Lab director
Choong-Wan (Wani) is the director of the Cocoan lab. His research focuses on understanding how the human brain represents, processes, and regulates pain and emotions using machine learning and computational modeling. He received his dual PhD in the Department of Psychology and Neuroscience and the Institute of Cognitive Sciences from the University of Colorado Boulder (PhD advisor: Tor D. Wager), and MA in Clinical psychology and BS in Biology from Seoul National University. He has received many awards including the Scitech Korea Young Neuroscientist Award from the Korean Society for Brain and Neural Sciences (한국뇌신경과학회, 2023), the Top 100 R&D achievements from the government (국가연구개발 우수성과 100선, 과기정통부, 2022), Kim Chan Award from the Korean Pain Research Society (대한통증연구회, 2022), Outstanding Achievement Award from the Korean Society for Human Brain Mapping (학술상, 대한뇌기능매핑학회, 2021), Jaeil Kim Young Scholar Paper Award from the Korean Psychological Association (한국심리학회, 2019). Currently, he is an associate director of the IBS Center for Neuroscience Imaging Research (뇌과학이미징연구단), an associate professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering at Sungkyunkwan University (SKKU) and also the BK21-FOUR funded department of Intelligent Precision Healthcare Convergence (IPHC) at SKKU.
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Graduate students
Sungwoo is a graduate student in the Cocoan lab. He joined the lab as a postbac RA 2018 summer and entered the graduate school 2019 summer. He received B.A. in Psychology at Catholic University of Korea and is taking another B.S. course in Computer science and Statistics at Korea National Open University. He is interested in deep learning and computational models of pain and emotions. He is currently leading a project, called the Midnight Pain Club!
Jihoon is a graduate student in the Cocoan lab. He joined the lab as an undergrad RA at 2018 summer and entered the graduate school 2020 spring. He majored in Computer Sciences at the Hongik University. He previously worked with Prof. Yongseok Yoo at the Brain & Information Lab in Incheon University. His research interests include computational neuroscience and artificial intelligence (esp. deep learning models).
Eui Jin is a graduate student in the Cocoan lab. She joined the lab as a post-bachelor research assistant in the fall of 2022 and started a graduate study in the spring of 2023. She holds a B.A. in psychology and big-data humanage from the Catholic University of Korea, and her research interests revolve around emotions from cognitive, affective, and clinical neuroscience perspectives. Specifically, her research focus is on music-induced analgesia and she aims to further her investigations in this field with the ultimate goal of commercializing music as a treatment method in the future.
Sohee is a graduate student in the Cocoan lab. She joined the lab as a post-bachelor research assistant in the spring of 2023 and started a graduate study in the spring of 2024. During undergrad, she double majored in Department of Medical Biotechnology and Bio-Software at Kangwon National University. She is interested reinforcement learning and computational models of internal state. She also wants to understand decision making process based on internal state.
Joobin joined Cocoan lab spring of 2023 as an Undergraduate Research Assistant and started her undergradaute & masters combined program 2024 fall. She studied psychology at Sungkyunkwan University and has a broad interest in the mechanisms of emotion and its link to other constructs such as pain. She aims to study them through language and unravel how emotion carries out in the brain.
Jeong In is a graduate student in the Cocoan lab. She joined the lab as an Undergrad Research Assistant in the Cocoan lab since November 2023 and started a graduate study in the spring of 2025. She is majoring in philosophy and psychology at Yonsei University. She is interested in identifying how people develop the sense of self relevance and the internal model generating selfhood.
Youngsoul joined Cocoan Lab in February 2024 as an Undergraduate Research Assistant and transitioned into the BS/MS integrated program in Fall 2025. With a background in Biomedical Engineering at Sungkyunkwan University, her research focuses on understanding pain as a multivariate stimulus. She is particularly interested in how a subject’s internal state shapes the pain experience and leverages these internal factors as critical predictors in her models.
