Woojun Kim
[CV] (last updated: May 2025)
Postdoctoral Fellow (Advised by Prof. Katia Sycara)
Advanced Agent-Robotics Technology Lab
Robotics Institute, School of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon University
Contact -> woojunk [at] andrew [dot] cmu [dot] edu & kwj123123 [at] gmail [dot] com
Research Interests
My research currently focuses on multi-agent reinforcement learning (MARL). Specifically, I'm interested in developing MARL algorithms that achieve superior coordination among multiple agents and consider practical issues such as scalability, robustness, and generalization, and their applications to real-world problems such as robotics. My research on MARL can be organized into three intertwined thrusts:
(1) Correlated exploration method in MARL;
(2) Learning to communicate among multiple agents in MARL; and
(3) Development of scalable and robust MARL algorithms.
Besides the research on MARL, I'm also interested in {single-agent, multi-task, offline} reinforcement learning and other broad topics in machine learning such as imitation learning, transfer learning, and active learning.
Recent News
(Jul. 2025) Our paper received the Best Paper Award at the GenAI-HRI Workshop, RSS 2025!
(May. 2025) Our paper was selected as a finalist for both the Best Conference Paper and Best Multi-Robot Systems Paper at ICRA2025!
(Jan. 2025) Three papers are accepted to ICRA 2025.
(Sep. 2024) One paper is accepted to NeurIPS 2024.
(Jul. 2024) One paper is accepted to IROS 2024 as an oral presentation!
(Jan. 2024) One paper is accepted to ICLR 2024 as a spotlight presentation
(Oct. 2023) I joined CMU as a postdoc!
(Sep. 2023) Two papers and one workshop paper are accepted to NeurIPS 2023.
(Apr. 2023) Two papers are accepted to ICML 2023.
(Jan. 2023) Two papers and one workshop paper are accepted to AAMAS 2023.
Employment
(2023.10 ~ Present) Postdoctoral Fellow in the Robotics Institute, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA, USA (Advised by Prof. Katia Sycara)
(2023.03 ~ 2023.09) Postdoctoral Researcher in Electrical Engineering, KAIST, Daejeon, Korea (Advised by Prof. Youngchul Sung)
Education
(2018.03~2023.02) Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering, KAIST, Daejeon, Korea (Advised by Prof. Youngchul Sung)
(2016.03~2018.02) M.S. in Electrical Engineering, KAIST, Daejeon, Korea (Advised by Prof. Youngchul Sung)
(2010.03~2016.02) B.S. in Electrical Engineering, Korea University, Seoul, Korea (Including 2 years of military service)
Publications
(C: conference / P: preprint / W: workshop / U: under-review)
* denotes equal contribution
† denotes corresponding or advising author
Journal and Conference Publications
[C16] CARE: Enhancing Safety of Visual Navigation through Collision Avoidance via Repulsive Estimation
Joonkyung Kim, Joonyeol Sim, Woojun Kim, Katia Sycara, Changjoo Nam†
Conference on Robot Learning (CoRL) 2025
[C15] Distributed Multi-robot Source Seeking in Unknown Environments with Unknown Number of Sources
Lingpeng Chen, Siva Kailas, Srujan Deolasee, Wenhao Luo, Katia Sycara, Woojun Kim†
IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) 2025 (acceptance rate: 38.7%)
Best Conference Paper Finalist and Best Paper Finalist on Multi-Robot Systems
[C14] Escaping Local Minima: Hybrid Artificial Potential Field with Wall-Follower for Decentralized Multi-Robot Navigation
Joonkyung Kim, Sangjin Park, Wonjong Lee, Woojun Kim, Nakju Doh, Changjoo Nam†
IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) 2025 (acceptance rate: 38.7%)
