Nayoung Kim, PhD
- Assistant Professor of Neurobiology (in Psychiatry)
Overview
Nayoung Kim, PhD, is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at Columbia University. She received her BA in Industrial and Systems Engineering and her MS in Management Engineering from the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), and her PhD in Industrial and Systems Engineering from North Carolina State University. She began her postdoctoral training at Weill Cornell Medicine, studying cognitive impairments following traumatic brain injury, and completed further postdoctoral training on adolescent depression in the Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Division in the Department of Psychiatry at Columbia University.
Dr. Kim's research broadly aims to better understand the intersection of digital technology and adolescent mental health. She is interested in how everyday smartphone use shapes behavioral, social, and neural development during adolescence, and in translating these insights into scalable strategies that protect youth mental health.
Dr. Kim's research broadly aims to better understand the intersection of digital technology and adolescent mental health. She is interested in how everyday smartphone use shapes behavioral, social, and neural development during adolescence, and in translating these insights into scalable strategies that protect youth mental health.
Academic Appointments
- Assistant Professor of Neurobiology (in Psychiatry)
Gender
- Female
Research
Dr. Kim's research investigates the intersection of digital technology and adolescent mental health, with a focus on how neurophysiological markers and smartphone passive sensing data can help identify risk for depression and how everyday smartphone use shapes social, physical, and neural development across adolescence. Her work pairs intensive longitudinal data from adolescents' own smartphones with neuroimaging and neurophysiological measures, including EEG and fMRI, and draws on large-scale developmental datasets such as the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study. A central aim is to better understand the social-affective and neural processes that link everyday technology use to depression risk in youth. By identifying which adolescents are most vulnerable and how patterns of use matter beyond total screen time, this work aims to inform targeted, scalable interventions and evidence-based guidelines for healthy technology use.
Selected Publications
Kim, N., Funkhouser, C. J., Trivedi, E., Letkiewicz, A. M., Li, L. Y., Sritharan, A., Sarkas, S. E., McGregor, M. M., Durham, K., Pagliaccio, D., Allen, N. B., Shankman, S. A., & Auerbach, R. P. Emotion-processing biases and neural connectivity in remitted major depressive disorder among adolescents (In Press) Clinical psychological science
Kim, N., Li, L. Y., Funkhouser, C. J., Letkiewicz, A. M., Trivedi, E., Sritharan, A., Sarkas, S. E., McGregor, M. M., Durham, K., Pagliaccio, D., Tang, A., Allen, N. B., Shankman, S. A., & Auerbach, R. P. (2025). EEG-based brain connectivity and sentiment analysis from smartphone social communication: Insights into remitted major depressive disorder among adolescents. NPP Digital Psychiatry & Neuroscience, 3, 23. PMID41070033
Kim N., Bloom, P. A., Rosellini A. J., Webb C. A., Pizzagalli D.A. & Auerbach R. P. (2025). Probing neurophysiological processes related to self-referential processing to predict improvement for depressed adolescents receiving cognitive behavioral therapy. Biological Psychiatry: Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuroimaging, 5, 485-494. PMID: 39491787
Li, L. Y., Kim, N., Trivedi, E., Sarkas, S. E., McGregor, M. M., Sritharan, A., Durham, K., Alekseichuk, I., Letkiewicz, A. M., Mittal, V. A., Pagliaccio, D., Allen, N., & Auerbach, R. P. Smartphone language and resting-state EEG indicators of self-focused attention prospectively predict depression recurrence among adolescent remitted MDD (In Press) Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatr, 67: 941-950.
For a complete list of publications, please visit https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/myncbi/nayoung.kim.6/bibliography/public/
Kim, N., Li, L. Y., Funkhouser, C. J., Letkiewicz, A. M., Trivedi, E., Sritharan, A., Sarkas, S. E., McGregor, M. M., Durham, K., Pagliaccio, D., Tang, A., Allen, N. B., Shankman, S. A., & Auerbach, R. P. (2025). EEG-based brain connectivity and sentiment analysis from smartphone social communication: Insights into remitted major depressive disorder among adolescents. NPP Digital Psychiatry & Neuroscience, 3, 23. PMID41070033
Kim N., Bloom, P. A., Rosellini A. J., Webb C. A., Pizzagalli D.A. & Auerbach R. P. (2025). Probing neurophysiological processes related to self-referential processing to predict improvement for depressed adolescents receiving cognitive behavioral therapy. Biological Psychiatry: Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuroimaging, 5, 485-494. PMID: 39491787
Li, L. Y., Kim, N., Trivedi, E., Sarkas, S. E., McGregor, M. M., Sritharan, A., Durham, K., Alekseichuk, I., Letkiewicz, A. M., Mittal, V. A., Pagliaccio, D., Allen, N., & Auerbach, R. P. Smartphone language and resting-state EEG indicators of self-focused attention prospectively predict depression recurrence among adolescent remitted MDD (In Press) Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatr, 67: 941-950.
For a complete list of publications, please visit https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/myncbi/nayoung.kim.6/bibliography/public/