Mara Helmuth composes for computer and acoustic instruments, often using her own software. She is Associate Professor in Composition and the director of (ccm)², the College-Conservatory of Music Center for Computer Music at the University of Cincinnati. She holds a D.M.A. in music composition from Columbia University, a B.A. and M.M. from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and taught at Texas A&M University and New York University. She has had numerous performances in the United States and internationally. She has served as International Computer Music Association member of the board of directors (1998-2001), Array newsletter editor or co-editor (1998-2003), and Vice President for Conferences (2004-2005), as well as ICMA paper, music and award juries. Her tape music includes Abandoned Lake in Maine (1997), based on loon sounds, Mellipse (1989,1995), which won third prize in the 1990 NEWCOMP computer music competition and bugs and ice: A Question of Focus (2002). Collaborations for percussion and computer with Allen Otte are heard on the Electronic Music Foundation compact disk Implements of Actuation (EMF 023) and in the first Internet2-streamed opera, Clotho: the Life of Camille Claudel. Recent work includes the interactive Staircase of Light installation for the Sino-Nordic Arts Space in Beijing and China Prism, a dance performance version of this work and collaborations with saxophonist Rick VanMatre and artist Anna VanMatre, pipa virtuoso Ming Ke, and Alan Bern of Brave Old World. Her software includes Patchmix a Cmix/RTcmix graphical code-generating instrument builder, StochGran, a granular synthesis composition application, and Soundmesh, for Internet 2 network improvisation. Her writings have appeared in the monographs Analytical Methods of Electroacoustic Music and Audible Traces, and in the Journal of New Music Research, Computers and Mathematics with Applications and Perspectives of New Music. She also plays the qin, a Chinese zither.