Hello! My name is Sora Kanosue and I’m interested in programming languages, how they shape how people program, and how they can be improved.
I’m currently a software engineer working on the Luau programming language. Previously, I was a Master’s student at UC Berkeley advised by the wonderful Sarah E. Chasins, who I also worked with during my time in undergrad, also at UC Berkeley. While at Berkeley, I developed HiLT, a domain-specific language for constructing human-in-the-loop data transformation interfaces.
I graduated from undergrad in May 2023, with a major in Computer Science and a minor in Mathematics. I spent my summers interning at Amazon, interning at Cohesity, and teaching.
Research
A DSL for human-in-the-loop data transformation GUIs
Users trying to perform human-in-the-loop tasks involving complex data transformations can benefit from having bespoke interfaces, but building such a tool with existing abstractions and frameworks is hard. HiLT tries to meet the unmeet needs in this area. In an evaluative user study of programmers using HiLT, we found that folks were consistently more successful with HiLT than with other libraries (even when AI-assisted!).
I was advised on this project by Sarah E. Chasins with mentoring from Parker Ziegler and help from Eric Rawn and Xiaorui Liu.
Using symbolic execution to optimize RISC-V code
SEPO was a system I worked on in collaboration with Jacob Yim that explored how ideas from symbolic execution could be leveraged to optimize assembly code. We began by modeling the semantics of the RISC-V ISA to build a symbolic execution engine. This engine was used to execute RISC-V assembly to output traces of snapshots of symbolic CPU states.
Service
2019-2024
BMUN is a non-profit organization promoting awareness of international issues and diplomacy and helping high schoolers build debate and public speaking skills through UN simulations. I served as BMUN’s Treasurer for two years, with major projects including overhauling our scholarship program, and automating our invoicing. Previously, I was head chair of BMUN 70’s iteration of the Security Council, and chaired for the UNHRC and UNEP.