Alexander Lerch works on creating the next generation of music software technology, enabling new ways of understanding, creating, accessing, and listening to music. His main research areas are Music Information Retrieval/Audio Content Analysis and Intelligent Signal Processing. Lerch studied Electrical Engineering at the Technical University Berlin and Tonmeister (Sound Engineering) at the University of the Arts Berlin. He received his PhD on algorithmic music performance analysis from the Technical University Berlin. In 2001, he co-founded the industry leader company zplane.development - a research-driven technology provider for the music industry. At zplane, Lerch worked on the design and implementation of algorithms for music processing and music information retrieval that have been licensed to companies such as Ableton, Native Instruments, Sony, and Steinberg. His book "An Introduction to Audio Content Analysis: Applications in Signal Processing and Music Informatics" has been published in 2012 by IEEE / Wiley press. Since the year 2014, he also acts as DAAD research ambassador to intensify academic relations between Germany and the USA.