Joan Smith

Principal Engineer at Google, AI and Infrastructure

[Pushmeet Kohli @pushmeet]

Announcing a major milestone achieved by my team @GoogleDeepMind: we have proven key security properties of the machine code underlying the Signal messaging protocol. This is the first time the actual production code of a widely deployed protocol has been formally verified – by any method, with or without AI – and at this depth.

More than a research breakthrough, it’s a prime example of how frontier AI can be a force multiplier to counter the speed and scale of modern cyber threats.

Formal verification offers a higher standard of security; however, it’s extremely complex and time consuming, which is why in many cases it’s considered to be impractical. Similar efforts could take teams decades of combined effort. We did it in a month’s time.

Using AlphaProof Code, Google DeepMind's new agentic framework for formal verification that runs on LLMs including Gemini Carbon, we verified the Signal protocol down to the actual code running on devices.  This milestone lays the groundwork for a future in which vital systems, from medical device firmware to power grid software, ship with mathematical proof that their protections work.

Reaching that future will take continued research from our community. In that spirit, we're open-sourcing our formal specifications and verification artifacts so others can build on this work.

On a personal note, this moment is of deep significance to me. I started my own research journey more than two decades ago as an intern working on checking the consistency of complex software systems. Seeing this grand challenge made practical with modern AI is extraordinary.

I'm extremely proud of my team members: Swarat Chaudhuri, Andrew Ferraiuolo, Anton Kovsharov, Tej Chajed, Sam Schlesinger,  Karn Seth, Jonathan Katz, and Charles Sutton for taking on this grand challenge and delivering, and grateful to the Signal team for their partnership.

https://t.co/kN1eRYQ8fF

[Jason Sheltzer @JSheltzer]

Pleased to share my lab’s new manuscript integrating genomics, drug development, cell biology, and mouse modeling to comprehensively evaluate the cyclin-dependent kinase CDK11 as a drug target in cancer.

[Jason Sheltzer @JSheltzer]

At-home pregnancy tests were invented in 1967, but for years the FDA prevented them from being sold to consumers.

Regulators believed that it was dangerous for people to be able to obtain this information directly - medical information had to come from a doctor, of course.

[François Chollet @fchollet]

You can write a self-replicating physical program in just 45 tokens (RNA bases). That's small enough to emerge spontaneously via brute force recombination at scale.

[Joan Smith @joans]

@michellearning tokens, too

[Joan Smith @joans]

@michellearning @genentech @RecursionPharma @awscloud @nvidia Congratulations, Michelle! You're really building the future of scientific discovery

[Jason Sheltzer @JSheltzer]

I’m excited to share a new postdoctoral opportunity in my lab at Stanford to study the consequences of gene dosage alterations in iPS cells. Check out the posting below and shoot me an email if you’re interested -

[Jason Sheltzer @JSheltzer]

New from my lab on bioRxiv - we found an existing drug that appears to be safe in humans that selectively kills chemotherapy-resistant cancer cells.

[Jason Sheltzer @JSheltzer]

Thrilled to share our new paper describing the development and characterization of CDK11 inhibitors for cancer therapy. We also establish a new system that I think represents a huge leap forward in our ability to understand drug toxicity in a living organism.

[Joan Smith @joans]

I'm eager to get to know our new community -- please reach out and say hi!

[Joan Smith @joans]

I'm thrilled to share that my family and I are moving to Palo Alto. I'll be continuing my work at Google building out our AI infrastructure for maximal efficiency and speed.

[Joan Smith @joans]

It's an incredible time for the field and our company, and I am so excited to continue this work in-person with my brilliant colleagues.

And, pulling everything together, my husband Jason will be joining the faculty at Stanford, moving his cancer research lab from Yale.

[Jason Sheltzer @JSheltzer]

An interesting trend I found:

Among the top 10 national winners at the Intel/Westinghouse Science Fair from 1990 to 2002, 66% of them are now in academia.

Among the same group from 2003 to 2014, less than a third are academics.

[Jason Sheltzer @JSheltzer]

Check out our new study in @ScienceMagazine, where we take on a 100-year-old debate: what’s the role of aneuploidy in cancer?

We discovered that genetically removing extra chromosomes blocks cancer growth - a phenomenon we call “aneuploidy addiction”. https://t.co/K5ny7Ureph

[Jason Sheltzer @JSheltzer]

Proud to announce the launch of Meliora Therapeutics, a mechanism-focused drug development company, co-founded with @davidycli and @joans, with $11M in seed funding from @HOFCapital, @obviousvc, @Zhenfund, @villageglobal, and others.

https://t.co/zgZ5whecJI

[Jason Sheltzer @JSheltzer]

Welcome Tavi Glenn Sheltzer-Smith! Born on 4/21/22. 8 pounds 3 ounces, 21 inches long. Mother and baby are doing great!

[taber @cakesandcourage]

a popular myth is that people who are Very Computer have computers that work. nothing could be further from the truth. the Very Computer are capable of generating much more novel and fascinating ways to make computers not fucking work and exercise this capability wantonly

[Jason Sheltzer @JSheltzer]

New paper from @joans and me! A pan-cancer, cross-platform analysis identifies >100,000 genomic biomarkers for cancer outcomes. Plus, a website to explore the data (https://t.co/20fFzSgSEu) and a (controversial?) discussion of “cause” vs. “correlation” in cancer genome analysis.

[Jason Sheltzer @JSheltzer]

I’m excited to share that I’ll be joining the Yale School of Medicine as an assistant professor! My lab will be moving from CSHL to Yale this summer. And we’re hiring! If you’re interested in working on cancer genomics, chromosome engineering, or drug targeting, drop me a line.

[Joan Smith @joans]

This is a great team of smart and kind people that does super cool, meaningful work.