Jungjoon Park

Postdoctoral Fellow · AMILab (Advanced Machine Intelligence), KAIST School of Computing

Daejeon, Republic of Korea

About

I work at the interface of neuroscience and AI — using AI to study neural and behavioral data, and drawing on neuroscience to inform AI systems. Prior work has examined context-dependent perception and cognition in rodent empathy, emotion-aware LLM reasoning, and conditional similarity in vision-language models. At KAIST AMILab, I am working on computational methods for animal behavior analysis.

Education

Sep. 2013 - Aug. 2022 Ph.D. in Bio & Brain Engineering, KAIST, Daejeon, Republic of Korea

• Dissertation: “Behavioral and Genetic Study on Postnatal Factors of Empathy: The Differential Contributions of Social Context and Brain Areas on Observational Fear Learning”

Sep. 2010 - Aug. 2013 M.S. in Bio & Brain Engineering, KAIST, Daejeon, Republic of Korea

• Thesis: “Investigation of Empathy in Terms of Age and Memory”

Mar. 2005 - Aug. 2010 B.S. in Bio & Brain Engineering (Minor in Business Economics), KAIST, Daejeon, Republic of Korea

Experience

Aug. 2025 - Aug. 2026 Postdoctoral Fellow, AMILab, KAIST School of Computing

• Hosted by Prof. Tae-Hyun Oh (AMILab PI); supported by the InnoCore Postdoctoral Fellowship Program (MSIT/NRF).
• Vision-Language Models & conditional visual similarity: co-authored CLAY (CVPR 2026) on modulating visual similarity in a VLM embedding space.
• 3D Gaussian Splatting (3D-GS) for animal reconstruction & behavior analysis (ongoing): developing a multi-view geometry (MVG) + neural-representation pipeline that reconstructs freely-moving animals in 3D/4D and extracts quantitative behavioral descriptors.

Oct. 2024 - May 2025 Impact Scholar, Impact Scholars Program (ISP), Neuromatch Academy, Virtual

• Selected for an intensive AI fellowship with hands-on research and mentorship; completed mentored research on LLM-based emotion recognition.

Sep. 2022 - May 2024 Chief Operating Officer & Research Director, ACTNOVA, Daejeon, Republic of Korea

• Co-founded and scaled a neuroscience-AI startup, raising ₩4.3B in pre-Series A and growing the team to five researchers.

Jan. 2012 - Feb. 2018 / Nov. 2014 - Feb. 2018 Trainee → Researcher, Center for Cognition and Sociality (CCS), IBS, Daejeon, Republic of Korea

• Performed chemogenetics, in-vivo electrophysiology, and behavioral assays to map affective empathy and remote social memory circuits.

Mar. 2006 - Aug. 2010 / Mar. 2018 - Aug. 2022 Researcher, Brain Dynamics Laboratory, KAIST, Daejeon, Republic of Korea

• Processed non-human primate behavioral datasets and human fMRI data; analyzed cross-species behavioral and cognitive neuroscience experiments to uncover neural correlates of empathy.

Mar. 2011 - Dec. 2012 Trainee, Brain Science Institute (BSI), KIST, Seoul, Republic of Korea

• Studied rodent social behavior and system consolidation mechanisms including memory specificity & generalization trade-off.

Publications

Peer-Reviewed Conference Articles

• Lim, S.; Lee, H.; Park, J.-J.; Oh, T.-H. CLAY: Conditional Visual Similarity Modulation in Vision-Language Embedding Space. IEEE/CVF Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR), 2026. arXiv:2604.11539

Peer-Reviewed Journal Articles

• Park, J.-J.; Ha, S.; Shin, H.-S.; Jeong, J. Experience of a Hierarchical Relationship between a Pair of Mice Specifically Influences Their Affective Empathy toward Each Other. Genes, Brain and Behavior 21(5):e12810, 2022. DOI
  • Authors: Jungjoon Park, Seungshin Ha, Hee-Sup Shin, Jaeseung Jeong.
• Lee, J.-H.; Latchoumane, C.-F. V.; Park, J.-J.; Kim, J.; Jeong, J.; Lee, K.-H.; Shin, H.-S. The Rostroventral Part of the Thalamic Reticular Nucleus Modulates Fear Extinction. Nature Communications 10:4637, 2019. DOI
  • Authors: Joon-Hyuk Lee, Charles-Francois V. Latchoumane, Jungjoon Park, Jinhyun Kim, Jaeseung Jeong, Kwang-Hyung Lee, Hee-Sup Shin.
• Keum, S.; Park, J.; Kim, A.; Park, J.; Kim, K. K.; Jeong, J.; Shin, H.-S. Variability in Empathic Fear Response among 11 Inbred Strains of Mice. Genes, Brain and Behavior 15(2):231–242, 2016. DOI

Peer-Reviewed Workshop Posters (Non-Archival)

• Daegun Kim, Jineun Kim, Wongyo Jung, Jungjoon Park, Mingyu Kim, Anna Shin, Yong-Cheol Jeong, Seahyung Park, Gwanhoo Shin, Ye Won Lee, Jea Kwon, Daesoo Kim AVATAR: AI Vision Analysis for Three-Dimensional Action in Real-Time. CV4Animals Workshop @ CVPR, 2022. Non-archival (not in CVPR proceedings).

