Meet our team

Dr. Barbara Reuer is the Founder and CEO of MusicWorx Inc. and Resounding Joy Inc., both located in San Diego, CA.  She is internationally known for her expertise in music-centered wellness and music therapy and has more than 40 years of clinical experience in schools, convalescent facilities, retirement homes, hospices, medical and psychiatric hospitals, corrections facilities, substance abuse and eating disorders programs, health spas, as well as teaching at community colleges and universities.  

Major areas of Dr. Reuer’s current professional involvement are in the area of music therapy program and job development in San Diego County including an international music therapy internship program.  In addition to her clinical work, she provides workshops and seminars (wellness, community building, stress management and pain management) nationally and internationally for health care professionals, educators and corporate clients.  She has authored and co-authored several books and articles.  Public notice of her work extends from recognition in publications to the Lifetime network show, New Attitudes, and the UCSDTV Health Matters:  Music and the Mind.   She has been interviewed in print media and television at the local, national and international levels.

Dr. Reuer is a 2008 Southern California Cancer Pain Initiative Awardee for excellence in pain management.  She has served as President of the National Association for Music Therapy and is recipient of the American Music Therapy Association’s national Professional Practice Award in 2000 and the Lifetime Achievement Award in 2008, the highest award for professional contribution in the field of music therapy.

Dr. Erik Berda is the Chemistry and Materials Science Department Chair at the University of New Hampshire, where he additionally holds the distinguished Gloria G. and Robert E. Lyle Professor of Chemistry Chair. He is also a lifelong student of musical arts, visual arts, and martial arts. 

Dr. Berda's musical journey began at an early age when his introduction to musicianship, via the clarinet, led to the goal of learning the entire woodwind family. He would soon transition to the guitar after a few years, with an evolution of his original goal adapted to include mastery of a broad array of electric and acoustic plucked, fretted stringed instruments. Dr. Berda is an expert in music theory and guitar pedagogy and has ranging expertise in genres including classical, jazz, folk, bluegrass, blues, rock, heavy metal, and the avant garde. He has over 25 years of professional experience in live performance and studio work, and is primarily interested in live performance with real-time experimental improvisation: true fluency in music where the separation between thought and note are as close to imperceivable as possible. 

This idea of thought melding with perception is also what led Dr. Berda to become enamored with chemistry and the development of functional biomimetic macromolecular systems. Given the fact that thought and perception, on a physical level, are actually derived from a complex network of chemical and electrochemical signaling pathways, the neurological systems that govern the perception and creation of music are fundamentally grounded in chemistry. Dr. Berda pursued research in synthetic polymer chemistry with a goal of mimicking protein folding as a way to harness nature’s lock-and-key receptor/neurotransmitter design in synthetic and simulated biological settings for applications ranging from health and disease, adaptive and responsive biomaterials, and chemical robotics. His work has been funded by NIST, the US Army Research office, NIDA, and the NSF. 

Winner of the 2021-2022 Frederic A. Juilliard/Walter Damrosch Rome Prize in Music Composition, Dr. Tina Tallon currently serves as Assistant Professor of AI and the Arts in the University of Florida’s College of the Arts, where she is director of the Florida Electroacoustic Music Studio (FEMS) and affiliate faculty in the UF Informatics Institute and Intelligent Critical Care Center. Dr. Tallon received her Ph.D. in music composition from the University of California San Diego in 2020, where she studied the potential of electronic music as a reparative medium for engaging trauma. 

Dr. Tallon’s research focuses on the myriad ways in which artificial intelligence influences how artists engage with society, with a specific emphasis on equity and algorithmic justice. Her interests include human-computer interaction, virtual tactility, embodied sonic cognition, algorithmic composition and procedural music generation, and data sonification. She has received numerous awards, grants, and fellowships from organizations such as the Harvard Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, the American Academy in Rome, the Barlow Endowment, ASCAP, and NewMusicUSA, and her music and interactive installations have been presented around the world. Prior to beginning her career as a musician, her research in pancreatic cancer won the Alexander J. Denner Award from MIT, and she has developed computational tools to model both cancer metastasis and stem cell differentiation. With over a decade of experience in academic, clinical, and industrial labs, Dr. Tallon brings both scientific rigor and an artistic sensibility to the development of therapeutic technologies.

