who i am
Hello! 👋
I am a machine learning engineer in Isomorphic Labs, based in London.
Previously, I was at Cohere for three years as one of the first three co:lleagues, building large language models with JAX and TPUs. I am from Toronto, grew up from Vancouver and Seoul, and studied math and jazz bass (quite randomly and unrelatedly to each other 😛) during my undergrad(s).
It’s hard to pinpoint my areas of interest as I gravitate towards what seems most interesting and impactful. But currently, I am interested in:
- ML in structural biology / drug discovery
- ML for scientific discovery
- training / optimising large deep learning models
My hobbies also drift towards what seem most interesting at the time, but I’ve picked up running relatively recently (~2 years), maybe at the expense of letting go of rock climbing.
Contact
email @ joanna.s.yoo | github @ joasyoo| x @ joasyoo
what i've been up to
| where | start | end | what |
|---|---|---|---|
| John's Hopkins University | 2025-01 | - | MSc in applied physics. |
| Isomorphic Labs | 2023-01 | - | Applied ML. Bridging the models' capabilities and real-world impact. |
| Cohere | 2020-01 | 2022-12 | Founding Engineer. Built LLM training frameworks. |
| MindsLab | 2017-02 | 2019-12 | ML projects in drug discovery, NLP, and computer vision |
| UBC | 2011-09 | 2016-05 | BSc in Math. |
my reading list
progress on the reading
| source | progress (2026) | towards the goal |
|---|---|---|
| Book | 4/12 | 🟢 on track |
| Blog Post | 21/100 | 🟡 getting close |
| Paper | 20/100 | 🟡 getting close |
recent reads
| last few books i read | by | how much i liked it |
|---|---|---|
| The Remains of the Day |
|
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ |
| Project Hail Mary |
|
⭐️⭐️⭐️ |
| Novelist as a vocation |
|
⭐️⭐️⭐️ |
| Piranesi |
|
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ |
| Never Let Me Go |
|
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ |
| Foster |
|
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ |
some of (shareable) thoughts / notes
| title | last modified | tags |
|---|---|---|
| 2025 Review and 2026 Planning | 2026-02-26 08:27 | |
| OKR - 2024 Review and 2025 Planning | 2026-02-28 07:40 |