[C13] Integrating Multi-Robot Adaptive Sampling and Informative Path Planning for Spatiotemporal Natural Environment Prediction
Siva Kailas, Srujan Deolasee, Wenhao Luo, Woojun Kim, Katia Sycara†
IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) 2025 (acceptance rate: 38.7%)
[J2] Performance of Large Language Models on the Korean Dental Licensing Examination: A Comparative Study
Woojun Kim, BongChul Kim, Han-Gyeol Yeom†
International Dental Journal
[C12] Adaptive Q-Aid for Conditional Supervised Learning in Offline Reinforcement Learning
Jeonghye Kim, Suyoung Lee, Woojun Kim, Youngchul Sung†
Conference on Neural Information Processsing Systems (NeurIPS) 2024 (acceptance rate: 25.8%)
[C11] ShapeGrasp: Zero-Shot Object Grasping with LLMs via Geometric Decomposition
Samuel Li, Sarthak Bhagat, Joseph Campbell, Yaqi Xie, Woojun Kim, Katia Sycara, Simon Stepputtis†
IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), 2024
Oral Presentation
[C10] Decision ConvFormer: Local Filtering in MetaFormer is Sufficient for Decision Making [pdf] [project]
Jeonghye Kim, Suyoung Lee, Woojun Kim†(Equal advising), Youngchul Sung†
International Conference on Learning Representation (ICLR), 2024
Spotlight Presentation (Top 5%)
[C9] Sample-Efficient and Safe Reinforcement Learning via Reset Deep Ensemble Agents [pdf]
Woojun Kim*, YongJae Shin*, Jongeui Park, Youngchul Sung†
Conference on Neural Information Processsing Systems (NeurIPS) 2023 (acceptance rate: 26.1%)
[C8] Domain Adaptive Imitation Learning with Visual Observation [pdf]
Sungho Choi, Seungyul Han†, Woojun Kim, Jongseong Chae, Whiyoung Jung, Youngchul Sung
Conference on Neural Information Processsing Systems (NeurIPS) 2023 (acceptance rate: 26.1%)
[C7] LESSON: Learning to Integrate Exploration Strategies for Reinforcement Learning via an Option Framework [pdf] [code]
Woojun Kim*, Jeonghye Kim*, Youngchul Sung†
International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML) 2023 (acceptance rate: 1827/6538=27.9%)
[C6] An Adaptive Entropy-Regularization Framework for Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning [pdf]
Woojun Kim, Youngchul Sung†
International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML) 2023 (acceptance rate: 1827/6538=27.9%)
The preliminary version was presented at ICML 2022 workshop (DARL)
[C5] Parameter Sharing with Network Pruning for Multi-Agent Deep Reinforcement Learning [pdf]
Woojun Kim, Youngchul Sung†
International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems (AAMAS) 2023 (acceptance rate: 237/1015=23.3%)
[C4] A Variational Approach to Mutual Information-Based Coordination for Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning [pdf]
Woojun Kim, Whiyoung Jung, Myungsik Cho, Youngchul Sung†
International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems (AAMAS) 2023 (acceptance rate: 237/1015=23.3%)
The preliminary version was presented at ICML 2022 workshop (AI4ABM)
[J1] Enabling Technologies for AI Empowered 6G Massive Radio Access Networks [pdf]
Md. Shahjalal, Woojun Kim, Waqas Khalid, Seokjae Moon, Murad Khan, ShuZhi Liu, Suhyeon Lim, Eunjin Kim, Deok-Won Yun, Joohyun Lee, Won-Cheol Lee , Seung-Hoon Hwang, Dongkyun Kim, Jang-Won Lee, Heejung Yu, Youngchul Sung, Yeong Min Jang†
ICT Express, July 2022
[C3] MASER: Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning with Subgoals Generated from Experience Replay Buffer [pdf]
Jeewon Jeon, Woojun Kim†(Equal advising), Whiyoung Jung, Youngchul Sung†
International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML) 2022 (acceptance rate: 1235/5630=21.9%)