Sehwan is a graduate student in the Cocoan Lab, where he has been involved in research since June 2024 (initially as a post-bachelor research assistant). He studied astronomy at Chungnam National University and Yonsei University, and began his graduate program in Spring 2026. He is broadly interested in the covert nature of human consciousness and the mind–body problem, with a particular focus on subjective and phenomenal experience. Outside the lab, he enjoys philosophy—especially phenomenology, existentialism, and ontology—as well as literature, and he hopes to make practical contributions to human life through a deeper understanding of consciousness.
Visiting scholar
Saül Pascual-Diaz is a physicist and postdoctoral researcher in the Pain and Emotion Neuroscience Laboratory (PENlab) led by Dr. Marina López-Solà at the Universitat de Barcelona. He specializes in multimodal neuroimaging, including structural MRI, diffusion MRI, and task- and resting-state fMRI, using multimodal multivariate analyses. As a postdoctoral researcher, he was part of the SPRINT multisite project led by Stanford, Toronto, Cincinnati, and Barcelona, developing a multisensory brain signature for pain recovery in adolescents with chronic musculoskeletal pain. He is currently visiting the Cocoan Lab at Sungkyunkwan University through his postdoctoral position funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science, collaborating with lab director Dr. Choong-Wan Woo.
Research staff
Jaejoong is a postdoc in the Cocoan lab. He is interested in the individualized brain representations of experimental and clinical sustained pain. He received his M.D. from Hanyang University in 2017, and joined the Cocoan lab as a graduate student. He received Ph.D. from Sungkyunkwan University in 2023.
Jungwoo is a graduate student in the Cocoan lab. He joined the lab as a postbac RA 2019 spring and entered the graduate school 2020 spring. He majored systems biology and minored philosophy at Yonsei University. He is interested in computational basis of emotion and pain. His ultimate goal is to find computational motifs of our psychological constructs that can substitute lingual representation.
Jisu is a post-bachelor researcher and lab manager in the Cocoan lab. She majored Psychology at Jeonbuk National University. She is interested in using fMRI to study the neural mechanism of emotional experiences, especially in relation to emotional disorders.
Deborah is a post-master’s research coordinator and lab manager at the Cocoan Lab. She earned her bachelor’s degree in biology from Baylor University and completed her master’s degree in medical science at the University of North Texas Health Science Center in 2024. She previously worked in a neurology clinic, where she developed a strong interest in neuroscience. She hopes to expand her studies in the effects of pain and neuroimaging. Ultimately, she plans to pursue a medical degree in the United States.
Jeong Yeon joined the COCOAN Lab in 2025 and currently works as a post-bachelor researcher. She studied Psychology and Software Engineering at Duksung Women’s University. Her research interests focus on interoceptive AI and multi-agent systems, particularly in studying interactions between agents and the emergence of adaptive behaviors.
Undergraduate students
Sangheon, majoring in Biomedical Engineering at Sungkyunkwan University, joined the Cocoan lab in JAN. 2025. as an undergraduate research assistant. He has a broad interest in brain mechanisms, particularly in how consciousness is formed and operates. He hopes to acquire a better understanding of relationship between conciousness and brain.
Minsuh is majoring in Global Biomedical Engineering at Sungkyunkwan University. She joined the Cocoan Lab in November 2025 as an undergraduate research assistant. She has a broad interest in artificial intelligence, with a specific focus on AI’s internal states and their role in creating lifelike intelligence.
Seo-Yeon Jeong is majoring in Psychology at Duksung Women’s University. She joined the Cocoan Lab in March 2026 as an undergraduate RA. She has a broad interest in understanding cognitive psychology using neural data and is particularly interested in how subjective experiences are represented in brain networks.
Seo-Yeon Park is an undergraduate student at Sungkyunkwan University, majoring in Industrial Engineering. She joined the lab in March 2026 as an undergraduate research assistant. Her research interests focus on computational approaches to studying internal brain states such as sleep and dreaming, as well as neurodegenerative diseases.
Jinyoung Park, majoring in Neuroscience at the University of Michigan, joined the Cocoan in March, 2026, as an undergraduate research assistance. Curious about computational approaches to understand brain mechanics, he has a wide range of interest on the field. Recently, he is fascinated by the researches that incorporate fMRI data to create machine learning models with clinical potentials.
Collaborators
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