Laerdon Kim

I'm a third-year at Cornell University studying computer science. I'm interested in simulating human behavior, representation learning, and proactive + personalized human–AI interaction. My research advisors are Professor Cristian Danescu-Niculescu-Mizil and Professor Lillian Lee.

Laerdon Kim

research interests

I am curious about, broadly, reimagining interaction paradigms around AI systems, which I hope to investigate in two ways:

  • I care about proactive applications that help users think, reflect, and act more effectively over time.
  • I want to build models that can reliably understand, simulate, and steer conversational dynamics. I am inspired by work on social simulation.

new!

I recently authored a paper on conversational forecasting to appear at ACL 2026!

about me

  • I am a maintainer of ConvoKit, a toolkit for analyzing conversational data.
  • I produce music in Ableton, occasionally contributing samples of my cello.
  • I sketch. I have a lot of MUJI pens, too.
  • I like to grill, and bake cupcakes, pies, and custard-related desserts. I once made an algae-colored pumpkin pie.
  • In summer 2024, I started a blog on Substack.

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