[C2] Communication in Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning: Intention Sharing [pdf]
Woojun Kim, Jongeui Park, Youngchul Sung†
International Conference on Learning Representation (ICLR), 2021 (acceptance rate: 860/2997=28.7%)
[C1] Message-dropout: An Efficient Training Method for Multi-Agent Deep Reinforcement Learning [pdf]
Woojun Kim, Myungsik Cho, Youngchul Sung†
AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI), 2019 (acceptance rate: 1150/7095=16.2%)
Workshop Papers
[W9] Modeling Latent Partner Strategies for Adaptive Zero-Shot Human-Agent Collaboration
Benjamin Li, Shuyang Shi, Lucia Romero, Huao Li, Yaqi Xie, Woojun Kim, Stefanos Nikolaidis, Charles Michael Lewis, Katia Sycara, Simon Stepputtis†
RSS Workshop on Generative AI and Human-Robot Interaction, 2025
Best Paper Award
[W8] OffRIPP: Offline RL-based Informative Path Planning
Srikar Babu Gadipudi, Srujan Deolasee, Siva Kailas, Wenhao Luo, Katia Sycara, Woojun Kim†
ICRA Workshop on Beyond the Lab: Robust Planning and Control in Real World Scenarios, 2025
[W7] DyPNIPP: Predicting Environment Dynamics for RL-based Robust Informative Path Planning
Srujan Deolasee, Siva Kailas, Wenhao Luo, Katia Sycara, Woojun Kim†
ICRA Workshop on Beyond the Lab: Robust Planning and Control in Real World Scenarios, 2025
[W6] HiMemFormer: Hierarchical Memory-Aware Transformer for Multi-Agent Action Anticipation
Zirui Wang, Xinran Zhao, Simon Stepputtis, Woojun Kim, Tongshuang Wu, Katia Sycara, Yaqi Xie†
NeurIPS Workshop on Video-Language Models (NeurIPS), 2024
[W5] ShapeGrasp: Zero-Shot Object Grasping with LLMs via Geometric Decomposition
Samuel Li, Sarthak Bhagat, Joseph Campbell, Yaqi Xie, Woojun Kim, Katia Sycara, Simon Stepputtis†
ICRA Workshop on 3D Visual Representations for Robot Manipulation (ICRA), 2024
[W4] Decision ConvFormer: Local Filtering in MetaFormer is Sufficient for Decision Making
Jeonghye Kim, Suyoung Lee, Woojun Kim†(Equal advising), Youngchul Sung†
Foundation Model for Decision Making (FMDM) Workshop at NeurIPS 2023
[W3] Off-Policy Multi-Agent Policy Optimization with Multi-Step Counterfactual Advantage Estimation
Seongmin Kim, Seungyul Han, Woojun Kim, Jeewon Jeon, Youngchul Sung†
Adaptive and Learning Agents (ALA) Workshop at AAMAS 2023
[W2] An Adaptive Entropy-Regularization Framework for Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning [pdf]
Woojun Kim, Youngchul Sung†
Decision Awareness in Reinforcement Learning (DARL) Workshop at ICML 2022
[W1] A Variational Approach to Mutual Information-Based Coordination for Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning
Woojun Kim, Whiyoung Jung, Myungsik Cho, Youngchul Sung†
International AI for Agent-Based Modelling (AI4ABM) Workshop at ICML 2022
Preprint Papers
[P1] A Maximum Mutual Information Framework for Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning [pdf]
Woojun Kim, Whiyoung Jung, Myungsik Cho, Youngchul Sung†
Awards & Honors
Best Paper Award at the GenAI-HRI Workshop, RSS 2025
Best Paper Finalist on Multi-Robot Systems, ICRA 2025
Finalist, Qualcomm Innovation Fellowship, Dec. 2020
Honorable Mention, 25th Samsung HumanTech Paper Award, Feb. 2019
Championship, The 1st AI Soccer Worldcup with Team AFC_WISRL, Aug. 2018 (Team Leader)
Second Prize, The 1st AI Soccer Korean Cup with Team AFC_WISRL, Dec. 2017 (Team Leader)
Invited Talks
"Message-dropout: An Efficient Training Method for Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning" at NAVER, Feb. 2019
"AI Worldcup and Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning" at Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI), Nov. 2018