Heejun Kim
📍 Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST)
M.S. in Artificial Intelligence
Mail | CV | GitHub | Google Scholar
I am currently pursuing an M.S. in Artificial Intelligence at KAIST, conducting research on Reasoning and Efficient AI system at the Scalable and Efficient AI Lab under Prof. Sehoon Kim's supervision. AGI will usher in a new phase of human labor, and what counts as good AI judgment ultimately rests on human values. My work is dedicated to building AGI agents whose behavior aligns with those values.
Previously, I worked with Prof. Taesup Kim at Seoul National University and Prof. Sundong Kim at Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology, researching reasoning and LLM behavior.
I also worked as a visiting researcher at Forschungszentrum Jülich's INM-7 institute, directed by Prof. Simon B. Eickhoff, through the Korea-Germany Junior Research Fellowship, exploring the intersection of neuroscience and machine learning.
Education
Research Experience
Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) · Advisor: Prof. Sehoon Kim
- Improving reasoning capabilities and accelerating inference in recursive architectures
Seoul National University (SNU) · Advisor: Prof. Taesup Kim
- Conducting research on Agentic Memory Using LLM Uncertainty Estimation
- Studied internal behavioral mechanisms of LLMs underlying reasoning, hallucination, and memory recall
Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology (GIST) · Advisor: Prof. Sundong Kim
- Researched test-time adaptation with reinforcement learning for self-improving reasoning capabilities of large language models on the Abstract Reasoning Corpus (ARC)
- Investigated metacognition-driven strategies for helping large language models escape local minima in reasoning
Host Institute: INM-7, directed by Prof. Simon B. Eickhoff and contributed to Mathematical Neuroscience Group led by Dr. Oleksandr Popovych
- Developed preprocessing pipeline for multi-modal MRI human connectome data using High-Performance Computing (HPC) and HyperThreading technology
- Korea-Germany Junior Research Fellowship 2024 organized by Max Planck Korea
Publications
Heejun Kim, Seungpil Lee, Jewon Yeom, Jaewon Sok, Seonghyeon Park, Jeongjae Park, Taesup Kim, Sundong Kim
NeurIPS 2026 | ICML 2026 Mechanistic Interpretability Workshop (Spotlight, 2.8% acceptance rate) | Paper
Jewon Yeom, Jaewon Sok, Heejun Kim, Seonghyeon Park, Jeongjae Park, Taesup Kim
NeurIPS 2026 | ICML 2026 Mechanistic Interpretability Workshop | Paper
Yunho Kim, Jaehyun Park, Heejun Kim, Sejin Kim, Byung-Jun Lee, Sundong Kim
ICML 2026 DEMO Workshop | Paper
Honors & Awards
- Government Scholarship, GIST (Mar 2020 - Aug 2026)
- Government STEM Scholarship (Mar 2020 - Aug 2026)
- Dean's List, College of Information and Computing, GIST (Spring 2025, Fall 2025)
- Korea-Germany Junior Research Fellowship Program 2024 (Sep 2024 - Feb 2025)
Fund: 12,000,000 KRW (8,197 EUR) by National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF), No. RS-2023-00254343. - GIST International Internship Support Program (Sep 2024 - Feb 2025)
- Hyundai AI Challenge - Top 25/330 teams (Sep 2023 - Oct 2023)