Isabella Pu

Hi y’all! I’m Isabella Pu, a first year PhD student in the Personal Robots Group at the MIT Media Lab, studying with Professor Cynthia Breazeal. In 2023, I graduated magna cum laude from Princeton University with a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science and certificate in Robotics & Intelligent Systems, and in 2025 I received my Master’s degree in Media Arts and Sciences from the MIT Media Lab. Currently, I am grateful to be supported by the MIT Presidential Graduate Fellowship.

Broadly, my research investigates how we can use social robots and AI to create joyful, educational, and creative child-robot/AI interactions. As today’s children become more immersed in AI and robots, it becomes increasingly important to empower children’s usage of these technologies. In particular, I am interested designing and developing new AI and social robot interactions that provide fun, creative, and hands-on learning while demystifying how these technologies work. I pursue this line of work in several ways:

• I create child-robot and child-AI interactions to investigate how children can interact with robots and AI in joyful, educational, and creative ways.
• I design K-12 learning experiences to teach children about AI and robots, empowering them to use these technologies more confidently and with greater understanding.
• I develop human-AI and human-robot co-creativity interactions to encourage creative learning and augmented creative technology usage.

Previously, I have worked at Blizzard Entertainment (for the Horde!) on the Player Interactions & Trust team, building systems to detect disruptive behavior in games and help promote pro-social behavior. If you’re interested in this, check out some of the PIT team’s amazing work.

Outside of work, I am an avid achievement hunter and play all sorts of video games. I also follow fashion, write & play music, and write & perform poetry.