Generative Audio · Multimodal Intelligence

JunchuanZhao

I build expressive AI systems for voice, music, and human motion.

Ph.D. student at the National University of Singapore, exploring controllable generation systems that preserve expression, style, and human intent across sound and movement.

Researching at NUS Sound & Music Computing Lab
01 / Profile

About

I study generative AI for voice, music, and human motion, with an emphasis on controllable systems that support expressive creation.

Research practiceSingapore · NUS

I work where sound, intelligence, and human expression meet.

I am a Ph.D. student at the School of Computing, National University of Singapore, advised by Prof. Ye Wang in the Sound and Music Computing Lab.

My research covers speech and singing voice synthesis, neural audio codecs, music generation, talking head generation, co-speech gesture generation, and affective multimodal learning.

I am especially interested in models and interfaces that make generated media easier to guide, evaluate, and use in creative or communicative settings.

Before and alongside my research, I have spent many years studying piano and singing. This musical background shapes the questions I care about: how generated sound can remain controllable, expressive, and useful for real creative workflows.

For selected performances and music projects, check my music page.

02 / Research directions

Research Focus

Three threads connect most of my work: expressive voice generation, music and audio intelligence, and multimodal human signal modeling.

Speech and Singing Voice Generation

Speech synthesis, singing voice synthesis, voice conversion, singing technique control, and zero-shot vocal modeling.

Explore voice research

Music and Audio Intelligence

Neural audio codecs, controllable audio generation, piano transcription/rendering, music style transfer, and creative ML systems.

Explore music research

Audio-Driven Human Generation

Talking head generation, co-speech gesture generation, multimodal emotion analysis, and human-centered generation.

Explore human animation
03 / Updates

Recent News

A compact timeline for papers, internships, teaching, and milestones.

  • One paper has been accepted by Interspeech 2026.
  • I am joining Tencent as a Research Intern in Speech Synthesis in Singapore.
  • One paper has been accepted by ACL 2026 Main Conference.
  • One journal paper has been accepted by IEEE TASLP 2026.
  • One paper has been accepted by ICLR 2026.
  • Two papers have been accepted by ICASSP 2026.
  • One paper has been accepted by Interspeech 2025.
  • I have been selected for the SoC Teaching Fellowship Scheme.
  • One paper has been accepted by ICASSP 2025.
  • One journal paper has been accepted by IEEE/ACM TASLP 2024.
  • I started my Ph.D. journey at NUS in the SMC Lab.
  • I received my Master's degree from the National University of Singapore (NUS).
  • I joined THUNLP Lab as a Research Intern.
  • I joined the SMC Lab as a Student Researcher.
  • I received my Bachelor's degree from Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications (BUPT).
04 / Research output

Publications

Research across voice, music, and human-centered multimodal systems. Browse by year, filter by field, or search the collection.

* Equal contribution   ·   † Corresponding author

2026

arXiv New

Edit Who Speaks, Control How They Speak: Global Timbre Editing and Local Instruction Control for TTS

Junchuan Zhao, Chenglin Xu, Wei Zeng, Haoyang Li, Yiwen Guo, Ye Wang

arXiv preprint, 2026.

arXiv New

Preference Optimization for Non-Verbal Vocalization Synthesis

Haoyang Li, Chenglin Xu, Junchuan Zhao, Yuang Cao, Liumeng Xue, Yiwen Guo, Eng Siong Chng

arXiv preprint, 2026.

2025

2024

05 / Experience

Academic Record

Teaching, academic service, honours, and contact links collected in one place.

Teaching

  • Teaching Assistant, CS3244 Machine Learning, Sem2 AY2025/2026.
  • Teaching Assistant, CS4347/CS5647 Sound and Music Computing, Sem1 AY2025/2026.
  • Teaching Assistant, CS4347/CS5647 Sound and Music Computing, Sem1 AY2024/2025.

Service

  • Reviewer for ToMM, TASLP, INTERSPEECH, ICASSP, ISMIR, ACM MM, AAAI, NeurIPS, EMNLP, and SLT.
  • Event chair and performer at NUS Sound and Music Computing Concert 2025.
  • Featured performer at NUS SMC Concert and NUS Jazz Band events.

Honours

  • SoC Teaching Fellowship Scheme, 2025-2026.
  • NUS Research Scholarship, 2023-2027.
  • Outstanding College Student in Beijing, 2022.
  • Queen Mary University of London Undergraduate College Prize, 2022.

Contact

For research discussions, collaboration, code, CV, and professional profiles.

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