RESEARCH INTERESTS

I study well-being and service use among immigrant and racial, ethnic, and linguistic minority populations, and how the digitalization is changing access, delivery, and experience of care for these groups. My work spans three areas: (a) the delivery system, including workforce composition, the availability of culturally and linguistically concordant care, and the state-level policy environments that shape both; (b) the populations, including their well-being, coping, help-seeking, informal care networks, and use of digital and AI-mediated resources; and (c) the practitioners, including capacity-building, and intervention development for culturally and linguistically appropriate services.

I utilize quantitative and computational methods with community-engaged research approaches. I am specifically interested in NLP and large language models in social work and migration studies across research, practice, and education: in research, as methods for work with diverse populations; in practice, as technologies that shape assessment, documentation, and decision-making; and in education, as a growing area of training in the field.

My first-authored papers have been published in Psychiatric Services, Social Science & Medicine, Journal of the Society for Social Work and Research, and Digital Health. My dissertation was supported and awarded by the Society for Social Work Research, Grand Challenges for Social Work, the American Psychological Association, and New York University. I have received national awards and scholarships in Korea from the Migration Research and Training Centre, the Ministry of Health and Welfare, and the Ministry of Education. Outside of research, I serve as a board member of Migration to Asia Peace and a research committee member of Mustard Seed Generation.

At the University of Michigan, I am a faculty affiliate of the e-Health and Artificial Intelligence (e-HAIL) initiative, Institute for Healthcare Policy and Innovation, and the Curtis Center for Health Services Research & Innovation. At NYU, I was selected as the inaugural predoctoral fellow at the Constance and Martin Silver Center on Data Science and Social Equity and co-organized the Summer Institute in Computational Social Science (SICSS)–NYU Silver, focusing on data science for social good. I hold a PhD in Social Work from New York University.

Disclaimer: This blog is for general informational purposes only. I cannot provide individual consulting or respond to personal inquiries. All views expressed are my own and do not represent my institution.

RECENT NEWS

• Aug 2026 Teaching Teaching a new MA-level course, “Technology for Social Good: Innovation and Ethics in Social Impact Leadership,” at U-M School of Social Work.
• Jul 2026 Publication My first ACL! My provocation paper with EAAMO working group “Guidelines for Whom? Rethinking AI Ethics in Resource-Constrained Migration Services” has been accepted to the ACL 2026 Workshop on Evaluating AI in Practice. See you in San Diego!
• Jun 2026 Conference Attending AcademyHealth Annual Research Meeting (May 31–Jun 2) for my first time! Presenting all three chapters of my dissertation on language access in mental health care as both podium and poster. Feel free to email me if you’d like to connect 🙂
• Jun 2026 Award Honored to receive the Early Career Abstract Award from the AcademyHealth Mental Health and Substance Use Interest Group!
• May 2026 Publication My co-authored paper with Sangpil Youm (UoF), “Beyond Positive or Negative: How Mixed Emotions on Reddit Are Linked to Depressive Symptoms in Asian American Families”, has been accepted to the Digital Minds Workshop at ICWSM 2026 in Los Angeles.
• May 2026 Service Co-organizing (with Lauri Goldkind (Fordham), Cheng Ren (UAlbany)) the SSWR DS/AI SIG Doctoral Student Networking Event (May 18, virtual), jointly hosted with Grand Challenges for Social Work: Harnessing Technology for Social Good. The event brings together doctoral students and early-career scholars at the intersection of AI, data science, and social work. RSVP here.
• May 2026 Talk Giving a talk on technology and generative AI use among immigrant and ethnic minority populations at the inaugural Digital Drop-In session hosted by the Society for Digital Mental Health (May 11, virtual). Excited to be part of the SDMH community! RSVP here.
• May 2026 Training Participating in the IHPI Impact Accelerator Program (May 19–21)! Looking forward to learning how to bring my research on language access and mental health to broader audiences.
• May 2026 Training Participating in the Michigan Road Scholars program (May 4–8). So excited to learn about communities across Michigan firsthand! Also joining Ginsberg Center’s Community-Engaged Learning Design Intensive (May 11–14).
• Apr 2026 Award Honored to receive the NYU University-wide Outstanding Dissertation Award!
• Apr 2026 Award Honored to receive the Robert Moore Award for Outstanding Dissertation from NYU Silver School of Social Work!
• Apr 2026 Service I joined the Michigan Institute for Data Science (MIDAS) at U-M as a Faculty Affiliate.
• Apr 2026 Talk Giving a talk at Korea University’s Department of Sociology Colloquium on Apr 24 (virtual)! My talk is on applying computational social science methods to immigrant and minority mental health research. The presentation will be in Korean.
• Apr 2026 Conference Presenting at the Rethinking Complex Migration conference at TMU (Apr 15–17)! Our panel is “Emerging Technologies and Human-Computer Interaction for (Im)migration Research.” Excited to share this work alongside my collaborators Jihye Lee (WashU) and Cheng Chow (UT Austin).
• Apr 2026 Conference Giving an oral presentation at All of Us Science Day 2026 (Apr 15, virtual)! This year’s theme is “From Discovery to Impact,” and I am presenting my research on mental health and service utilization among Asian Americans.
• Mar 2026 Publication My paper on BTS fandom communities and mental health support using NLP is accepted to JMIR Infodemiology! Pre-proof version is available here 🙂
• Feb 2026 Publication My two papers on Korean American church leaders and mental health gatekeeper training, with Mustard Seed Generation Research Committee members, have been accepted to Journal of Religion and Health and Pastoral Psychology.
• Jan 2026 Award I have received the SSWR Outstanding Doctoral Dissertation Award for 2026 for my dissertation, “Unraveling Ethnic Disparities: Spatial and Virtual Access to Mental Health Services among Immigrants with Language Barriers.” I am deeply honored and grateful for the support of my mentors and communities throughout this journey. Please join the award ceremony if your time allows!
• Jan 2026 Teaching I am teaching Data Visualization Applications at U-M SSW in Winter 2026. Excited to be teaching my first course on data science for social work practice and research 🙂
• Jan 2026 Conference Attending SSWR 2026 in Washington, D.C. I’m organizing a workshop on LLMs for social work research and a roundtable on data science in social work. I’m also co-organizing the Data Science and AI SIG with Cheng Ren (UAlbany). Please come say hello at SSWR 🙂
• Jan 2026 Publication My co-authored paper with Michael Park (Rutgers University), “Mental health service use among Filipino American and Korean American young adults during the COVID-19 pandemic,” is published in Journal of Community Psychology!
• Jan 2026 Publication My co-authored paper with Subin Na (UPenn), “Impact of bilingual mental health providers on service utilization among Asian Americans: Moderating role of Medicaid spending,” has been accepted to Journal of Racial and Ethnic Health Disparities.
• Jan 2026 Publication My first-authored paper, “Training Computational Social Work Scientists: Lessons from the Summer Institute of Computational Social Science,” has been accepted in Journal of Social Work Education. I am grateful to the SICSS-NYU Silver participants for sharing their experiences.