Kai Tzu-iunn Ong

Welcome to my iunniverse

prof_pic.jpg

[google scholar] [x] [linkedin] [​ktio89(at)yonsei(dot)ac(dot)kr]

Hello. I am Kai, from Taiwan. I am a Ph.D. candidate in AI (advised by prof. Jinyoung Yeo). ​​Before AI & CS, I’d studied mechanical engineering at National Taiwan University (B05) and Yonsei University. I’ve always been enthralled by how we can draw inspiration from both societal challenges we're facing and human behaviours (e.g., cognitive theory) to drive the advancement of AI. Consequently, my research interest lies in the intersection of:

  • Dialogue / Interactive Systems1
  • Language Agents2
  • Human-centred AI
  • AI for Science and Social Good (e.g., healthcare)3,4

Contact me for collaboration:)


Publication Spotlight

* = Co-first authorship. The full publication list is here.
  1. New Towards Lifelong Dialogue Agents via Timeline-based Memory Management
    Kai Tzu-iunn Ong*, Namyoung Kim*, Minju Gwak, Hyungjoo Chae, and 5 more authors
    NAACL 2025  Oral Presentation 
    [PDF]
  2. Multitask Deep Learning for Joint Detection of Necrotizing Viral and Noninfectious Retinitis from Common Blood and Serology Test Data
    Kai Tzu-iunn Ong*, Taeyoon Kwon*, Harok Jang, Min Kim, and 5 more authors
    Investigative Ophthalmology & Visual Science 2024 (Q1; IF = 5.0)
    [PDF]
  3. Large Language Models Are Clinical Reasoners: Reasoning-aware Diagnosis Framework with Prompt-generated Rationales
    Taeyoon Kwon*, Kai Tzu-iunn Ong*, Dongjin Kang, Seungjun Moon, and 6 more authors
    AAAI 2024
    [PDF]
  4. Evidence-empowered Transfer Learning for Alzheimer’s Disease
    Kai Tzu-iunn Ong, Hana Kim, Minjin Kim, Jinseong Jang, and 5 more authors
    IEEE ISBI 2023  Oral Presentation 
    [PDF] [Video]

Academic Experience

Yonsei University 2022 - Expected 2027
Ph.D. student in Artificial Intelligence

Yonsei University 2018 - 2022
B.Sc. in Mechanical Engineering

National Taiwan University 2016 - 2018 (Voluntarily Ceased)
B.Sc. in Mechanical Engineering

HSNU (The Affiliated Senior High School of National Taiwan Normal University)
Math and Science Concentration

Tianmu Junior High School & Elementary School
The tallest kid in my grade

Spoken Languages

Native:
Taiwanese Mandarin, Taiwanese Hokkien, and their variants.

Full professional proficiency (C1+):
American, Korean

Understanding people if they stay within certain topics:
Spanish

Beginner:
Japanese, Toki Pona

Activities

Program reviewer: AAAI (2023, 2024, 2025), ACL (2023, 2024, 2025), EMNLP (2023, 2024, 2025), ​EACL (2024)

Co-organiser: Multi-Camera Robust Classification of Fundus Diseases (MuCaRD) Challenge, MICCAI 2025

Teaching (TA):

  • Introduction to AI (AAI2250), Yonsei university (Fall, 2024)
  • NLP (AAI3301), Yonsei university (Spring, 2024)
  • AI expert program, Samsung, Korea (Jul, 2023 & Fall, 2024)
  • Big data (CSI4121), Yonsei university (Spring, 2023)

Mentoring:

  • Iiseo Jihn (Spring, 2025): LLMs for psychotherapies.
  • Gayoung Kim (Spring, 2025): VLMs for healthcare.
  • Seung Woo Baek (Spring 2025): Paper accepted to KIISE Special Issue (Feb 2025).
  • Taeyoon Kwon (Fall, 2023): Papers accepted to AAAI 2024 and IOVS 2024.

Conference Attendance

Upcoming:  N/A

Past: NAACL 2025 (USA), ACL 2024 (Thailand), EMNLP 2023 (Singapore), IEEE ISBI 2023 (Colombia), Coling 2022 (Korea)

Interest

I enjoy working out and learning languages. Recently, I've started extensive reading. I'm currently reading "행성어 서점" by 김초엽.