Pierre-Valery Tchetgen is an interdisciplinary researcher whose work centers on drummologie, the study of the use of African talking drums for communication, with extensions into education technology, human-computer interaction, and social justice research. He is Founder and Ambassador of the Music is Healing Collective, which uses music as a vehicle for social change to bring together diverse backgrounds and motivate youth toward social justice. His research lab - the Urban Griot Collaborative - is currently developing the Drumball digital orality hypermedia system and Urban Griots Playground early literacy Music-Based Intervention (MBI). As an Assistant Professor of Music in the College of Arts, Media & Design at Northeastern University, Pierre-Valery has taught Black Popular Music, Hip Hop in the Music Industry, and has begun designing new courses towards a future Rhythm Studies minor. He is also a faculty in the Art+Design department, where he teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in Experience Design. As an affiliate faculty with the Africana studies department, his work in the digital humanities focuses on leveraging the multimodal affordances of storytelling across the lifespan through design-based research in human-computer interaction and cultural computing. He holds a Ph.D. in Education, a Masters of Information Management and Systems from UC Berkeley and a Masters of Arts in Humanities from the University of Chicago.