Butch Rovan is a composer, performer, media artist, and instrument designer who has served on the faculty of the department of Music at Brown University since 2004.

Rovan’s compositions have been performed all over the world, receiving early recognition in two of the Bourges International Electroacoustic Music Competitions as well as a first prize in the Berlin Transmediale Festival. His multipart installation "Let us imagine a straight line" was selected for the 14th WRO International Media Art Biennale in Poland. He has recorded on the Wergo, EMF, Circumvention, and SEAMUS labels.

The design of sensor hardware and wireless microcontroller systems for musical performance represents a central part of Rovan’s creative work, which has yielded two patents. Among his most recent projects are the TOSHI, a new conductor interface for orchestral synthesis, and a new accessible technology that allows non-sighted composers to program interactive computer music. His research has been featured in The Computer Music Journal, including in a special anthology presenting his custom GLOBE controller. A seminal essay written with Vincent Hayward was highly influential for the field of haptics, and a later piece on alternate controllers was included in Riley and Hunter’s “Mapping Landscapes for Performance as Research,” published by Palgrave Macmillan.

Earlier in his career, Rovan served as compositeur en recherche with the Real-Time Systems Team at the Institut de Recherche et Coordination Acoustique/Musique (IRCAM) in Paris, and then as a faculty member at Florida State University and the University of North Texas, where he headed the Center for Experimental Music and Intermedia. At Brown, he directed the Brown Arts Initiative from 2016-19, where he was instrumental in the design and planning of the Lindemann Performing Arts Center.