Professor Ayoung Kim received her bachelor's degree in 2005 and her master's degree in 2007 from Seoul National University Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering. Afterwards, she received a master's degree in electrical engineering from the University of Michigan in 2011 and a doctorate in mechanical engineering in 2012. After obtaining her doctorate, she worked as a postdoc at the University of Michigan's Department of Shipbuilding and Marine Engineering until September 2013, and as a senior researcher at the Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI) until August 2014. After that, she served as an assistant professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology from September 2014, and as an associate professor from March 2020 to August 2021.

Professor Ayoung Kim (University of Michigan Ph.D.) researches ‘SLAM’ (Simultaneous Localization and Mapping) which is a technique that estimates the location and creates a map for the movement of autonomous objects, including robots. SLAM technology is used to help autonomous driving by utilizing underwater robots that cannot use GPS, robots at construction sites that change the environment from time to time, and autonomous vehicles in complex urban areas. To this end, research is also conducted to utilize and fuse optical sensors such as radars and thermal imaging cameras as well as optical sensors such as cameras and lasers.