guitar at the University’s Jackie McLean Institute of Jazz. A musical family indeed. And as much as he enjoyed music on campus, Aron would drive into Hartford as often as he could to see jazz school musicians play at the historic Black-Eyed Sally’s restaurant.
“But I was also good at math,” he interjects. “I met Bob Celmer (professor of mechanical engineering and acoustical engineering program director) and he showed me all the great facilities there for acoustics, which is the science of sound, the engineering side of music—something I also love!” Aron found the subject matter of acoustics fascinating and wanted to get involved, even if it meant missing a few nights at Black-Eyed Sally’s.
During his four years at UHart, Aron interned for the U.S. Department of Energy at SLAC National Linear Accelerator in Stanford, California, where he developed a method of automated optical analysis for dark matter detector crystals. He also interned for PVI Systems in Niantic, Connecticut, where he implemented microphone arrays for acoustic beam forming. During his senior year, through the Connecticut Space Grant Consortium, he interned at NASA Ames Research Center in California, where he designed a low-frequency calibration system for wind tunnel standing wave modes.
“Miles definitely was one of the brightest students I’ve had in my time here,” Celmer says. “He was laser focused on the research he wanted to do in grad school. We would constantly expose him to the latest research in the field and he ate it up like ice cream. The more he learned, the more involved he got.” Celmer recalls that Aron was very involved outside of the classroom and labs as well. “He held office in our chapter of the Acoustical
Society of America and Tau Beta Pi. Part of his appeal comes from his musical background. He is comfortable presenting on stage so he is comfortable presenting himself. He’s a very engaging combination.” The European scholarly community found Aron just as engaging. His Fulbright research project in Switzerland focused on treating brain diseases and cancer with enhanced drug delivery methods using focused ultrasound and microbubbles. Research papers he wrote while at Oxford are still being published; overall, 10 of his scholarly papers appear in academic journals. Once back in the United States, Aron led the software engineering team for a company called Arcanium, which was started by a friend he had met at NASA. He also took a turn as senior full-stack developer for Archie MD, a physician-led company that develops stunning biomedical and surgical training animations and augmented-reality experiences. In 2018, he co-founded a company in Cambridge, Massachusetts, that simplifies online guitar study.
Named Subtonic, the company “was founded on the belief that learning music should be an interactive and creative experience, not just another set of online video lessons,” Aron explains. “Subtonic is about sharing the joy of musicianship using the best technology of 2021 and beyond.” The company is preparing to release Subtonic for Teachers, which will be free for all educators.
The more he learned, the more involved he got.
“When I was a kid, I thought about going into the music profession in one way or another,” Aron recalls. “My dad’s a guitar professor, and when I told my parents that I wanted to be a music theory professor, they said, ‘Oh, maybe you should think about something else, because that’s really, really hard!’” Whether or not that conversation led directly to engineering and science as a professional core is unanswerable, but it hardly matters since music has been as much a part of his adult life as STEM subjects. What’s more, through Subtonic, he is able to combine music and technology.
Currently, Aron lives with his brother in northeastern Connecticut. Both are entrepreneurs working on musicoriented businesses, though their separate enterprises are not competitive. Just where he’ll be a year from now is up for grabs, as is whether or not Subtonic will be joined by another entrepreneurial venture or two. Music is always in his head—but engineering and science are never far from his mind.
“What companies like Elon Musk’s Neuralink and Google’s Verily Life Sciences are doing makes me think that I might continue to explore those kinds of fields in some way,” says the 29-year-old scholar and entrepreneur. “But I have a lot of time to think about it.”
