Ryan SangBaek Kim, Ph.D.
Founder & Principal Investigator
Ryan Research Institute
Affective Neuroscience · Philosophy of Mind · AI Ethics
Paris, France
ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0006-2751-496X
Email: ryan@ryanresearch.org
Substack: https://substack.com/@profryankim
About the Institute
Ryan Research Institute (RRI) is a Paris-based research institute studying emotion, interpretation, and the conditions under which emotional meaning is formed, displaced, or governed.
Its work spans psychology, neuroscience, philosophy of mind, and AI ethics. The central focus is interpretive authority: who has the final say in defining what a feeling means.
RRI develops Affective Sovereignty as a research program, examining how emotional interpretation shifts across individuals, institutions, and intelligent systems.
The institute functions as a research hub, publishing peer-reviewed work, books, datasets, and public writing across disciplines.
Institutional Affiliations & Memberships
(ordered by relevance & recency)
- Full Member, International Association for Safe & Ethical AI (IASEAI)
- Full Member, Italian Society for Ethics in Artificial Intelligence (SIpEIA)
- Full Member, BCS – The Chartered Institute for IT (UK)
- Full Member, SGAI – Specialist Group on Artificial Intelligence (BCS AI Section)
- Full Member, EurAI – European Association for Artificial Intelligence (via BCS)
- Full Member, Korean Artificial Intelligence Association (KAIA)
- Lifetime Member, Korean Academic Society of Business Administration (KASBA)
- Registered Artist, Korea Music Copyright Association (KOMCA)
- Lifetime Member, Korean Artist Welfare Foundation (KAWF)
"Emotion is the last sovereignty we must protect in the age of intelligent machines."
Manifesto
Emotion is the last sovereignty we must protect in the age of intelligent machines.
The Ryan Research Institute was founded to establish Affective Sovereignty as a new intellectual and ethical frontier.
It begins from a simple claim: the right to interpret one’s own emotions belongs to the individual.
As emotional AI systems become capable of labeling, predicting, and shaping affect, the risk is no longer limited to misclassification. The deeper risk is that systems begin to define emotional meaning itself.
Affective Sovereignty asserts that interpretation cannot be fully delegated.
This is not only a psychological concern, but a question of dignity, autonomy, and freedom.
Research Fellowship
RRI operates a small number of structured research collaborations focused on validation, reproducibility, and theoretical integration.
These are not training programs or open-ended mentorships. They are document-driven collaborations with defined scope, contribution tracking, and research governance.
Participation is limited and invitation-based.
For collaboration inquiries: