Hello, I’m David.

A communication scholar who studies how people relate to one another via machines, and to machines themselves.

I’m an Assistant Professor of Human-AI Communication at Nanyang Technological University’s Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information, where I direct the NTU Embodied Dynamics Lab. I also serve as Assistant Dean for Technology and Education in NTU’s College of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences. NTU lists faculty and current appointments in the Wee Kim Wee School directory and on my NTU faculty profile.

I study how people come to understand, trust, and sometimes care about intelligent machines. I focus on the cues people can see and respond to: a machine’s body, face, movement, gesture, and presence in physical or virtual space.

My training spans communication, cognitive science, education, and computer science. I studied at UCLA, Harvard, and USC, then completed postdoctoral work at USC’s Institute for Creative Technologies and Northeastern’s Khoury College. That combination shapes both the questions I ask and the methods I use.

Before joining NTU, I was an Assistant Professor at Santa Clara University in the Bay Area. Working there gave me experience with the questions and priorities that university researchers and technology organizations bring to emerging systems. That experience now informs my research and leadership work in Singapore.

I’m Korean American, the son of immigrant parents, and I grew up mostly in Los Angeles, but moved back and forth from South Korea. My close proximity to my loved ones in Korea is one of the perks of being in Singapore. I practice yoga daily and enjoy being outdoors, especially in Yosemite. I have been a big fan of the LA Dodgers from the Mike Piazza past to the Shohei Ohtani present. Faith has been a constant through a lot of change. The Korean word 감사 (感謝) is close to how I try to approach things: gratitude for my beloved family, friends, and mentors that have given me so much love and support.

For media inquiries, I can speak about Human–AI Communication, social presence, embodied interaction, XR, and how people assess and relate to AI systems. Contact me here.

Find my work on my NTU faculty profile, Google Scholar, ORCID, Semantic Scholar, ACM Digital Library, IEEE Xplore, Web of Science, and Scopus. You can also read about the Embodied Dynamics Lab or my work in technology, education, and external collaboration.