Q&A: Computer Science Major Joni Isbell is Charting Her Own Research Course

Joni Isbell is a third-year computer science major studying cross-language alignment with School of Modern Language Assistant Professor Hongchen Wu. She also studies LLM suspense detection with Interactive Computing Professor Mark Riedl. The following is part of a series of Q&As from the Undergraduate Research Opportunities program.

How long have you been an undergraduate researcher at Georgia Tech?

I have been doing research for a full year. I started my research journey with  Dr. Hongchen Wu during my summer semester of my sophomore year in 2024. A semester later, I joined Dr. Mark Riedl’s Entertainment Intelligence and Human-Centered AI (EI & HCAI) lab.

How did you get involved with undergraduate research?

Image

Throughout my time at Georgia Tech, I have been exposed to computer science research through my job as a research communications student assistant at the College of Computing, engaging with my professors, and connecting with my peers. After taking one of Dr. Wu’s Chinese Mandarin courses, I looked into her research and was fascinated. I reached out to learn more and have worked with her ever since. I also wanted to continue to explore different topics within computational linguistics to solidify my research interests. This was my motivation to reach out to the EI & HCAI lab. Research is my passion, and I am so grateful for these opportunities.

What are you working on?

Broadly, I explore how to apply linguistic and psychological concepts to computer science, and I evaluate how current systems reflect these ideas.

With Dr. Wu, I am conducting cross-language alignment on Thai audio and transcripts. I am analyzing model alignment results to compare the performance of using a high-resource language vs a low-resource but closely linguistically related language as intermediate dictionaries for tonal audio.

In the EI & HCAI lab, I am analyzing industry LLM’s detection of suspense in literature. Influenced by the field Machine Psychology, I am implementing suspense detection papers and comparing human vs AI agreement. We also are conducting adversarial attacks on the models to understand what causes a divergence of agreement.

What is your favorite thing about research/researching?

I love being surrounded by such brilliant people. I really appreciate the research community and how supportive and eager to teach they are. Everyday, I learn about new topics, emerging fields, and skills I can use both in my academic and personal life.

What are your future plans and how has research influenced them?

I plan to get a Ph.D. in computational linguistics. I would love to lead a research lab that focuses on the intersection of linguistic theory and computer science. Both of my mentors have greatly influenced me and I hope to one day mentor early career researchers in the same way they’ve supported me.

Story and photo courtesy of the Office of Undergraduate Education