Hello! I am a sixth year PhD at Stony Brook University (New York) in Visualization Lab under the Center for Visual Computing, advised by Dr. Arie E. Kaufman. My research focuses on how data is intelligently adapted across realities -- Physicality and Virtuality (VR, AR, MR HMD, Mobile, Tiled Display, PC), aiming to design a personalized, context-aware XR interface that "understands" users, environments, and tasks, enabling the adaptation of visualization and interaction. I leverage multimodal AI that integrates speech, gestures, and visuospatial cues, to support (1) personalized information adaptation and (2) fluid user collaboration across realities. I also explore (3) security and privacy in ubiquitous, everyday XR.

I see myself as a "systems" applied researcher who likes to propose next-generation concepts of XR (with prototypes), toolkits, or, representations and standards that benefit the eXtended Reality (XR) and Visualization research community. I am also always thrilled to expand my research ideas with the researchers from other relevant domains such as HCI, Computer Vision, NLP, and Security/Privacy.
Prior to my PhD journey, I received my master's degree in 2020 from Stony Brook and was privileged enough to research under the supervision of Dr. Xiaojun Bi. I received my bachelor's degree from Soongsil University, South Korea, in 2017. I actively conduct research to contribute to the communities of XR, Visualization, and HCI: IEEE TVCG, ISMAR, VR, VIS, ACM CHI, and UIST.

News

  • Jan 27, 2026 Two first-authored papers ("SpeechLess" and "Speech-to-Spatial" ) and two workshop papers ("Memento" and a paper on "Spatial Perception" ) were accepted to IEEE VR 2026, and I will be presenting them in Daegu, Korea, this March!
  • Sep 12, 2025 My co-authors and I submitted three papers on (1) Ubiquitous Computing and Context-aware AR; (2) MR Security; and (3) Spatial Computing, to IEEE VR 2026. Fingers crossed!
  • Aug 06, 2025 My co-authored paper "AuxiScope: Handheld Augmented Reality Tablet as an Auxiliary Display for Large-Scale Display Systems" is going to be presented at IEEE ISMAR 2025.
  • May 19, 2025 I received a "Special Recognition for Outstanding Reviews" from IEEE ISMAR 2025.
  • Apr 11, 2025 My co-authors and I submitted a paper on Cross-reality, Tiled-display, and Hand-held AR, to IEEE ISMAR 2025.
  • Jan 16, 2025 "Explainable XR" was accepted to IEEE VR 2025 (as TVCG paper), I will be presenting it at St. Malo, France, this March!
  • Dec 12, 2024 My co-author and I submitted a paper on the usability of 2D and 3D immersive interface, to IEEE TVCG.
  • Nov 15, 2024 My co-author and I submitted a paper to CVPR 2025, on fast reconstruction of 3D digital twin, for XR.
  • Oct 08, 2024 Our TVCG accepted paper, "Submerse: Visualizing Storm Surge Flooding Simulations in Immersive Display Ecologies" is going to be presented at IEEE VIS 2024.
  • Oct 08, 2024 Our TVCG accepted paper, "VoxAR: Adaptive Visualization of Volume Rendered Objects in Optical See-Through Augmented Reality" is going to be presented at IEEE VIS 2024.
  • Sep 11, 2024 My co-authors and I submitted a paper on Cross-virtuality and Visual analytics, to IEEE VR 2025.

Current Projects

Projects introduced below are still in progress, thus, cannot be disclosed in detail.
Also, some projects are not included in the list below. Please reach out to me via email to learn more. I am open for collaboration or discussion.

  • Hand-held AR Project
    Using Hand-held AR Device for Tiled-display Systems

    We are designing an end-to-end framework that facilitates the usability of a mobile hand-held AR device in tiled-display systems.

  • Spatial Computing Project
    Exploring Spatial Computing for Network Security Applications

    We are exploring immersive interface designs for network security applications and investigate their use-cases.

