One step in Music, one step in Engineering. The short career of Nicolas d'Alessandro is always emphasizing this duality. Right after entering at Faculté Polytechnique of Mons (Belgium) in 1999, he shows a strong interest in merging these two aspects. This dream moves to reality a few years later when he meets Prof. Thierry Dutoit (TCTS lab). Together they activate a convention between Mons and Montreal (Canada). Therefore Nicolas becomes the first belgian student to achieve his Master thesis with Caroline Traube in LIAM, Université de Montréal. He comes back to TCTS lab in 2004 for realizing a PhD thesis with Thierry Dutoit. There he develops several digital instruments for generating expressive voice in realtime, including the HandSketch. He obtains his PhD in November 2009 and takes off for Vancouver a few days after, in order to take a Research Assistant position at UBC (University of British Columbia). He is working there today, in the perfect continuity of his passions for voice and contemporary music, leading the DiVA project (singing avatars) with Sidney Fels (MAGIC lab) and co-leading the UBC laptop orchestra with Bob Pritchard (School of Music).