Hey, I’m Leonardo!
I'm a CS Ph.D. student at the University of Southern California, advised by Prof. Emilio Ferrara.
I like the idea of applying engineering to social systems, and I'm currently researching the personalization and alignment of LLMs through representation engineering.
Papers
2026
Psychological steering of large language models
Leonardo Blas, Robin Jia, Emilio Ferrara
2026
Psychological steering of large language models
Leonardo Blas, Robin Jia, Emilio Ferrara
2025
Large-scale detection of multilingual coordinated activity on Telegram
Leonardo Blas, Diya Saraf, Tanishq Salkar, Nora Adadurova, Luca Luceri, Emilio Ferrara
2025
Large-scale detection of multilingual coordinated activity on Telegram
Leonardo Blas, Diya Saraf, Tanishq Salkar, Nora Adadurova, Luca Luceri, Emilio Ferrara
2025
Cross-platform narrative prediction: Leveraging platform-invariant discourse networks
Patrick Gerard, Luca Luceri, Leonardo Blas, Emilio Ferrara
2025
Cross-platform narrative prediction: Leveraging platform-invariant discourse networks
Patrick Gerard, Luca Luceri, Leonardo Blas, Emilio Ferrara
2025
Psychological steering in LLMs: An evaluation of effectiveness and trustworthiness
Amin Banayeeanzade, Ala N. Tak, Fatemeh Bahrani, Anahita Bolourani, Leonardo Blas, Emilio Ferrara, Jonathan Gratch, Sai Praneeth Karimireddy
2025
Psychological steering in LLMs: An evaluation of effectiveness and trustworthiness
Amin Banayeeanzade, Ala N. Tak, Fatemeh Bahrani, Anahita Bolourani, Leonardo Blas, Emilio Ferrara, Jonathan Gratch, Sai Praneeth Karimireddy
2025
Unearthing a billion Telegram posts about the 2024 U.S. presidential election: Development of a public dataset
Leonardo Blas, Luca Luceri, Emilio Ferrara
2025
Unearthing a billion Telegram posts about the 2024 U.S. presidential election: Development of a public dataset
Leonardo Blas, Luca Luceri, Emilio Ferrara
Projects
2024
r/History and r/AlternativeHistory post classifier
Binary post classifier built and trained with textual, numeric, and categorical Reddit data.
2024
r/History and r/AlternativeHistory post classifier
Binary post classifier built and trained with textual, numeric, and categorical Reddit data.
2024
House price modelling competition
Kaggle competition to model the house prices in Ames, IA, between 2006 and 2010.
2024
House price modelling competition
Kaggle competition to model the house prices in Ames, IA, between 2006 and 2010.
2024
Human trafficking, population, and GNI per capita
Analysis of contemporary socioeconomic and human trafficking data to shed light on this problem.
2024
Human trafficking, population, and GNI per capita
Analysis of contemporary socioeconomic and human trafficking data to shed light on this problem.
2023
Japanese dictionary
Web app to visualize 8K essential Japanese words, radicals, and mnemonics.
2023
Japanese dictionary
Web app to visualize 8K essential Japanese words, radicals, and mnemonics.
2021
Word search algorithms comparison
Runtime comparison of Boyer-Moore, standard trie, and two brute force searches on a 355K English words dataset.
2021
Word search algorithms comparison
Runtime comparison of Boyer-Moore, standard trie, and two brute force searches on a 355K English words dataset.
2019
Krabby-copter
CAD design, inspired on SpongeBob's Patty Wagon.
2019
Krabby-copter
CAD design, inspired on SpongeBob's Patty Wagon.
Essays
2023
Personal background
Where I come from, my perspective, and why I do what I do.
2023
Personal background
Where I come from, my perspective, and why I do what I do.
Photos
Blog
2021
Korean food culture
In the fall, I studied abroad at Yonsei University while taking an online Food Culture class at SJSU. My research topic for the semester was the Korean food culture. I watched Korean movies, read papers on Korean history, went to Korean restaurants, and talked to Koreans. All while in Korea! I was completely submerged in my study abroad experience, and I loved every bit of it.
Korean food culture
A presentation on the circumstances that shaped the ancient and contemporary Korean food cultures.
Korean food culture
A presentation on the circumstances that shaped the ancient and contemporary Korean food cultures.
Chuseok
A presentation on the concept, origins, and foods of Chuseok and the contemporary ways to celebrate it.
Chuseok
A presentation on the concept, origins, and foods of Chuseok and the contemporary ways to celebrate it.