Karena Cai

About Myself

Hi, I'm Karena. I am currently exploring new opportunities at the intersection of education and technology. I previously worked at Cruise as a Senior Applied Scientist II on the Behaviors team.

I am:

  • A self-starter and eager to learn anything and everything
  • Passionate about teaching, communication, and collaboration

You can sometimes find me running, hiking, learning something new, or in the middle of a good book.

Career

Cruise logo

Senior Applied Scientist II

Cruise LLC

Oct 2021-Nov 2024
  • Core AV Decision-Making Model. Re-architecture of the ml-model led to >40% impact for safety critical performance on the road; Developed and scaled core workflows for feature development, and testing and eval.
  • Behavior Testing and Evaluation. Led team in designing and implementing a pre-merge behavioral testing protocol that has caught >5x behavioral regressions in simulation with >3x time improvement in eval workflows.
  • Behaviors 101/201. Spearheaded the development of two courses on the end-to-end architectural design of the AV stack and standard engineering workflows
  • Autonomy Docs Website. Championed and led the creation of Cruise's Autonomy Org website, centralizing and making critical documentation accessible for the Perception, Behaviors, and Motion teams.
Technologies:
Python ML ROS C++
Exponent logo

Educational Content Designer Contractor

Exponent

Present
  • Content Creation. For the System Design and Data Structures courses for the interview prep start-up Exponent.
  • Developer User Guide Design. For the Extraction-Transform-Load (ETL) startup Teleport and data startup Yscape.
Technologies:
Technical Writing Documentation Education
Lyft logo

Prediction Engineering Intern

Lyft Level 5

Summer 2019
  • Core ML Prediction Models. Innovated new ML models based and improved the accuracy of existing prediction tools by 30%.
Technologies:
Python ML Prediction Models

Education

Caltech logo

Control and Dynamical Systems PhD

Caltech

2015-2021
  • PhD Research. Created the notion of behavioral contracts to formally guarantee safety and progress of self-driving cars.
  • CMS TAs Lead. Hosted workshop to mentor TAs and teach best practices
  • Healthy Collaboration Workshop. Organized and hosted a workshop to encourage healthier collaborations at Caltech.
Princeton University logo

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Bachelors

Princeton University

2011-2015
  • Library regular, E-Quad inhabitant, made friends, built and broke stuff, and investigated how nature could inspire robotics.
  • Minors. Applications of Computing, Robotics and Intelligent Systems.

Skills

Math

Linear Algebra
Optimization
Probability
Stochastic Processes

Coding

Python
Pytorch
JAX
Tensorflow
C++
SQL
ROS

Machine Learning

Machine Learning
Data Mining
Deep Generative Models

Tools

GPT 4.0
Claude Opus
Github with Copilot
Figma
Lucidchart
Cursor
Streamlit
DiagramGPT