Dr. Assal Habibi is an Assistant Research Professor of Psychology at the Brain and Creativity Institute at the University of Southern California. Her research takes a broad perspective on how biological dispositions and environmental factors interact and how learning experiences during childhood shape human development. Dr. Habibi is an expert in the use of electrophysiologic and neuroimaging methods to investigate human brain structure and function and her research have been published in several peer-reviewed journals. Dr. Habibi completed her doctoral work at UC Irvine, investigating the effects of musical training in musicians, non-musicians, and patients with auditory impairments. Currently, she is the lead investigator of a 5-year longitudinal study, in collaboration with the Los Angeles Philharmonic and their Youth Orchestra program, investigating the effects of childhood music training on brain, cognitive, and social development.

Mr. Wirlie Morris is a Grammy nominated producer, studio musician, songwriter, and accomplished connoisseur in the world of professional music. He has produced for artists such as Destiny’s Child, Boyz II Men, Charlie Wilson, Khelani, Lelah Hathaway, Blu Cantrell, Norman Brown, Johnny Gill, Xscape, and Meek Mill to name a few. Mr. Morris has also toured across the world as a Music Director, keyboardist, and bass player for artists such as the S.O.S. Band, Keith Sweat, and LSG. With heavy influences in pop, R&B, jazz, and gospel, his production spans a wide range of genres, earning him 4 Grammy nominations and over a dozen chart-topping, platinum hit-records on the Billboard Music Chart. Mr. Morris' dedication, natural music composition abilities, and production expertise led him to start his own production company, Take Note Entertainment, and more recently “WirlWIDE Entertainment, LLC. He continues to work with top artists in the music industry, but devotes much of his time and expertise developing new talent that have superstar potential.

Ms. Yolanda Vargas is a professional competitor, dancer, instructor, adjudicator, Certified Scrutineer, music director, and emcee, all licensed through the National Dance Council of America (NDA), with more than four decades of experience at the highest levels of competitive dance worldwide. She has over 37 years of experience teaching at The University of California, San Diego. She is also the founder and CEO of Infinity Dance Sport Center and The Ballroom Boutique. 

Ms. Vargas has competed in and actively teaches dance styles including: Waltz, Tango, Foxtrot, Rumba, Tango, Lindy Hop, Salsa, Bachata, Hustle, Argentine Tango and so much more. In addition, she  is the President of the Professional Dancers Federation. Ms. Vargas holds numerous Championship titles and has been a Certified Instructor with numerous dance organizations throughout the world. In addition to teaching at her own studio and at the UC San Diego, she also volunteers many hours working with The San Diego's Alzheimer's Association, St. Paul's Villa Retirement facilities, The San Diego Center for the Blind, and The American Heart Association, California Veterans Center.  

Dr. Nathaniel A. Lynd is an Associate Professor in the McKetta Department of Chemical Engineering at The University of Texas at Austin, where he was also awarded as the prestigious Laurence E. McMakin, Jr., Centennial Fellow in Chemical Engineering. Originally from Michigan Dr. Lynd started undergraduate research in polymer chemistry after a semester of organic chemistry with the late Professor Gregory L. Baker at Michigan State University. He was subsequently drawn to the subject of renewable-resource-derived polymers and moved to the University of Minnesota for his graduate education where he completed his PhD under Professor Marc A. Hillmyer, investigating the effects of molecular weight distribution on block polymer self-assembly. Following his graduate work, Dr. Lynd moved to the west coast to pursue postdoctoral studies at the University of California at Santa Barbara’s Materials Research Lab working jointly under Professors Glenn H. Fredrickson, Craig J. Hawker, and the late Edward J. Kramer. Eventually, he took a position as staff scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in the Materials Sciences Division before joining the faculty of the Chemical Engineering Department at UT Austin in 2015. 

Currently, Dr. Lynd’s research group conducts fundamental and applied research in polymer science which is guided by the principles of simplicity, sustainability, and relevance to key technological challenges in chemical engineering for the 21st century in energy, environment, narcotics detection, security, and materials for healthcare. Synthesis is the primary tool his group uses to answer fundamental questions in applied research projects. Additional efforts in molecular modeling are also used to facilitate materials design and to provide context for the interpretation of data. In particular, the Lynd group is engaged in research efforts that create and utilize new functional and reactive polyether materials and block polymers. Their most recent work is built on a foundation of developing novel techniques for the determination of advanced copolymer structures and detailed mechanistic understandings which facilitate the compositional control of structure-property-processing relationships.