Preprints

• Park, J.-J.; Mashayekh Esfahan, N.; Narayan, A. (N. = Nikoo, A. = Arasu) Toward Advancing Emotion Recognition in LLMs: A Comparative Study of Prompt Strategies, Few-Shot Learning, and Model Ensembling. Zenodo, Apr 2025. DOI

Selected Presentations

Invited Talks & Seminars

• Invited Speaker: “Mice Hierarchy and Empathy Study,” 50th European Brain & Behaviour Society Meeting (EBBS), Amsterdam, Aug 2023.
• Seminar: “The Virtuous Cycle of NeuroAI: Bridging Biological and Artificial Intelligence,” KAIST AMI Lab, Feb 2026.
• Co-Presenter: “Advancing Emotion Recognition in LLMs,” Impact Scholars Program Seminar, Virtual, Mar 2025.
• Invited Speaker: “Behavioral Video Analysis for Predicting Attraction towards Others,” BC & Behavior Workshop, DBDL, KAIST, Jan 2024.

Posters & Conference Presentations

• Poster: “AVATAR: AI Vision Analysis for Three-Dimensional Action in Real-Time,” CV4Animals Workshop @ CVPR, Jun 2022.
• Poster: “Intrinsic and Social Factors of Empathic Response,” Francis Crick Symposium, CSHL, Suzhou, May 2019.
• Oral: “NAS-Optimized CNN for Driver Monitoring with XAI,” ETRI AI System Development Seminar, Pangyo, Oct 2018.
• Poster: “The Precision of Contextual Familiarity Memory Is Attenuated in Remote Retrieval,” Society for Neuroscience (SfN), San Diego, Nov 2013.

Honors & Awards

2022 Committee Member, Convergence Division — 2022 Science-Belt Research Society Idea Concert, INNOPOLIS.

2022 Excellence Prize — Instructor & Course Designer for “Neuroscience 101,” KAIST.

2019 Excellence Prize — Ultimate Question Competition, KAIST.

2018 Grand Prize (DDSA), Encouragement Prize (ETRI) — NAS-Optimized CNN for Driver Monitoring with XAI.

2012 Grand Prize — “Neuronal Variability—Noise or Signal?” Korean Society for Computational Neuroscience.

2007 Encouragement Prize — Undergraduate Research Program (URP), KAIST.

2006 Scholarship — Department of Bio & Brain Engineering, KAIST.

Teaching & Mentorship

Jun. 2025 Workshop Instructor, “Neuro-AI Convergence: Foundation Model Workflows for Neuroscience,” DBDL, Dept. of BCS, KAIST.

Spring 2022 Instructor, “Neuroscience 101,” KAIST Global Leadership Center.

Dec. 2020 - Aug. 2022 Instructor, “Python for Neuroscientists,” CCS, IBS.

Fall 2019 - Fall 2021 Instructor, “A Small, Good Thing: Stories of Mind and Life,” KAIST Global Leadership Center.

Feb. 2012 - Oct. 2013 Supervisor, Tip-of-the-Tongue Phenomenon in Korean-English Bilinguals (high-school mentee).

Academic Service & Leadership

2020 - Present Co-Founder & Organizer, Neureka & KAIST NeuroAI Communities — interdisciplinary seminar series featuring speakers including Prof. Peter Dayan.

Selected Grants & Projects

• Lead Researcher (Industry Partner, ACTNOVA) — Segmentation of Cognitive-Control Heterogeneity in ASD via Cross-Species Phenotyping, Brain Science Convergence (MSIT). KRW 450M/year. Apr 2024 – Present.
• Principal Investigator (ACTNOVA) — An AI System to Find Biomarkers in Behavioral Image Data (Finalist), Science-Belt R&BD Program (MSIT). KRW 475M/year. Apr 2023.
• Research Director (ACTNOVA) — Unsupervised Behavior Embedding Segmentation for Group Difference Analysis in Mice, UCSD & Broad Institute. Jun 2023 – May 2024.
• Project Lead — LLM-Powered Engine for Parental Coaching Plan Recommendation, ConnectsLab. Mar – Apr 2025.
• Project Lead (KAIST) — Assessing Empathic Abilities in Actress Bae Doona via fMRI, Actor Research Institute. Apr – Nov 2021.

Core Competencies

• AI/ML Engineering — Python, PyTorch, TensorFlow, NumPy, Pandas, LaTeX, Bash; Generative Models (VAE, Diffusion), LLMs (Prompt Engineering, HuggingFace, LangChain, PEFT); Linux, Docker, Git, MLflow, Weights & Biases, Hydra.
• Computer Vision & 3D Reconstruction — Multi-View Geometry (MVG), 3D Gaussian Splatting; Qwen-VL, Qwen-Omni (multimodal); Pose & keypoint estimation (MediaPipe, YOLO), unsupervised behavior segmentation (SUBTLE, keypoint-MoSeq).
• Neuro-AI & Cognitive Modeling — Brain-inspired cognitive architectures; analyzing neural (fMRI/EEG) and behavioral data to inform model design.
• Experimental Neuroscience — Full experimental loops: cognitive/behavioral paradigm design, targeted neural recording (single-unit), manipulation (optogenetics), analysis.

Professional Training & Certifications

Sep. 2024 - Apr. 2025 AI Bootcamp, Upstage AI Lab & FastCampus — 1st place (anomaly detection), 3rd place (RAG), scalable MLOps pipeline.

Jul. 2024 Deep Learning Course, Neuromatch Academy — multi-modal emotion recognition (tinyBERT + wav2vec).

2018 - 2021 Data Science & Production ML — CCEI (6-month Fellowship), Google Cloud, NIPA.