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2019 Cocoan’s SWOT and BIG questions

Strengths

  • We have expertise in pain/emotion research, in interpreting predictive models within the context of neuroscience
  • Computational resources (well-equipped)
  • Strong analysis methods and techniques; advanced computational skills
  • Lab members have diverse backgrounds
  • Wani is enthusiastic about research; ambitious and passionate Wani
  • No administrative job for students
  • Easy to collect new data and test new ideas
  • Independence

Weaknesses

  • Independence again, a small number of collaborations going on within the lab; not enough intergroup discussions, lack of inter-lab collaborations
  • not many experts in the lab (e.g., no postdocs), and our group is already big (a bottleneck exists)
  • We’re “users” of computational methods, not developers, though sometimes we could want to develop new things
  • We do not have a strong reputation yet; uncertain about future outcomes
  • We’re from diverse fields; could be superficial about things
  • A majority of projects are at the same stage (the “analysis” phase)
  • Each research has different perspectives and goals; difficult to be integrated into one big picture

Threats

  • Each project takes long time, while the field is changing rapidly; difficult to catch up
  • Data—storage and computational resources
  • Analysis tools are changing too rapidly
  • Difficult to know what is going on at the center of the field

Opportunities

  • We’re a part of a big center; we can easily collect large data and have an access to good computing resources
  • Collaborations with many other researchers with different modalities can be possible
  • Clinical applicability
  • Growing field! our field are getting attention; many people are flowing into the field
  • We’re addressing challenging research questions; opportunity for new discovery
  • Good networking in the field

BIG questions

that We ARE asking:

  • Can we accurately measure pain and emotions through the brain; what is the upper bound of model performance?
  • Can we make brain models of emotions, affects, and concepts that are subjective and abstract?
  • Dissociating different components of pain
  • Investigating within-individual factors (e.g., cognitive factors) that influence pain
  • Building personalized models of pain and emotions
  • real-life pain and emotions

that we WILL be asking

  • (we ended this lab activity with the promise that we will keep thinking about this question, what are the big questions that we will be asking!)