Publications

  • SpeechLess Project
    SpeechLess: Micro-utterance with Personalized Spatial Memory-aware Assistant in Everyday Augmented Reality
    Yoonsang Kim, Devshree Jadeja, Divyansh Pradhan, Yalong Yang, Arie Kaufman.
    IEEE Conference on Virtual Reality and 3D User Interfaces (IEEE VR)., 2026.
    PDF VIDEO
  • Speech-to-Spatial Project
    From Speech-to-Spatial: Grounding Utterances on A Live Shared View with Augmented Reality
    Yoonsang Kim, Divyansh Pradhan, Devshree Jadeja, Arie Kaufman.
    IEEE Conference on Virtual Reality and 3D User Interfaces (IEEE VR)., 2026.
    PDF VIDEO
  • Memento Project
    Memento: Towards Proactive Visualization of Everyday Memories with Personal Wearable AR Assistant
    Yoonsang Kim, Yalong Yang, Arie Kaufman.
    IEEE Conference on Virtual Reality and 3D User Interfaces Abstracts and Workshops (IEEE VRW)., 2026.
    PDF (Pre-print) VIDEO
  • Spatial Attention Project
    Evaluating Spatialized Auditory Cues for Rapid Attention Capture in XR
    Yoonsang Kim, Swapnil Dey, Arie Kaufman.
    IEEE Conference on Virtual Reality and 3D User Interfaces Abstracts and Workshops (IEEE VRW)., 2026.
    PDF (Pre-print)
  • AuxiScope Project
    AuxiScope: Handheld Augmented Reality Tablet as an Auxiliary Display for Large-Scale Display Systems
    Matthew Castellana, Chahat Kalsi, Yoonsang Kim, Saeed Boorboor, Arie Kaufman.
    IEEE International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality (IEEE ISMAR)., 2025.
    DOI PDF
  • Explainable XR Project
    Explainable XR: Understanding User Behaviors of XR Environments using LLM-assisted Analytics Framework
    Yoonsang Kim, Zainab Aamir, Mithilesh Singh, Saeed Boorboor, Klaus Mueller, Arie Kaufman.
    IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics (IEEE TVCG)., 2025 (via IEEE VR - Special issue).
    DOI PDF VIDEO CODE
  • VoxAR Project
    VoxAR: Adaptive Visualization of Volume Rendered Objects in Optical See-Through Augmented Reality
    Saeed Boorboor, Matthew Castellana, Yoonsang Kim, Zhutian Chen, Johanna Beyer, Hanspeter Pfister, Arie Kaufman.
    IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics (IEEE TVCG)., 2023.
    DOI PDF VIDEO
  • Submerse Project
    Submerse: Visualizing Storm Surge Flooding Simulations in Immersive Display Ecologies
    Saeed Boorboor, Yoonsang Kim, Ping Hu, Josef M Moses, Brian A Colle, Arie Kaufman.
    IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics (IEEE TVCG)., 2023.
    DOI PDF VIDEO MEDIA #1 MEDIA #2
  • Erebus Project
    Erebus: Access Control for Augmented Reality Systems
    Yoonsang Kim, Sanket Goutham, Amir Rahmati, Arie Kaufman.
    USENIX Conference on Security Symposium (USENIX Security)., 2023.
    DOI PDF MEDIA CODE
  • Privacy Preservation Project
    Design of Privacy Preservation System in Augmented Reality
    Yoonsang Kim, Saeed Boorboor, Amir Rahmati, Arie Kaufman.
    IEEE Symposium on Visualization for Cyber Security (IEEE VizSec)., 2021.
    PDF
  • 2D Touch Pointing Project
    Best Honorable Mention

    Modeling Two-Dimensional Touch Pointing
    Yu-Jung Ko, Hang Zhao, Yoonsang Kim, IV Ramakrishnan, Shumin Zhai, Xiaojun Bi.
    ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology (ACM UIST)., 2020.
    DOI PDF VIDEO
  • Bayes' Command Project
    Using Bayes' Theorem for Command Input: Principle, Models, and Applications
    Suwen Zhu, Yoonsang Kim, Jingjie Zheng, Jennifer Yi Luo, Liuping Wang, Xiangmin Fan, Feng Tian, Xiaojun Bi.
    ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (ACM CHI)., 2020.
    DOI PDF
  • MR Remote Desktop Project
    Flexible Remote-Control Application for Virtual Reality using Virtual Graphics Driver and OpenCV
    Yoonsang Kim, Geunyeop Ha, Sangjun Lee.
    International Journal of Applied Engineering Research (IJAER)., 2017.
    PDF