This interview was conducted in December 2024. It has been transcribed and edited for clarity.

Sofia Giannuzzi is a senior at Harvard College studying Computer Science and English. Her
research focuses on generative AI and literature.

HTR: What does being an innovator mean to you? And how does this manifest in your
daily life?

Sofia Giannuzzi: I believe that innovators are more or less just people who are doing what they
are passionate about, and I think that when you are really excited about what you are doing, you
tend to push the limits of your field. I think I am just really passionate about what I do and the
research that I do, and in that way, I am somewhat of an innovator. My thesis research mainly
surrounds the ability of generative AI to mimic short story conventions. So I’m bridging my two
concentrations in a way that I never have before, and I think that doing this and being in this
digital humanity space, especially when it comes to generative AI, is pushing it to a new space. I
think, perhaps, that’s where the innovator part comes in.

HTR: What sparked your interest in combining the concentrations of Computer Science
and English?

Sofia Giannuzzi: So I came into college knowing that I wanted to major in computer science.
I’ve been coding since the ninth grade in high school, so I have been going for a while. I always
love using code as a way to sort of benefit my other interests. So I came in knowing that I was
going to concentrate in CS, and then somewhere along freshman year, I hadn’t taken any
English classes and I realized that I really missed reading and writing – because I love books,
I’ve always loved books, and I love talking about books. So I ended up double declaring in my
sophomore fall. I never really thought of them as two interests that bridge easily. They’re kind of
two very separate fields, and I only have recently been able to start sort of working at the
crossroads of the two, and combining these two interests, which has been really cool.

HTR: Can you share some of the key stories or challenges and successes from these
experiences that you have had in Harvard relating to your research?

Sofia Giannuzzi: Yes, I sort of came up with the idea for my thesis project in my junior fall, and I
didn’t really know the best way to go about it.As a double concentrator, you only can thesis in
one field, and though I’m not a joint concentrator, my thesis involves a lot of literary theory as
well as code. So, it was sort of an interesting problem to address, and I ended up doing my
thesis in the English Department because I thought that would allow me to bring more to the
English Department. I think this kind of interdisciplinary work is really important to be doing in
the English departments. So, that is sort of how I got to doing my research. Furthermore, I knew
that it was something that I wanted to continue doing the summer before my senior year, but I
didn’t really know the best ways to do that. I ended up really relying on mentors that I have
found through Harvard Computer Science, in particular professor Vijay Janapa Reddi, who
taught my CS 141 class last semester. When I told him about my interests and about my

research question, he was really interested and he wanted to support me. So I got a spot
working at Harvard Edge Computing Lab over the summer, where I got more hands-on with
generative AI, AI training, and data analysis, which has really allowed me to take my thesis
research to the next level. I’m really grateful to him and to that lab for taking me in and teaching
me these skills. It’s sort of funny when you know what you wanna do, but you don’t really know
the best way to get there. It’s really amazing to have these wonderful Harvard professors and
TFs and grad students who are willing to help you bridge that gap.

HTR: Are there any classes at Harvard that have been fundamental in helping you find
your specific thesis question?

Sofia Giannuzzi: Yeah, my research is very specific and like I said, there’s not a lot of people
doing what I do in this dual space. So, I will say that there’s no classes that sort of set me up
directly for this, but I will say that one class that has been impactful for me is CS 124. I love it
because I really think that it forced me to recognize my ability to problem solve, which I really
appreciated about the course. I also loved CS 141, which is a hardware class. I think that as we
think more and more about generative AI and how it is going to impact the future, hardware is a
really important thing to sort of think about hand in hand with that. One of the classes I loved
that actually sort of informed my research would be The Essay with James Wood in the English
department.It’s English 185E, and it basically just made me realize the power of short-form
literature, which led me to focus my thesis topic on short stories.

HTR: How did you go about finding your community on campus?

Sofia Giannuzzi: Yeah, I would say Lowell House Committee has been a huge part of that for
me. I think that a lot of people end up really loving their house and I don’t think that there’s a bad
house (I know that that’s easy to say coming from Lowell). However, I do think that all the house
communities are really vibrant if you choose to interact with them, and I believe that there’s an
amazing community of tutors and faculty deans within every house. When I was a sophomore, I
joined Lowell House Committee board as a community chair, and I think that it’s just been a
place where I’ve met some of my closest mentors, my closest friends. It really makes it feel like
walking into the dining halls is like coming home.

HTR: What advice would you give to your younger self about navigating Harvard?

Sofia Giannuzzi: I think I would tell myself to trust the process. There were a lot of times where
I thought I knew what was the best path for me, but I didn’t. For instance, this past summer, I
was going to go work at a tech internship, when I ended up getting this spot at the research lab
on the campus in a grant to support my work. Throughout college, a large part of myself really
thought that I was gonna go into big tech companies and do that whole tech pipeline type thing.
However, it turns out that there were things I was more interested in, and I had to trust myself
through that process to be able to find those things and find ways to support myself as I
endeavored to do these things.

HTR: Looking into the future, what are you excited to work on?

Sofia Giannuzzi: I’m excited to see what artificial intelligence does. It’s really interesting when
you have a foot in both English and Computer Science fields. I am interested in questions
surrounding what AI is going to do to human creativity and human creative fields. I also think
that we are right on the cusp of something really interesting and I’m really excited to be at the
forefront of that and working with these technologies and sharing that we build AI in a way that
also protects the creative forms that we love.