Kangsoo Kim

I am a postdoctoral researcher in the Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) Lab at the University of Delaware (UDel) under Prof. Roghayeh (Leila) Barmaki. Before joining the HCI Lab at UD, I was a postdoctoral scholar at the Synthetic Reality Lab (SREAL) in the Institute for Simulation and Training with an appointment in the College of Nursing, University of Central Florida (UCF).

In the new paradigm of technology, which merges and tightly integrates the physical, digital, and biological spheres, all the physical and digital things are becoming more and more intelligent and connected to each other through the Internet, and the boundary between them becomes blurry and seamless.

In this era of technological advancements, my research explores how to develop more influential interactive systems and how to effectively and efficiently enhance human abilities using immersive Extended Reality (XR)—Virtual/Augmented/Mixed reality (VR/AR/MR)—while pursuing better understanding of human perception and behavior in (social) interactions with/through virtual entities, in a broad scope of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) and User Experience (UX). For example, I investigate the effects of embodied Virtual Humans (VHs) with coherent and plausible behaviors interacting with the surrounding physical environment on the sense of social presence with the VH and the trustworthiness of it.