Donggyu Kim is a Ph.D. student at the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism at the University of Southern California (USC). He holds a B.S. in Advertising with highest honors from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) and an M.A. in Advertising from the University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin), where he served as a teaching assistant for two years. He also earned an M.S. in Communication Data Science from USC and served as a teaching assistant for an additional year. Outside academia, he has gained professional experience through internships at Samsung Life Insurance, McCann Worldgroup, and Informa PLC.

His research examines the psychological underpinnings of human–AI interaction and AI-mediated communication, with a particular focus on how AI shapes persuasion in strategic communication contexts. His work investigates how virtual humans and influencers influence audience perceptions and persuasive outcomes, as well as how generative AI is transforming human–AI collaboration and communication processes.

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More information on his research can be found on ResearchGate