Hayeon Kim is an assistant professor at Sogang University. Her research chases a question at the heart of immersive media: why some virtual moments feel utterly real while others fall apart. She studies how presence is formed and broken, how bodies and perceptions adapt to virtual worlds, and how intelligent systems can read and respond to human experience in real time. A lifelong gamer across VR, console, and PC, she treats games as both her laboratory and her muse, studying what makes interactive experiences feel real, comfortable, and shared. Before academia, she worked as a client game programmer at Nexon.