Kevin Hyekang Joo


I n t r o d u c t i o n
I am a Ph.D. student in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Southern California, where I am advised by Prof. Mohammad Soleymani. I am also an AI researcher at the USC Institute for Creative Technologies (USC ICT), and I collaborate closely with the groups of Profs. Jonathan Gratch, Maja Matariฤ‡, and Gale Lucas. My research themes are primarily human-centered, and I am particularly interested in Human Communicative Behavior & Affect Analysis using multimodality. My research is supported by the USC Annenberg Fellowship.

I received my B.S. and M.S. in Computer Science from the University of Maryland, College Park. Over my journey, I am fortunate to have worked with Prof. Fernando De la Torre from the CMU Robotics Institute as a Research Associate, with Prof. David W. Jacobs from the University of Maryland during my Master's, and with Prof. Ngan Le from the University of Arkansas during my research internships.

*I am happy to discuss and collaborate with anyone on the relevant research!*


N e w s
  • 10/24: Received the Graduate Student Research Award awarded to select fellowship holders from the University of Southern California
  • 09/24: Received the CURVE Research Fellowship Award from the University of Southern California
  • 08/24: Received the USC Annenberg Fellowship from the University of Southern California
  • 08/24: Started a Ph.D. in Computer Science at the University of Southern California
  • 11/23: A paper [4] accepted at ACM SIGMOD 2024
  • 10/23: An extended abstract accepted at APAN 2023
  • 06/23: A paper [3] accepted at IEEE ICIP 2023 (Oral)
  • 05/23: Started a Research Internship at the MIT Lincoln Lab in Lexington, MA
  • 05/23: Graduated from the University of Maryland with an M.S. in Computer Science, advised by Prof. David W. Jacobs
  • 05/22: Started a Research Internship with Prof. Ngan Le at the University of Arkansas over the summer
  • 02/22: A paper [2] accepted at ACM SIGMOD 2022
  • 10/21: A paper [1] accepted at BMVC 2021 for an oral presentation
  • 08/21: Started an M.S. in Computer Science at the University of Maryland, supervised by Prof. David W. Jacobs
  • 07/21: Selected as one of 12 recipients of $10,000 Google Scholars Scholarship in the year of 2021, funded by Google, for my postgraduate studies in Computer Science
  • 06/21: Started a Research Internship with Prof. Leilani Battle at the University of Washington through the NSF-funded Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) program
  • 05/21: Graduated from the University of Maryland with a B.S. in Computer Science (Machine Learning Track) and a Minor in Technology Entrepreneurship
  • 06/20: Started a Software Engineering Internship at Amazon Devices (Remote)
  • 06/19: Started a Software Engineering Internship at Amazon Web Services (AWS) in Herndon, VA