Since establishing the Childhood Dementia Research Group in 2002, Kim has dedicated her research career to the study of, and development of treatments for childhood dementia. Kim presently leads and coordinates a multi-disciplinary team and a comprehensive, innovative translational research program that is seeking to develop tools for predicting the rate of symptom onset and disease progression in the childhood dementia Sanfilippo syndrome, evaluate novel treatments, and provide blood-based biomarkers for monitoring therapeutic efficacy.