Kim earned her PhD from Northwestern University and did her post-doc in the laboratory of Scott Hultgren at Washington University in St. Louis in collaboration with Birgitta Henriques-Normark and Staffan Normark at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm. During that time, Kim was an American Heart Association Fellow, Carl Tryggers Fellow, and NIH K99 recipient. In 2011, Kim received and NRF Fellowship in Singapore and joined the faculty at Nanyang Technological University (NTU) joined SCELSE, a biofilm-focused research institute, as a Principal Investigator. In 2014 she was awarded an ICAAC Young Investigator Award by the American Society of Microbiology, in 2016 she received the Nanyang Teaching Award, and she was promoted to Professor in 2021. In 2022, Kim joined the University of Geneva. In her free time, Kim enjoys reading, cooking, her pugs, and exploring Switzerland.