The Sync Project Announces Partnership with Berklee College of Music's Institute for Creative Entrepreneurship

The Sync Project Announces Partnership with Berklee College of Music's Institute for Creative Entrepreneurship

Collaboration will include creation of original research and educational experiences on the use of "Music as Medicine"

BOSTON, May 21, 2015 /PRNewswire/ -- The Sync Project(TM), a global collaboration harnessing the scientific potential of music for health, today announced a collaborative partnership with Berklee's Institute for Creative Entrepreneurship (BerkleeICE). The partnership will center on collaboration on original research, joint course development and an internship program. As a first step in the collaboration, The Sync Project and BerkleeICE are exploring the launch of a course on "Music as Medicine" in the 2015-2016 academic year.

The course will focus on the recent advances in our understanding of the neuroscience of music and the use of music as medicine. Students will learn about how music affects different neural pathways and physiology and apply practical learning to the clinical applications of music in managing or treating different health conditions, including applications in performance, sleep and anxiety.

"Music can be a catalyst for new disruptive ideas to emerge, whether those ideas are applied to the creative music space or whether those ideas are exported into other fields, like health," said Panos Panay, Founding Managing Director of Berklee's Institute for Creative Entrepreneurship. "The Sync Project's rigorous focus on the leading science of the neurological and health impacts of music, makes them a perfect partner."

The Sync Project, a PureTech startup, is building a platform to scientifically measure and harness music to improve health. The platform maps music characteristics to real-time biometrics and objective measurements of physiology, enabling the study of the therapeutic effect of music at scale in large populations.

"The Sync Project's mission is to bring together the scientists, technologists, clinicians and musicians of the world to help accelerate the discovery of the clinical applications of music," said PureTech CEO and Sync Project Co-founder, Daphne Zohar. "With this collaboration, we hope to engage and inspire the next generation of musicians to help us advance the field of music as medicine."

About the Berklee Institute for Creative Entrepreneurship:

Creativity and innovative thinking are the most valuable assets for professionals who wish to excel in today's competitive business environment. Such skills are particularly critical in the music industry, where new technologies and ideas compel constant change in the ways music is developed, marketed and distributed. These trends are at the core of Berklee's Institute for Creative Entrepreneurship (ICE), an initiative designed to inspire, educate and launch the next generation of creative entrepreneurs. BerkleeICE helps prepare graduates for careers as entrepreneurs; fosters the creation of new products, services and businesses in the creative industry; and inspires disruptive ideas through musical creativity and cross-discipline collaboration.

BerkleeICE was founded in 2013 and is led by founding managing director and entrepreneur Panos Panay. More information can be found at http://www.berklee.edu/focused/ice and @BerkleeICE

About The Sync Project
The Sync Project is developing a platform to scientifically measure and study the effects of music on our health in areas like sleep, cognition, motor coordination and performance. The goal is to collect and correlate real-time biometric data and music, so that we can pinpoint and understand the health properties of music. The Sync Project was founded by PureTech. Advisors include Joi Ito, Director of the MIT Media Lab, Robert Zatorre, Professor of Neurology and Neurosurgery at the Montreal Neurological Institute at McGill University, Tristan Jehan, Founding CTO of The Echo Nest (Spotify), Marko Ahtisaari, Director's Fellow at the MIT Media Lab and former Head of Product design at Nokia, Hugh Forrest, Director at South by Southwest (SXSW) Interactive Festival, and Adam Gazzaley, Director of the Neuroscience Imaging Center and Professor of Physiology, Psychology and Psychiatry at UCSF.

For more information visit www.thesyncproject.com

About PureTech
PureTech is a science-driven healthcare company, seeking to solve some of today's toughest health challenges through disruptive approaches. Based in Boston, PureTech has a network of more than 50 experts across multiple disciplines - from entrepreneurs to world-renowned scientists - giving PureTech access to potentially groundbreaking science and technological innovations. PureTech is problem-focused and solution-agnostic, looking beyond traditional disciplines and approaching healthcare problems from different perspectives. Focusing on areas of significant unmet medical need, PureTech evaluates and tests more than 650 ideas per year and selects only the most scientifically and commercially promising concepts to advance.

The Sync Project and The Sync Project logo are trademarks of The Sync Project.

SOURCE The Sync Project

The Sync Project

CONTACT: Lindsay Underwood, Media & Communications Manager, PureTech, lmu@puretechhealth.com, (617) 456-0981, Emily Featherston,Version 2.0 Communications, efeatherston@v2comms.com, (617) 426-2222

Web Site: http://www.thesyncproject.com


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