Welcome to David Y.J. Kim’s Homepage

My Academic Goal and Research

Generally, my interest lies on educational technology. I am interested in improving the next generation of education using state-of-the-art technologies. Specifically, I have two lines of research that I pursue.

One line of research is building new tools to democratizing computing — making information technology a tool for everyone, from children in school to leaders in government. Currently I am working with App Inventor at MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory with the supervision of Prof. Hal Abelson. App Inventor stems from the idea that anyone should be able to take powerful computational tools and create meaningful, original mobile applications for smartphones and tablets that have impact on the world and in their daily lives.

Currently, I’m developing a no-code platform that allows individuals to easily create mobile applications using natural language descriptions without the need for coding skills. This type of platform would greatly simplify the process of app development and make it accessible to a wider range of people, democratizing access to mobile technology. More specific statement can be found here.

Another research goal is to create a solid framework that uses Machine Learning (ML) and Deep Learning (DL) to infer explanatory variables of human behavior from real-world data, then further apply them to support or refute hypotheses regarding student learning. There are various and thorough studies on this topic that have yet to be conducted. More specific statement can be found here.

During my Masters Degree I have been working with my advisor Michael C. Mozer as a Research Assitance for a couple of years. The overall research project focus on developing intelligent textbooks which infer student understanding based on students’ interactions with the textbooks. Given a model of the student’s knowledge state, we then hope to customize material for further study and review.

Personal Motivation/ Life Goal

My motto is “Living, Loving, and Learning,” as the author of the book Leo F. Buscaglia, Ph.D. mentioned. I always pursue learning new things not only in academia but in my everyday life. My goal is to contribute to making a loving society of understanding and empathy. Personal History and Diversity Statement.

While mutual relationship between people has always been and continue to be essential, I vision a future where Artificial Intelligence (AI) collaborates with people by augmenting human capabilities, educating and training people in various tasks and activities. AI can improve the quality of individual’s performance, resulting in better education, healthcare, and overall life decision making. To successfully integrate AI in to our society it is crucial for AI to understand human, specially their mind. I believe AI must have a solid understanding of human cognition, intention, and emotion, hence why I am pursuing academic study in Artificial Intelligence.