Position Title
PhD Candidate (Computer Science)
Nicholas Treynor is a PhD student in the Department of Computer Science. He specializes in AI-driven storytelling and integrated systems. His primary research is conducted within the Social Intelligence and Narrative Games (SING) Lab, where he works primarily on furthering interactive story generation, employing a mixture of classical AI techniques to solve planning tasks, alongside LLMs to aid in text generation within a hybrid system to tackle complex design challenges in storytelling and player interaction.
He currently collaborates with other CAIEF members on Stay Thy Blade, a virtual-reality project exploring conflict de-escalation through interactive Shakespearean theater. His role focuses on developing the user-input interpretation layer, designing AI-driven integrated systems to parse player speech, motion, and intonation to enable responsive NPC interactions.
His broader research approach within the center involves integrating classical AI techniques—such as expert systems, state-space search, and graph traversal—with contemporary machine learning approaches to develop AI-driven interactive experiences and tools, with a particular focus on storytelling.