MIT Faculty 2006–2024 · Visiting Professor: Boston University · Smith College · Mount Holyoke College
Eighteen years at MIT built a rare combination: deep technical expertise and the classroom craft to make it accessible. Cuthbert created MIT's Music Technology program, led the Digital Humanities Lab (MIT's largest undergraduate-focused research laboratory), received MIT's top general teaching award and its Teaching with Digital Technology Award, and co-founded Artusi — the industry-leading platform for online music instruction used by universities worldwide. That same skill set — designing learning systems, training technical teams, and communicating complex ideas with clarity — translates directly to corporate training, mentorship programs, and organizational leadership.
2015
Levitan Award, MIT School of Humanities, Arts & Social Sciences top teaching honor, recognizing outstanding innovation in the classroom — awarded specifically for transforming music fundamentals instruction through the Artusi platform.
MIT
2017
Recipient of MIT's second-ever Teaching with Digital Technology Award. Cited for outstanding use of digital tools in Fundamentals of Music and Early Music, selected from 80 nominations.
MIT · Mellon
2019
Led MIT's largest undergraduate-focused research laboratory, launched with a $1.3 million Andrew W. Mellon Foundation grant. Trained dozens of undergraduates in computational methods bridging humanities and data science.
MIT
2009
Created MIT's Music Technology curriculum and cuthbertLab, its first research laboratory — pioneering the intersection of computation, AI, and music education at one of the world's premier technical institutions.
Free & open via OpenCourseWare
2023
Algorithms, corpus studies, ML, music generation, and computational music perception. Includes full video lectures.
2012
Corpus analysis, datasets, and hands-on music-historical inquiry using music21.
2010
European music from the early Middle Ages through the Renaissance, with custom pedagogical software for historical tuning systems.
2006
Western concert music across its most turbulent century — continuity, change, reception, and historiography.
2010
How rhythm, meter, and musical time are understood across music theory, cognitive science, and cultural traditions.
Music Theory Pedagogy with Technology
Co-founded Artusi and authored its interactive textbooks — Music Theory Now and Fundamentals of Music — used by universities worldwide for harmony, counterpoint, and ear training with automatic grading and instant feedback.
MIT · $1.3M Mellon grant
Directed MIT's largest undergraduate-focused research laboratory, developing a model for integrating computation with humanistic inquiry that has been adopted at institutions across the country.
Video lecture
2009
Public lecture on hidden musical notation discovered in everyday objects and historical texts.
Lecture
2007
On information theory, ambiguity, and how minimal music manages to communicate so much with so little.
Pre-concert lecture
2008
The medieval English composer and his lasting influence on the birth of Renaissance polyphony.
Pre-concert lecture
2010
Pre-concert lecture on the remarkable medieval musical heritage of Ascoli Piceno and its surviving manuscript sources.
Covid-Era Lecture
2020
Pre-concert talk for the Alamire Foundation on early Flemish polyphony and manuscript sources.
Training · Mentorship · Leadership · Curriculum Design
The skills behind 18 years of MIT teaching — structuring complex material for diverse audiences, building learning systems that scale, and developing technical talent from the ground up — translate directly to corporate contexts.
Hands-on workshops for engineering and data science teams. Specialties: AI/ML applications, computational methods, Python, and the intersection of data and creative domains.
Structured mentorship frameworks for junior engineers and researchers, drawing on experience mentoring dozens of undergraduate and graduate researchers at MIT.
Full learning-system design — from assessment frameworks to interactive digital content — informed by co-founding Artusi, an EdTech platform used by tens of thousands of students.
Speaking, facilitation, and leadership coaching that bridges technical depth with humanistic breadth — the same combination that earned MIT's highest teaching honors.