Dr. Kris Bryden joined the faculty of Iowa State University in 2001 as an adjunct associate professor in the Department of Music. She teaches music theory and music technology. She recently completed a Ph.D. degree in music theory with a minor in composition at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and has received a Master of Music degree in music theory from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a Bachelor of Music degree in flute performance from Idaho State University. Her current research interests include closure in late twentieth-century music and developing atonal music composition tools that can be used to create music on-the-fly. She is active as a composer and enjoys playing the recorder.
Dr. Bryden is a research associate of the Virtual Reality Application Center. She is currently collaborating with computer science, mathematics, biology, and engineering faculty to develop music composition tools to allow the user to hear scientific data as music without human intervention. These tools will be used to examine complex data sets for a wide range of applications in engineering and biology and will be coupled with three-dimensional virtual reality environments.