Cavan is a PhD research student at the Sonic Arts Research Centre, Queen's University Belfast.

Cavan's current PhD research, studying under the supervision of Dr. Michael Gurevich, Dr. Paul Stapleton and Dr. Sile O'Modhrain, is provisionally titled 'The Spectator Understanding Of Performative Interaction'. His work examines the role of the spectator in the ecology of communicative interactions with technology. Exploring the spectators cognition of performance with digital musical instruments and how the design process can be informed to create more communicative performances.

In 2006 he graduated from the Sonic Arts Research Centre with a Masters in Sonic Arts, focusing on novel interaction techniques. His dissertation, 'Creating Games With Feeling', was presented at the CGames06 conference gaining the 'Best Student Paper' award. Cavan spent the following years playing bass in the Irish 'rock' group Catoan touring the UK and Ireland. In 2007 he engineered and co-produced Catoan's 'And Will I' album released on the local 'Curious Incident Records' label. During this time Cavan also worked as technical director for Banjax until 2007 and thereafter as technical director for Straandlooper Digital Animation Studios.

Cavan also develops new and innovative ways of breaking cheap electronic toys in order to re-purpose them into performance instruments alongside developing instrumental laptop performance. He can be seen performing regularly in groups such as Noise. Stop. Repeat. The Summer Experiment, The Belfast Legion for Improvised Sights and Sounds (BLISS) and Mexican&Brittish.