Calder Hannan graduated from the University of Virginia with a B.A. in Music and Physics in 2017 and joined Columbia's Music Theory PhD Program in Fall 2018. His research interests include popular music (especially extreme and progressive metal), rhythm and meter, the experience of musical form, and transcription. His dissertation will prospectively explore moments of tactus transformation in recent popular music from music theoretical, ethnographic/cultural, and cognitive perspectives. He also recently started a YouTube channel where he shares his metal research for a general audience, and writes and records as the metal project Florid Ekstasis.