My name is Kun Xu. I am an Associate Professor of Emerging Technologies at the University of Florida College of Journalism and Communications.

My research focuses on human-robot interaction, human-computer interaction, computer-mediated communication, and psychological processing of emerging media. I use social scientific approaches to investigate how people perceive, evaluate, and interact with humanoid social robots, virtual agents, and mobile assistants. I am also interested in how people make sense of spaces and maintain social relationships in virtual and augmented reality environments.

My research seeks to inform UI design, UX design, education, health communication, and political communication. I primarily use lab experiments, multivariate/modeling techniques (SEM and HLM), computational methods (GIS, machine learning), and visual analyses in my works.

Born and brought up in Shanghai, I received my B.A. in International Journalism (major) and German (minor) from Shanghai International Studies University. I worked as a cameraman in the TV Department at Reuters News Agency and as a news editor in the TV Center of Shanghai Media Group (SMG). I obtained my Ph.D. in media and communication at Temple University.