2SmallCats
Thoughtful AI.
Practical solutions.
About Joan
Joan is a researcher and engineer driven by a simple question: how can technology make people's lives better?
She holds a Ph.D. in Computing & Information Sciences from Rochester Institute of Technology and has spent her career bridging research and real-world engineering from Perception/Machine Learning and Human-Computer Interaction research to building production systems at Microsoft, Uber, startups, and her own independent lab, Revelix Labs.
Today, Joan is increasingly focused on AI safety and trustworthy AI. Her current interests include understanding model behavior and internal states, human-AI interaction, AI oversight, and developing practical techniques that help people use AI safely and confidently. She enjoys exploring new research questions and translating them into systems that can be evaluated in the real world.
Beyond technology, Joan has spent many years volunteering in humanitarian causes, including disaster relief, animal rescue, children's shelters, and direct patient care as a Certified Nursing Assistant. These experiences continue to shape her belief that advances in AI should ultimately be measured not only by capability, but by their impact on human well-being.
Outside of research, she enjoys Argentine tango, scuba diving, poker, and learning languages while traveling.
Why "2SmallCats"?
2SmallCats is named after a dream I shared with my lifelong friend, Yuyu: to build technology that makes a real difference in the world. In July 2021, Yuyu passed away in a tragic accident. This company carries that dream forward - in her memory, and for myself.
Yuyu earned her master's in computer science from USC and a Ph.D. from Northeastern, and was working at Google when she passed. But ask anyone who knew her, and they won't lead with that. They'll tell you about her laugh - warm, constant, contagious. She was easy-going, straightforward, altruistic to a fault. And once she set her mind to something, she went all-in, no half-measures. That same spirit - joyful, generous, all-in - is what I try to carry into this mission every day.