Hello! I am a PhD Candidate at Stony Brook University (New York), advised by Dr. Arie E. Kaufman. My research focuses on how everyday context in the physical world can be encoded into digital representations to facilitate human-to-human and human-to-AI communication across realities--spanning physical and virtual environments (VR, AR, MR, HMD, mobile, tiled-display, desktop). To achieve this, I investigate novel interaction and visualization paradigms that enable XR systems to "understand" users, environments, and tasks, and "adapt" system responses, leveraging implicit and explicit multimodal cues such as spatial, temporal, verbal, gestural, and auditory signals. I also explore privacy-aware and trustworthy XR systems that support safe communication of information and user intent in ubiquitous XR environments.

I see myself as an applied "systems" researcher who likes to propose next-generation concepts of XR (with prototypes), frameworks, 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. I actively research to contribute to the domains of XR, Visualization, and HCI via IEEE TVCG, ISMAR, VR, VIS, ACM CHI, and UIST.
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.

News

Publications

  • Teaser image for SpeechLess: Micro-utterance with Personalized Spatial Memory-aware Assistant in Everyday Augmented Reality
    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
  • Teaser image for From Speech-to-Spatial: Grounding Utterances on A Live Shared View with Augmented Reality
    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
  • Teaser image for Memento: Towards Proactive Visualization of Everyday Memories with Personal Wearable AR Assistant
    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
  • Teaser image for Evaluating Spatialized Auditory Cues for Rapid Attention Capture in XR
    Honorable Mention 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
  • Teaser image for AuxiScope: Handheld Augmented Reality Tablet as an Auxiliary Display for Large-Scale Display Systems
    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
  • Teaser image for Explainable XR: Understanding User Behaviors of XR Environments using LLM-assisted Analytics Framework
    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)
  • Teaser image for VoxAR: Adaptive Visualization of Volume Rendered Objects in Optical See-Through Augmented Reality
    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
  • Teaser image for Submerse: Visualizing Storm Surge Flooding Simulations in Immersive Display Ecologies
    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
  • Teaser image for Erebus: Access Control for Augmented Reality Systems
    Erebus: Access Control for Augmented Reality Systems Yoonsang Kim, Sanket Goutham, Amir Rahmati, Arie Kaufman USENIX Conference on Security Symposium (USENIX Security)., 2023
  • Teaser image for Design of Privacy Preservation System in Augmented Reality
    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
  • Teaser image for Modeling Two-Dimensional Touch Pointing
    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
  • Teaser image for Using Bayes' Theorem for Command Input: Principle, Models, and Applications
    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
  • Teaser image for Flexible Remote-Control Application for Virtual Reality using Virtual Graphics Driver and OpenCV
    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

Ongoing Projects

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

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

  • Exploring Spatial Computing for Network Security Applications
    Exploring Spatial Computing for Network Security Applications

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